The weather here is much more pleasant than I had expected, with an average midday temperature of only about seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit and a cool breeze blowing almost constantly from the near though invisible snows. Every day since I arrived the sky has suddenly clouded over during the afternoon and an hour or so later we get a magnificent thunderstorm, with bigger hailstones and heavier rain than I’ve ever seen before: even in India during the monsoon we had nothing quite like it. This is a very satisfactory arrangement, as the rain lays the dust – if only briefly – and slightly lessens the stink by washing away some of the excrement and rotting garbage that accumulates on the streets. Half an hour ago I stopped writing to revel in a truly classic thunderstorm. The first crash made my ashtray leap off the table and literally deafened me, so I blew out the candles and sat at the open window to enjoy the display. Overhead it was as though some mischievous god were switching on and off a brilliant blue electric light which revealed every detail of the garden and neighbouring house. Then the sheet lightning stopped and instead the sky seemed alive with writhing dragons of flame flashing from horizon to horizon, while the thunder roared continuously from mountain to mountain like a million lions – and then the rain came and gradually the storm subsided. I must be getting more and more animistic: this is the sort of thing that now awakens my religious fervour.
8 MAY
At this season a permanent heat-haze veils the Himalayas, and for me one of the most unexpected things about the Kathmandu Valley is its lack of a ‘mountain atmosphere’. Nor, I feel, is this merely a temporary effect of climatic conditions for Kathmandu has long been a place apart, isolated from, ignorant of and indifferent to both the outside world and the rest of Nepal. Now the outside world has enthusiastically invaded it, either for pleasure or profit, and it has been forced reluctantly to consider itself in relation to other countries – but it still ignores the mountains.
It is remarkable how the fact of coming to a country to work rather than to explore completely alters one’s approach. The always exciting discovery of an unknown land takes on an entirely new texture when one is planning to settle, for however brief a period, and since it is essential to learn to live with local idiosyncrasies the tendency to criticise is blunted. Also, instead of eagerly pursuing knowledge and understanding from the moment of arrival, one waits for them to come, how and when they will. Yet I have to admit that something is missing too – the incomparable thrill of wandering for wandering’s sake.
It has been calculated that Nepal has approximately a hundred and twenty national holidays per annum (apart from the fifty-two Saturdays, which are the weekly day of rest) and all these – including the King’s birthday, as he is popularly believed to be a reincarnation of Vishnu – are religious festivals. So far I have failed to comprehend even dimly the religion of Nepal, where Hinduism and both schools of Buddhism mingle and subtly interact on each other; but I am consoled by the knowledge that even distinguished scholars go astray in this theological maze and have to end their expositions with a flurry of generalities. However, it is clear that the Nepalese are devout adherents to something and their many and much-feared gods are immeasurably more important to them than their politicians – and very likely more useful too. Almost everyone believes implicitly in charms, and astrology determines each important decision, including affairs of state. I often wonder what happens when events belie the astrologers: but no doubt there are well-established formulae to cover up for the stars’ mistakes. To us, all this is ignorant superstition in its most extreme form, and the payment of fees to miserly Brahmin priests does keep many families in perpetual debt; yet to the Nepalese these payments are a sensible insurance against disaster.
During the past week the important Machendranath Rath Jatra Festival has been in progress at Patan – about ten minutes’ walk from Jawalkhel – and this morning Donbahadur informed us that the astrologers had pronounced six o’clock this evening to be the most auspicious time for drawing the god’s two chariots through the streets of the town; so, having arranged to meet Sigrid beside the wooden floats at 5.30 p.m., I went early to Patan to get the feel of the occasion.
On the way I passed through the ‘Street of the Pigs’, a low-caste quarter where an inconceivable number of tiny black sows lie all over the place suckling an equally inconceivable number of piglets whose size, colour and shape make them indistinguishable from rats. Here, also, dozens of naked children, manure-smeared buffalo-calves, congenitally mangy puppies and grubby chicks are to be seen tumbling around together in filth-blocked gutters, half-filled with inky, glutinous liquid. Most of the higher-caste Nepalese avoid this street – not through any fastidiousness, for their own home area could well be equally unsavoury, but simply because the proximity of pigs would make them ritually unclean. Yet the inhabitants do not seem to be in the least cowed by their inferior social status; they are now used to seeing me passing by, and today quite a few of them leaned from their first-floor windows and shouted greetings, which gave me a warm ‘accepted’ feeling.
In the small square where the god’s chariots were parked a considerable crowd had already gathered – including many hill-people, some of whom had walked for more than a week to attend the festival. During my first few days at Jawalkhel I had often stopped to watch these chariots being assembled and decorated; each float is surmounted by an unwieldy fifty-foot tower of wood, bamboo and bast, festooned with greenery and long strips of coloured cloth. At the summits fly scarlet flags, and in a shrine at the base of the leading chariot’s tower sits Machendranath, one of the ‘Grand Magicians’ of Buddhist tantrism, who normally lives in the Bungmati Temple, south of Kathmandu. On the night of the full moon preceding this festival he is washed in milk to prepare him for his slow, week-long journey through the city streets – a journey during which he is believed to bestow greater fertility on humans, animals and crops. If either of the towers collapses – as one did in 1953 – this is interpreted as a prediction of bad luck for the coming year, and to lessen the chances of any such collapse all overhead cable wires are cut along the god’s route – which perhaps explains why the electric current has been so very erratic during the past week. Within the shrine a Brahmin priest sits in constant attendance on Machendranath, and as the crowd drifts to and fro people pause to bow to the god, and pray for a moment with joined hands, before throwing a fistful of rice or a small coin into the shrine. Each of the floats has two unsteady-looking, giant wooden wheels, on which three big eyes have been awkwardly painted, and a twelve-foot shaft made from a curved tree-trunk. To the outward ends of these shafts, where they curve upward, are tied huge, carved, painted masks – grotesque and gaudy – that grin at the populace with ambiguous expressions in which threats and promises seem intermingled.
When I arrived beside the chariots scores of small boys were doing acrobatic tricks on the shafts, sitting astride the masks, climbing the towers and generally behaving as though this were a funfair rather than a solemn occasion. To the Nepalese Machendranath Rath Jatra is one of their most important religious festivals and this deity is very sacred, very powerful and very easily angered; yet here that subdued sense of reverence which we cultivate towards things sacred is quite unknown, and fear, worship and gaiety flow together as inseparable parts of daily life. Only for a brief, solemn moment, while they show homage, pray and make offerings, do people withdraw from the joyous tumult around them – and when they rejoin it they appear even happier after ‘making puja’.
Sometimes a strolling musician would pause beside the chariots and play to Machendranath, and when two adolescents spontaneously started a dance near the chariots I hurried to join the circle that was forming around them. These were village lads from the hills, clad in homespun grey tunics, yet they gave an extraordinarily good performance of one of those stately temple-dances that long ago were imported into Nepal from South India. To an initiate every turn of the boys’ wrists and flicker of their eyelashes would have been eloquently symbolic; but e
ven uninitiated spectators can enjoy the grace of these slow, formal movements, and I found myself being also very much moved by that strange beauty which so transformed the faces of two quite ordinary boys, as they became more and more absorbed in their chosen way of worshipping the god.
Afterwards I went to sit among a group of Newari women halfway up a flight of temple steps. Within this ancient square were only mellow brick dwellings, semi-ruined pagoda-style temples, their roofs grass-grown, time-damaged shrines of obscure significance, and ornate, sunken baths, where water came gushing from the mouths of brass serpents into the pitchers of local housewives, who then pushed home through the crowd balancing their gleaming pitchers on their hips. By now the sun was just above the curly-tiled roofs, the golden light was soft and one could sense an increasing excitement. With every moment the crowd grew denser and more colourful, and as the women thronged to Machendranath with their handfuls of rice they seemed to create a splendid tidal wave that was tinted red and black, and green and blue, and gold and white.
When at last the auspicious moment came for the chariots to be drawn forward, and their uneven wheels began to roll slowly over the bumpy ground, I was horrified to see the towers’ incrustations of small boys remaining defiantly in position. Fortunately others shared my horror, and after a few moments the boys obediently detached themselves and leaped into the crowd.
It now looked as though all the men, women and children of the valley were cramming the narrow streets, filling the overhanging balconies and straddling the roof-tops. Yet as Sigrid and I were directly behind the chariots we could see every detail, including the creamy-coloured, bushy yaks’ tails with which Machendranath’s Brahmin attendant was being fanned by his acolytes. The extraordinary technique of moving these colossal contraptions through narrow laneways is to attach to each shaft two steel ropes about one hundred feet long, at which scores of men pull and pull, as in a tug-of-war – though facing away from the god – while a drum and cymbal band plays encouragingly beside them, accompanying that curious chant which the men shout in unison before each straining heave on the rope. When at last the chariot has been induced to progress some twenty or thirty yards (it never gets further without a pause) the whole crowd cheers wildly, and Sigrid and I had by now become so involved that we too yelled triumphantly as the cumbersome float groaningly moved forward. Then, as the floats proceeded on their crazy but curiously dignified way, some hundred yards apart, we noticed with alarm that the front ‘tower’ was becoming more and more unsteady, until it seemed quite likely to go toppling homicidally forward into the crowd. But apparently this threat was familiar, as four men now climbed halfway up the swaying superstructure, from where they released two more ropes, throwing them out behind the float. Another army of men at once manned these and, by hanging on desperately, managed to keep the tower on a comparatively even keel, though the braking effect of this precaution made progress even more difficult.
Now we looked back towards the other chariot and saw that it too was in trouble, of a different sort. One of the gigantic wheels had stuck in a pond of that gluey black mud which is among Kathmandu’s specialities and all the efforts of its team of draught-humans were being of no avail. We began to force our way back to see how this problem would be dealt with, but then our attention was violently recalled to the first chariot, and now we really were alarmed. Here the ground sloped slightly downwards for some fifty yards, and the chariot, suddenly becoming unnaturally frisky, was pulling the men on the brake-ropes so strongly that they had to run, while the men in front had panicked a little and were plunging into the crowd on either side. A few people fell and were trampled on slightly, but happily the slope levelled out – or Machendranath relented – before this panic spread. I hate to think what a real panic would have meant; as it was we were being pushed around fairly roughly – not out of any discourtesy, but through sheer necessity – and I felt truly in Nepal as I was carried along by that compact mass of sweaty little bodies, all shouting and laughing and pushing and shoving and praying and enjoying.
The god’s tour, begun in warm, golden sunlight, ended by the cloud-filtered light of a half-moon. Now tiny lamps were being hung outside each unglazed window to honour the passing god, and we could see into first-floor living-rooms where lanterns, hanging from low rafters, illuminated the little shrine-niches set into the walls. Each finely carved balcony was crammed with exuberant family groups, looking down in comfort on the seething gaiety and fervour in the street and throwing their offerings of rice towards the chariot as it drew level.
When Machendranath had reached his resting place for the night – another temple-filled square – the crowd thinned out, and Sigrid and I returned to investigate the second chariot’s situation. We saw at once that it was hopeless: no amount of heaving was going to dislodge the float from its mud-trap, and Donbahadur told us that the astrologers were being severely criticised for having miscalculated the most auspicious moment to begin the procession. He added that perhaps tomorrow a lorry would come to tow the chariot to its companion – a possibility which saddened me, as it seemed to foreshadow the day when the gods would succumb to motor transport.
9 MAY
This morning I paid my third visit to the Swiss-run Tibetan camp here at Jawalkhel, where about four hundred refugees live in one-roomed mud huts roofed with straw. Most of the adults are employed in the Self-Help Handicraft Centre where they make – mainly for export to the West – carpets, coats, sweaters and boots in modified versions of the traditional Tibetan style. Both adults and children appear to be in reasonably good health, despite this relatively low altitude of 4,500 feet, and it does one good to see the families still united, instead of being split up as so often happens in India.
Yet it is becoming obvious to me that all is not well in this Nepalese province of Tibland. Since my arrival I have repeatedly noticed how uneasy is the relationship between helpers and helped – and indeed I had some forewarning of this last month in Dharamsala, where I met hundreds of Tibetans who had recently, and illegally, crossed the frontier from Nepal because of extreme dissatisfaction with conditions here. It seems clear enough that some of their grievances are genuine and that the various relief agencies operating in Nepal have not always avoided those pitfalls which everywhere await workers among the Tibetans. But unfortunately it is equally clear that a ‘taking-help-for-granted’ attitude is now being developed by many Tibetan leaders, in direct opposition to His Holiness’s strongly-expressed wish that the refugees should strive increasingly for independence. One finds among these leaders a spoiled-child petulance if they don’t always get what they want – though often their demands are quite unreasonable – and this development is something I foresaw and dreaded more than a year ago. Such an attitude was no part of the Tibland scene as I knew it in India, yet it did seem likely to evolve as a result of the pampering policies adopted by so many relief agencies, and of the deep affection and admiration which the ordinary refugee inspires in his Western helpers – including myself. It was inevitable that the totally unsophisticated Tibetans would eventually be to some extent demoralised by our well-meant but ill-judged mixture of lavishness and adulation; so now we are finding it necessary to use clumsily harsh methods in an attempt to remedy our own mistakes, much as a badly brought-up child might be sent by despairing parents to an extra-strict school. And – understandably – the Tibetans don’t quite know what this is all about.
At the Handicraft Centre I met an English-speaking Tibetan youth whom I’d known in India, and after lunch he borrowed a bicycle to accompany me to Bodhanath as my interpreter on an official visit to the Tibetan monastery there. Bodhanath is four miles east of Kathmandu and we stopped for a few moments en route, on finding ourselves outside the Pashupatinath Temple – a site which rivals Benares as a place of Hindu pilgrimage. My copy of Nepal in a Nutshell had informed me that ‘only Hindus are allowed to go inside the courtyard of the Temple’, so we stood and stared from the arched entrance at the gia
nt statue of the Golden Bull, who naturally has his back turned on non-Hindus, giving them a splendid view of his world-famous behind – which displays such disproportionately massive testicles that one is tempted irreverently to diagnose mumps. Just to test Pasang’s reaction I innocently asked if Christians were allowed to enter Buddhist temples, and looking deeply shocked he said, ‘Of course! Anyone can enter our temples!’ He then asked the man who sat outside the gate, in charge of worshippers’ shoes, if Buddhists could enter this Temple: and in defiance of my little guidebook, but in harmony with the liberal traditions of Nepal, the reply was, ‘Yes, but only Tibetan Buddhists. Not Chinese’ – which seemed to me a very revealing confusion of politics with theology. I rather like the idea that we Westerners, so often condescending, should occasionally be slapped down by Hindu prejudices; yet there seems to be a flat contradiction between the Hindu philosophers’ teaching on the Oneness of the Universe and this priestly ban on non-Hindus entering certain temples.
The Bodhanath stupa – on which are painted four pairs of enormous eyes, gazing gravely in the four cardinal directions – is one of the highest Buddhist stupas in the world; one sees it first from afar, across the flat fields, and unlike most religious buildings here it is freshly painted and in good repair. Pasang told me that it is more than 2,000 years old; but one keeps an open mind on the dates, measurements and general statistics quoted by either Tibetans or Nepalese – though this date may well be accurate enough, since Professor Tucci thinks it possible that Nepal formed part of Asoka’s empire in the third century BC.
The Waiting Land Page 4