The Waiting Land

by Dervla Murphy

  21 JUNE – TOPRUNG

  The headman’s influence proved so effective that at 4 a.m. laden villagers began to queue outside the Panchayat building and by 8 a.m. we had purchased eighty mats (heavy rain meant that no one was going early to the fields). Then the supply dried up abruptly – doubtless because the weather did likewise – but we were promised forty more mats this evening. I then decided that fifteen of us, including all the girls, should return today, leaving ten to follow tomorrow. It would have been fun to wait and explore further, but Chimba had to stay as interpreter, and one of us two had to shepherd the fifteen, so I led the party off at 10.30 after a hearty ‘brunch’ of tsampa.

  Each Tibetan was carrying a roll of five or six heavy mats – supported by a broad band around the forehead – which made me feel dreadfully guilty about carrying nothing: but it’s no use pretending that I could carry even one mat (they measure eight feet by three) on any of these tracks. It was agony merely to watch the Tibetans struggling down that unspeakable path with those unspeakable loads; I myself found the descent difficult enough, and as one’s thigh muscles are the brakes on such a gradient I know that mine will be very stiff tomorrow.

  Soon after we left Siglis a cloud sat on the mountain and the chilly, driving mist made me feel quite homesick for Ireland when I saw it move across the green turf and grey rocks. By the time we got to the Gurung tea-house another real deluge was in progress, so we each had two glasses of the ginger brew while waiting for it to ease off. On the way down the sole of one of my canvas boots had come partly adrift, and now Tsiring – at sixteen the youngest of the party – noticed this unimportant detail, registered horror, demanded the boot, produced a large needle and strong thread from his pocket and expertly repaired the damage while we were drinking our tea. As good nomads these Tibetans set out on even the briefest trek equipped for all such emergencies.

  They also have a commendable passion for buying hens and chickens and, as they had each acquired at least two birds in Siglis, every roll of mats now contained its quota of poultry – which complained loudly at halts, to the wonderment of the Gurung farm birds.

  Next came that damnable river, which had risen so much since yesterday that our crossing via the boulders could not be repeated. After a long search we came on a place, much further upstream, where by a combination of rock climbing and jumping we could quite safely cross – without loads. Everyone then unloaded, some of us went to the other side and each roll of mats was passed from hand to hand up the rocks and over the water and down the rocks to level ground – an operation which delayed us more than an hour.

  Knowing that no other danger spots lay between us and Toprung I now went ahead of the rest, grateful for an opportunity to be alone for a few hours. Already the sky was clear again and the sun dazzled on a sparkling exuberance of growth; even Ireland could not surpass the brilliance of the green that clothed these mountains. But even since yesterday the rains had wreaked havoc on the path above the paddy-fields, and somewhere amidst those minor landslides I took a wrong turning which eventually brought me to the village – after many bewildered wanderings in various directions – from below instead of above.

  On those lower slopes I had loitered to watch the rice planters at work. This one week in the year is the most critical period of the Nepalese farmers’ lives, when transplanting takes place after the original shoots have suddenly sprung up and the first rains have irrigated the terraces. Each tiny field has a hole in the dyke through which the water pours out until a foot’s depth is left, when the hole is adroitly blocked with mud and the ploughing begins. Next the dyke is re-opened to allow the surplus water to flow away and in the residue of soft mud the young shoots are transplanted, before another closing of the dykes brings the water level back to six inches. I had never before realised what swift and skilful labour is required for this operation. When you see every individual tiny wisp of rice stalk being planted by hand you begin to understand why the entire population of a village has to slave at the task from dawn to dusk. Men and boys do the ploughing on one level while half the women and girls bend over the dry terraces, gently but speedily uprooting the tender shoots and throwing them onto the terrace above, where the rest of the womenfolk replant them, about six inches apart, at the most incredible speed; so rapidly do these workers’ hands move that you can hardly see them. It’s consoling to think that no machine is ever likely to be invented for a job that demands such a combination of skill, speed and gentleness.

  The general standard of health in all these villages is pretty low – though not as low as in the average Indian village. This morning I spent half-an-hour talking to the compounder at the tiny, ill-stocked Siglis dispensary. (No hospitals, doctors or nurses are to be found outside the Kathmandu and Pokhara valleys; and even within these valleys most of the worthwhile medical care is provided by missionaries.) This young man, a native of Kathmandu, was the only person in Siglis who spoke any English but, unlike the majority of Kathmandu-born officials who find themselves stationed in the hills, he did not complain about his present ‘primitive’ surroundings. Instead he gave the impression of being genuinely interested in his work, though he admitted that with his limited knowledge and experience and his minimal medical supplies he could really do very little to alleviate local suffering. He told me that venereal diseases – either inherited or contracted – were responsible for most of the villagers’ complaints. His estimate was that eighty-five per cent of the population was riddled with VD – hence so many blind, deaf, deformed or imbecile children. Whether or not Siglis is an exceptional village in this respect I wouldn’t know; one can only hope so.

  To my sleeping-bag now – but I fear not to sleep, remembering what our previous night at Toprung was like.

  22 JUNE – POKHARA

  It was another hellishly buggy night, as I had expected, and at 5.30 a.m. when the rain had just ceased, I set off alone, leaving the Tibetans to their lengthy preparation of a tsampa breakfast. An early meal is contrary to local trekking custom but the Tibetans, unlike the Nepalese, are used to a meal soon after waking, and because of this party’s poor condition and heavy loads I thought it advisable for them to fill up before starting for home.

  The next two hours provided one of those strange interludes – curiously apart from the rest of existence – which occur only when by some blessed chance a heightened receptivity coincides with a rare degree of beauty in one’s surroundings. I know that I shall never forget this morning’s walk through the forest. There seemed to be some magic in those short hours, some wonder beyond what was apparent to the senses.

  Half-a-mile beyond Toprung I was walking through a density of high greenness with which man has never tampered – an entirely solitary world where supple lengths of grey vapour, weaving between great trees, seemed to possess an eerie substance and purpose of their own. A dawn hush still lay over the mountains, and on this mantle of silence were embroidered the urgent rushings of new-born streams, and the myriad harsh or melodic bird cries that are the voice of the forest. Far below me a motionless pillow of cloud hid the depths of the valley and beyond this gulf the dark blue outlines of the opposite mountains were half-revealed, then obscured, then again half-revealed as their sheaths of mist shifted – until quite suddenly the sun was dominant, and the long, smooth lines of these crests lay free against a clear blue sky. Now the whole scene was changed by this vigorous golden light that came pouring over the mountaintops. As the warmth rapidly increased one could feel the earth’s eager response and around every corner were freshly-blossoming shrubs, their white, blue and deep pink flowers unfolding as one watched, to bloom with a most sweet radiance against the dark green of the undergrowth.

  Only when I reached the ‘marble village’, and paused to de-leech myself, did I come out of my trance. Between this village and the valley floor the track had been so transformed by floods, and the landscape so altered by new growth that I got lost twice, in a mild way, and was eventually forced – by the re
mains of a real landslide about halfway down the mountain – to find a new route to the river. I left signposts of specially arranged sticks for the Tibetans, to save them from repeating my optimistic mistakes in search of short-cuts, and this evening I was gratified to learn that these markers had served their purpose.

  This detour involved a descent through literally pathless forest, a long scramble down terraces of muddy paddy-fields, the fording of a waist-deep, violent river and then the ascent and descent of a new hill (which by this stage felt extraordinarily like a mountain). And all these manoeuvres were simply in order to reach another point along the river where it was possible to cross back to the main Pokhara track from which the landslide had deflected us.

  It was 4.30 p.m. when I at last got home, painfully hungry and with both boots blood-filled from leech bites. ‘Going for a walk’ in Nepal really is quite something!

  6

  Animal Spirits

  25 JUNE – POKHARA

  Yesterday my pup Tashi briefly joined this multiplying household. Though a happy and healthy infant her growth has been almost imperceptible during these past weeks, and when Ngawang Pema insisted on handing over possession I very much doubted her readiness to leave home. Tibetans suckle their own offspring until the mother’s breast has been repeatedly lacerated by sharp teeth so I thought it unlikely that the minute Tashi had already been prepared for life without Mum – and the next twenty-four hours proved me right. She was cowed, miserable and resolutely on hunger strike; her piteous whimpering would have taken a tear from a stone, so this morning, after a sleepless night for all concerned, I returned her to Mum with my compliments.

  One hopes that soon she will grow just a little. At present she is so furry-toy-like that on several occasions last night, when she moved suddenly, I imagined myself to be at last in the DTs. An appreciation of religious music would also help; as yet she is positively allergic to it and the lama’s sacred melodies had an extremely deleterious effect on her. Every time he started a new bell-and-drum duet she compulsively accompanied him, producing noises that sounded incredibly like the cacklings of a hen which has just laid. Yet Tashi makes music too, with every movement, because like all Tibetan pups she had seven tiny tinkling bells tied around her neck on the day her eyes opened. These serve a dual purpose – the keeping of evil spirits at bay and the prevention of straying during nomad treks.

  It’s now 1 a.m. because this evening we attended an uncanny ceremony at the camp – the exorcising of evil spirits by Dawa, a monk magician.

  When the ceremony began it was already dark outside, but the shelter was brightly lit by the flames of a huge log-fire and by the 108 butter lamps that flickered at the monk’s right-hand side as he sat cross-legged on a little mound of yak skins, facing west, with about twenty relatives and friends of the ‘possessed’ around him.

  Dawa spent the first fifteen minutes chanting more and more rapidly and wielding his drum and bell more and more quickly as he invoked the gods to enter into him and speak through him. Next he began to tremble all over – at first slightly, then in shuddering paroxysms as he turned north towards Tibet. At this point Thupten Tashi clutched my arm and whispered, ‘The god is coming!’ transmitting to me as he spoke a morsel of his own fearful belief. Now the acolyte, Dawa’s young servant, stepped forward and placed on his master’s head a bizarre cockade-cum-mask of bedraggled peacock feathers and streamers of dirty, coloured ribbon. This signified that the god had taken possession of his oracle, and at once the monk ceased to be a familiar neighbour and the Tibetans prostrated themselves before him as before a picture of His Holiness.

  During the few moments preceding the donning of the head-dress Dawa had been unmistakably going into a self-induced hypnotic trance and now, suddenly, he leaped to his feet, tossed the mask of ribbons off his face, and with staring eyes began to speak very angrily, loudly and clearly. At this stage my blood began to curdle slightly, for instead of using his native Dholpo dialect Dawa was now speaking Lhasa Tibetan, which is even further from our camp speech than BBC English is from the broadest Scots. I asked Thupten where this uneducated monk could possibly have learned such polished Tibetan and the answer was that he never had learned it, but that all mediums use it when possessed.

  Soon my blood curdled still more, as Dawa became thoroughly infuriated and went rampaging around the hut shouting hoarsely and waving his arms wildly until everyone had fled except Thupten and the blasé acolyte, whose function it was to placate the god by respectfully prostrating himself, and throwing little bowls of water or handfuls of flour into the air.

  Dawa’s frenzied perambulations eventually brought him to our corner, where he stood over us shaking his drum and bell cacophonously while he roared maledictions; now I could see the foam around his lips, the sweat trickling down his face and the truly terrifying gleam in his eye. Then, swerving away from us, he kicked violently at the altar of cardboard boxes on which the votive lamps were burning; this seemed to me a very rash thing for a god to do in a bamboo hut, but luckily the little flames went out as their containers fell to the ground. Possibly gods can ordain safety precautions in conjunction with their tantrums.

  Then abruptly Dawa subsided, trembling, onto his yak-skins, and as everyone came creeping cautiously back I asked Thupten why the god had been so angry. He replied that it was very necessary to condemn certain people in the camp for habitually having evil thoughts, which gave evil spirits a foothold in the community and caused many deaths. Other camp defects had also been censured, including disobedience of His Holiness’s commands that the refugees should strive to be self-supporting, and our washing of children in the local river, which is the home of an important god who objects to this pollution of his residence. I was greatly intrigued by the undiluted animism of this last complaint – and indeed by the whole confusing conglomeration of Bön-po rites, ancient primitive magic and practical politics. I hate to think of His Holiness’s reaction to any such ceremony; but at least he was being remembered, if only in his rôle as earthly leader of the refugees.

  Next came the exorcism of the sufferers, and now Dawa was back to normal; although in theory he was still inhabited by a deity all the symptoms of trance had vanished. His first patient was Droma, an adolescent girl who complained of great pain in the chest and back. (She is at present being treated by Kay for acute indigestion.) This youngster sat in front of the monk for about ten minutes with her eyes closed tightly and a look of terror on her face – which did not surprise me, as she was being emotionally pulverised by a fearful description of the particular demon she was harbouring. Then she lowered her chuba – keeping her breasts covered with unusual modesty because she is unmarried and Dawa a celibate – and the acolyte handed his master a saucer-sized copper disc which had been standing upright in a sacrificial bowl of flour. With this Dawa tapped her back vigorously, while making loud, yelping noises to frighten off the demon. (Had I been a demon they would certainly have frightened me very far off.) Next he spat all over her torso, muttering incantations between each spit – and then the exorcism was over. As Droma prostrated herself three times, before giving Rs. 5/- to the acolyte, I felt a slight sense of anti-climax; somehow one expects demons to move house less unobtrusively.

  The next two patients were babies whom Kay has been treating for severe dysentery, but who are not improving because their mothers will insist on breast-feeding them.

  Dawa’s second trance was even more violent than the first and, though there was no verbal outburst when the god arrived, he flailed around the hut waving drum and bell wildly and once hitting me on the side of my bemused head. Yet no one fled during this display of divine wrath, though everyone cowered and covered their eyes with their hands as the medium approached them; evidently it is the god’s spoken message that really frightens the people – and that most scared me, if scared is not too strong a word for the chilled unease felt in such a situation. After some ten minutes of violence Dawa abruptly sat down, and when his uncanny rig
ours and involuntary moanings had subsided the exorcism of the babies began.

  The first one received the same treatment as Droma but the other, who is very debilitated, was subjected to a long and complicated rite. So far Dawa’s face had been entirely hidden by his mask, except when the patients were being spat on, but now, as this naked baby was being presented to him by its terrified mother, he tossed back the streamers to reveal a subhuman, snarling expression, not at all modified by the flickering firelight. Then he leant forward with a jerk, giving a perfect imitation of a savage dog growling, and bit the baby between the shoulders.

  The rituals that followed were exceedingly complex. With his left hand Dawa pressed to the baby’s back the ends of those filthy ribbons that are always attached to prayer-drums, while in his right hand he held the drum and sucked vigorously at the ribbons where they were attached to its centre. After each suck he spat into a little brass bowl handed him by the acolyte, and then appeared to drink a mouthful of water from another brass bowl – though in fact I think he retained the water in his mouth to provide the next spit. This process was repeated eleven times, after which he did the copper-disc demon-scaring act as with Droma, before bending low over the infant and laying his head on its stomach. Then he jerked upright, tossed his mask back, spat once more into the bowl – and with the air of a grimly self-satisfied conjurer announced that the cause of the disease was now lying in the bowl for all to see. A murmur of admiration and reverence greeted this announcement and everyone crowded forward to gaze into the bowl, while the baby’s mother wept and laughed with relief. Yet I myself again felt thwarted; it is disillusioning to find that an evil spirit looks like a dead water-beetle.