Shopping for Buddhas

by Jeff Greenwald

  The next victim was a twelve-year-old boy who, poised at the bottom, eyed the rise with all the trepidation of a diver who suddenly realizes that, yeah, the high board is really a lot higher than it looks. . . . He swung his arms and heaved a deep breath before closing his eyes and plunging out in his best urban swan dive. Right behind him was an elderly Muslim lady who took one look and tried frantically to back away; instead, she somehow stumbled onto the device. At first she kept her eyes closed and seemed to heave a sigh of relief as her senses convinced her that she wasn’t moving after all. But as soon as she opened them, her face whitened into a mask of absolute and abject horror. She clung desperately to the rubber rail, crouched as if for combat as her sisters, her husband, her sons and grandsons all faded, perhaps forever, against the backdrop of blinking advertisements far below.

  The second mob waited at the escalator’s summit, delighting in the huge joke of relative motion. These sophisticated voyeurs—many of them seasoned escalator veterans themselves—shouted with glee as each of the hapless riders was propelled, panicked and staggering, from the apparently motionless safety of the escalator onto the utterly unexpected menace presented by stable ground.

  I ran up and down the stairway parallel to the marvelous escalator, enslaved by the realization that I could not leave—could not bear to leave—before demonstrating my utter command, my consummate prowess with escalators. No; I positively could not continue my search for a perfect peaceful Buddha before leaping onto this escalator like a trapeze artist, and wowing these local yokels with a bit of spontaneous street theater.

  So, after mingling patiently with the downstairs mob (who ushered me forward with the respect and generosity characteristic of all Nepalis), I found myself at the coveted brink. At first I made a show of trying to back away—and then, letting loose an awful howl, mounted the flying stairway in the most histrionic fashion imaginable, a pantomime of sheer terror, flailing and doubling back, slipping down the railing, disappearing from sight, finally rising to my feet only to be propelled like a rag doll into the waiting arms of the electrified crowd.

  Ah, they roared! They loved it! These people! My people! I walked back down the steps, Nepalis slapping me on the back. Whew! Hey! What a riot! That was great! I was great!

  But then the grin slid off my face like a wet towel, because the crowd was captured by a momentary silence. Far below, making their way through the swinging glass doors, a retinue of Buddhist monks entered the Shopping Center. They approached in single file, heads shaven, their robes flowing behind them like a flood of freshly squeezed Florida orange juice.

  The crowd melted, parting like a biblical sea to allow them through. The guard abashedly lowered his nightstick and stepped hastily aside. And the monks, without panic or ceremony, simply mounted the escalator and

  rode it

  to the next

  level.

  9

  Mornings, everywhere in the world, take their own peculiar rhythms; carefully etched compromises between the body’s perpetual reluctance and civilization’s unflagging persistence. My experience in Kathmandu was no exception.

  Wake up for the first time at 5:15 in the morning to the crunch of army boots on loose gravel, and hoarse crowing. The troops from the Police Training Academy just down the block have begun their morning march, rousing the neighborhood roosters. Cram head between pillows; fall back to sleep.

  Wake up for the second time at precisely 6:30 a.m. to the ceaseless, strident ringing of a puja bell, accompanied by guttural chants: An anonymous neighbor is conducting his morning ritual. By now the sky is lightening. Within another thirty minutes the morning commute has begun, roaring and honking around the blind corner some six meters from my bedroom window. No more sleeping after this.

  Consciousness is inevitably followed by a trumpeting of the bowels. Run to the bathroom and expel the previous day’s consortium of microscopic invaders. Shower, keeping my mouth clamped shut to prevent ingesting even a drop of the deadly local water (I actually knew one woman who showered with a snorkel).

  These ablutions complete, I throw on my robe and flip-flops and wander outside to check for the daily delivery of the Rising Nepal, the country’s lightweight English-language daily. I carry the newspaper into the dining room, settle myself in a lopsided cane chair, and spread the tabloid open on the table, eager to digest the latest news and opinion of my favorite Hindu kingdom.

  Fainting Spells in School

  The girl students currently enrolled at the proposed school at Kakarvitta are having fainting spells all of a sudden, it is learnt.

  Fifteen students suddenly fainted last Sunday for about forty-five minutes.

  It is claimed that the phenomenon began after the school felled a tree which was long regarded as the abode of Bandevi to make way for the construction of an annexe.

  A puja was organized last Sunday to appease the goddess but fifteen girl students again fainted right there, sources close to the school said.

  However, the girls have not been medically examined.

  10th Day on Bridge

  The wounded black cow on Bagmati Bridge has entered her tenth day on the sidewalk, while authorities have yet to show that they have noticed her plight.

  The animal looks much weaker, and cannot even lift her head to take a sip from an earthen bowl of water left there by some kindly soul.

  Passing pedestrians have reacted with compassion leaving maize leaves for the cow to eat while an ascetic from a nearby ghat has covered her in straw to protect the animal from the hot sun and rains.

  A glaring need for a better management of the city’s urban livestock is called for. And this is reflected in the sad story of the cow on the bridge. Her plight seems to be no one’s concern in the world’s only Hindu Kingdom.

  Doctors Dismissed

  Four doctors dismissed from the Department of Health Services. Dr Chetri, Dr Agarwal, Dr Sharma and Dr Amatya have been relieved of their posts. These doctors did not report to duty for the past five to seven years.

  I skim through a riot of other compelling headlines: “FARMER DIES OF IGNORANCE”—“SURVEY TO ASCERTAIN EXACT LOCATION OF NEPAL”—“INDIAN PLANE FAILS TO LAND”—“MAJORITY OF SHOPKEEPERS STOP THROWING GARBAGE”—ultimately arriving at the Letters page.

  Dear Editor:

  This refers to the news item on scientist Shaha. The Rising Nepal, 25 August issue states that Mr Shaha is the inventor of a plant that “generates energy through gravitation, without using any kind of fuel.”

  His Majesty’s Government, which “provided him with financial as well as other assistance to invent the fuel-saving plant” can duly claim a major part of the acclaim and glory that follows such an epoch-making venture. In this critical hour of mankind’s history when the human race is faced with an energy famine and an eventual heat-death of the universe under the inexorable Second Law of Thermodynamics, no stone must be left unturned to bootleg on energy supplies.

  I had the good fortune to listen to Mr Shaha explaining his device to a skeptical but apathetic group of engineers at the Pulchowk Campus. His device basically consists of a big equilateral triangle with heavy metallic spheres at the vertices and smaller equilateral triangle with smaller spheres revolving around an axis. According to the inventor, the force of gravitational attraction between the spheres will propel the smaller sphere toward the larger one—first one, then the other, then the third in a perpetual dance of cosmic eternity. A generator fixed to the revolving axis would then provide free electricity.

  The National Council for Science and Technology, the highest authority in the land on matters so abstruse, provided about 70,000 rupees to effect this historic invention. I would like to thank our learned doctors in the Council for providing every Nepali the opportunity to be a co-partner in this great venture of harnessing perpetual motion. . . .

  At exactly 8 a.m., Krishna, our peerless cook and housekeeper, Master of Pumpkin Pie and Doctor of Lasagna, rides his bicycle in through th
e gate and parks it on the cement drive. Krishna is a tiny man (even petite women dwarf him), in his late fifties or early sixties, with sparse hair and a perpetual hangdog expression. One gets the feeling that a strong cat could knock him down just by rubbing against his legs. His diminutive appearance, however, belies an awesome expertise. In a country where expatriate Westerners, for lack of other substantial grievances, argue long and loud about the relative skill and inventiveness of their cooks, Krishna is the last word. His gifts in the kitchen are legendary.

  We greet each other with a warm namasté—the beautiful local salutation that means “I greet the God that dwells within you”—and I write a letter or two while he prepares breakfast: a mug of strong Indian coffee, a bowl of sliced mangoes and tangerine with yogurt, and banana pancakes topped with maple syrup and butter. Eggs and egg dishes are to be avoided at all cost in Kathmandu, where the chickens are fattened on fish meal and a horrible fishy essence thus pervades everything from omelets to French toast.

  To live in Kathmandu—including half the rent on a very comfortable little house (which I shared with a wonderfully convivial but usually absent Asiaphile, teacher, trek leader and billiards champ named Ray Rodney); the salary for Raj, our gardener; the dhobi, who arrived every Wednesday and Sunday to haul our laundry down to the river for a good beating; and 1500 rupees a month for Krishna, who made the best carrot cake, pumpkin pie, coleslaw and baked turkey I have ever tasted—all this, including groceries, came to about $175 a month.

  I studied Krishna with unending fascination. In a country full of mysteries, he was the ultimate enigma. And the more I watched him go about his business, the more I thought of Hesse’s Journey to the East. In that saga it was Leo, the expedition’s servant, who turned out to be the enlightened being from whom they would learn their lessons. Krishna was justly famous as one of the best cooks in town—he could prepare everything from Dutch apple pie to egg rolls; from Indian curries to the meanest dhal bhat (the traditional Nepali meal of lentil stew over rice) in the valley. He would work all day, with never a complaint or sour expression, and then sit in the kitchen on a rattan stool doing absolutely nothing as Ray and I ate our dinner, played music and had loud, raucous fêtes with our expat chums. When we were quite finished, Krishna slid into the dining room (as noiselessly as the proud Snake Gods who once inhabited the valley) and cleaned up after us, silent and expressionless but without a trace of resentment.

  After completing his work, Krishna would get onto his bicycle and return home; home being a five-story building with a panoramic view of the Himalayas, located just off New Road—one of the most expensive districts in town. But Krishna is not a tenant; he owns the building. He and his family occupy the top two stories, and he rents out the lower three. In his other, parallel life, our humble cook and servant is the patriarch of a large and well-respected clan, which includes two enormous sons, both of whom are world-class soccer players thrice their father’s size.

  And here in this well-groomed nest in the center of downtown, the roles are reversed, and it is Krishna who is the benevolent despot; for that is the way in Hindu households.

  Through the length of my stay in Kathmandu, I was moved to regard our domestic help with a mixture of awe, respect and pure bewilderment. I kept trying, and failing, to imagine a similar situation in the West: a moneyed landlord and head of household working overtime as a manservant, at the beck and call of wild and crazy foreigners.

  After finishing my breakfast, the rest of my ritual was simple: brush up the teeth with boiled and filtered water, make a few calls, take care of any sundry business that I was not able to put off another day, present Krishna with the current dinner fantasy, and outfit myself for an afternoon of cycling from shop to shop beneath the grab-bag cloud cover of Kathmandu Valley.

  But first, more important than any weather report, was the daily status check on the crow. The crow! Two weeks before, as Ray and I were emptying our dinner plates in preparation for a dessert of Krishna’s homemade brownies topped with Mango Tango ice cream from Nirula’s Hot Shoppe, we saw the sky light up with a fantastic blue flash, and heard a tremendous explosion. (Holy fuck: they’ve bombed the palace!) We ran to the door—saw nothing—no indication that any civil disaster, on any scale, had occurred.

  The following morning, Ray—who is unusually sensitive to the subtle signs, symbols and metaphors offered by our environment—beckoned me outside. He did not look pleased. In fact, he wore the baleful look of a man who has just received a very unpleasant telegram. He pointed upward—I followed his gaze and winced, remembering last night’s deafening blast.

  A huge black crow had lighted on the electrical wires outside our house, and his touchdown had somehow caused a short circuit. The bird, upside down and fried to a crisp, now hung by its talons, permanently welded to the line about six meters above our front gate.

  Over the next few days, mutual friends gleefully pointed out, to Ray and myself, that nothing is permanent. The crow could not dangle in the air forever. Someday, in the not-too-distant future—tomorrow, maybe—its legs would rot out and the abomination would fall to earth, exploding onto the street in an infested mass too horrible to imagine. One would not want to be below the wire, occupying that particular square yard of real estate, when this happened; the experience could put a severe damper on a day of spiritual materialism. Every day, therefore, I carefully took note of the luckless fowl’s position and fed myself a subliminal reminder to give the area under the power lines plenty of berth.

  Today it looked good—if “good” is the proper word to describe a decaying crow. Both claws appeared firmly fastened to the wire. Little likelihood, unless a strong wind came up, that the inauspicious delicacy would choose today for its final descent. I heaved a sigh of relief, slung my daypack over my shoulder—in Kathmandu, day and night, all sahibs and memsahibs are committed marsupials—and launched myself into the wonderful world of Buddha shopping.

  10

  It may seem strange, this whole idea of shopping for gods and goddesses and Buddhas—but by just looking at the kinds of products for sale in the shops and cold stores, one comes to realize that devotion and commercialism have long gone hand-in-hand in Nepal: Buddha Fruits, Lord Ganesh potato chips, Tara mayonnaise. There’s an openness, a street-corner accessibility, a vulgarity to the gods and goddesses of Nepal that you just don’t see in the West. No Yahweh toothpaste here, or Baby Jesus Electrical Works; no Moses cigarettes or Mary Magdalene communion wafers. Our gods and prophets don’t endorse soft drinks or sell potato chips. We take them seriously. And you take them seriously, too, or we’ll hang you by your elbows. . . .

  Asia is a mythical jubilee, full of characters more lively and entertaining than anything you’ll find at Disneyland. Especially Nepal, Land of Ten Thousand Gods, where even everyday worship is laced with an alchemical magic. Shiva and Shakti blink on and off in Christmas lights; Vishnu gestures benevolently from the cover of a comic book; gilded cobra gods rise, hoods flared and tongues flickering, atop pedestals in public pools.

  No, they are not as anal with their gods as we Westerners are—which is one reason why their gods were easier to steal than one might think. The only outsiders who really took the Hindu gods absolutely seriously were the Muslims, who smashed idols and set temples ablaze during their anti-pagan romps through northern India in the eleventh through fourteenth centuries. That was a big mistake. If those Islamic marauders had been more clever, they would have simply carted the best work back home in carefully padded crates and recited the Koran in the empty vestibules as the treasures slowly but surely appreciated in value. Which is, of course, precisely what the Chinese did in Tibet, minus the Koran-chanting business.

  None of this is meant to imply that the Nepalis treat their devotional statues lightly. True, some are made for the sole purpose of being hawked to souvenir hunters. But before a given idol or sculpture is considered fit for devotion, it must first undergo an ancient rite called kumbhubhishekham. During thi
s complex ceremony, the spirit of the god or goddess is coaxed down to the earth and persuaded to leave just a tiny bit of divine essence within the previously inanimate stone.

  Besides the various on-sale deities, the main players in this shopping game are the shopkeepers themselves—a highly savvy bunch, usually honest, sometimes cunning, but always finely tuned to the machinations of the Western mind.

  One of the more attractive things about Asian art is that it doesn’t glorify individual artists the way the Western world does. Bidders at an auction in Los Angeles, to pick one particularly perverse example, recently spent thousands upon thousands of dollars for cardboard boxes full of anonymous office trash, simply because Andy Warhol was the one who went around and emptied the wastebaskets.

  In Asia, even the most exquisite Buddhas and Taras are traditionally unsigned, reflecting the belief that the human artist is merely a tool, a channel for the genius of Vishwakarma, the divine architect.

  During my first visits to Nepal, hailing directly from a country where important artists are ranked just a notch below rock and roll stars, I felt a definite impatience with the staid traditionalism of Eastern devotional art. Why couldn’t it break through its boundaries and become . . . more? All it needed, I reckoned, was a sentient boot in the ass from some innovative maverick artist; something to kick it into the twentieth century, or at least integrate it with modern (that is, Western) styles of expression.