Himalaya (2004) Page 11

  Poverty is corrosive, but it’s always worse when it is found side by side with wealth. Occupants of shanty towns in the Philippines or South America are as poor as this but they have their own, fierce, communal pride, and (apart from BBC film crews) they don’t have rich foreigners walking their streets every day.

  We’re at the Tsechokling Temple in good time. The Dalai Lama is giving a public audience before he speaks to us and security is tight. A beagle sniffer-dog is led along the line by a Sikh policeman. In the outer office leading to the Dalai Lama’s private quarters we’re politely asked to sit and wait while our papers are checked. A poster on the opposite wall makes depressing reading. ‘China’s Record in Tibet’ is blazoned across the top. ‘More than a Million Killed, More than 6000 Monasteries Destroyed, Thousands in Prison, Hundreds Still Missing’, and in big red letters at the bottom, ‘China Get Out of Tibet’.

  The Dalai Lama’s bungalow is spacious but not ostentatious. A room full of the various medals, awards and citations he’s been given from all over the world gives onto a long, cool, marble-tiled verandah, from which a few steps lead down to a driveway that snakes around an oval garden bed full of conventional roses and marigolds. A desk has been set up at the bottom of these steps, beneath the protective shade of bushy bougainvillea. A long line of visitors is being led in, at its head an Indian Catholic priest in white robe with a prominent crucifix around his neck.

  Monks line the drive, a most benevolent form of crowd control.

  At 12.40, dead on time, the man they’ve been waiting for appears and without fuss or bother he begins to greet them, going through all 700, showing interest in every individual, catching the eye, trying to avoid identical responses. Whereas a lot of the Westerners pass by quite briskly, like students collecting passing-out degrees, the Tibetan monks approach slowly, utterly awed, some bent double in their supplication. Though I have the impression that the Dalai Lama is not comfortable with too much respect, he listens earnestly and at length to their requests and has a nice way of rubbing his hand across their shaven heads and, occasionally, bending forward to brush his lips against their foreheads.

  By two o’clock the last of the line has gone through, and he is escorted away by his efficient, ever so slightly severe minders, only to reappear on the verandah minutes later to address a group of 60 new arrivals from Tibet, refugees who have just made the difficult and dangerous crossing through the mountains as he did 45 years ago. One of his private secretaries translates his remarks for me. Very interesting they are too. He begins in a folksy way, sitting, hands on hips, trying to draw these cowed and respectful new arrivals out. He starts by asking if any of them had been caught by the border police, or lost money and valuables on the way. He asks about the current state of the hospitals and schools. Do they teach Tibetan? How many lumberjacks are there in Tibet these days (a reference to the massive deforestation since the Chinese arrived)? Then he talks to them quietly but with authority. He tells them that since September last year the government in exile has renewed official contact with the Chinese. Though he hears that the Chinese occupation is even more repressive than the year before, he notes that more Chinese are visiting Tibet, both as tourists and pilgrims, and that there is a growing interest in things Tibetan around the world, which is putting pressure on the Chinese.

  It is important that they retain their Tibetan culture and language but Buddhism is far from being an irrelevant, unchanging religion. Buddhists and scientists have much in common, while in the field of psychology the Buddhists are well ahead. He grins. By 2000 years.

  We will win, he assures them, because we have truth and truth will ultimately prevail. Don’t worry. Educate yourselves. Learn Chinese. Learn about the world outside Tibet, because if he ever returns to Lhasa he will not go back to a feudal society. Go back, he says to the ones who plan to return home, and tell them that.

  It’s a sober, realistic, pragmatic message, implying, quite clearly, that the past is past. He has accepted the fact, if not all the practices, of the Chinese occupation. It echoes the mix of Buddhist spirituality and 21st-century savvy that characterizes the operation here in McLeodganj.

  Meanwhile we have set up our cameras and lights in the audience room, hung with thangkas with a finely modelled shrine to the Buddha at one end, but as our time comes round, the secretary appears, eyebrows raised apologetically, to tell us that a group of local worthies have to be accommodated, but his Holiness hopes to get them through in five minutes. It sounds as if he’ll be exhausted.

  At 2.25 we are advised that he will be coming. I arm myself with a katag, a thin white scarf, which is a mark of greeting and respect among Tibetans. Try not to dwell on the fact that I am about to embark on a 40-minute talk with the spiritual leader of one of the great religions and can’t remember a single one of the questions I rehearsed in my room last night. The only warning I am given is to avoid asking specific questions about his current relations with the Chinese. Two of his closest advisers will sit in on the interview, to help translate, they say, but I know they’re there to keep an eye on us.

  The 14th Dalai Lama, born Llamo Thondup, the son of peasant farmers, confirmed as the incarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama when only two years old, arrives without fuss or fanfare, entering the room unescorted and looking pretty good for a 68-year-old who must have shaken a thousand hands already today. His presence is powerful, but in no way intimidating.

  He pauses in the doorway, bringing his hands together and bowing his head towards me in traditional Buddhist greeting. His skin is clear and healthy, his complexion barely lined. He holds his head slightly forward, giving the impression of someone who likes to listen as much as command. Pushing his maroon and yellow robes back up onto his left shoulder, he comes towards me. His arms, like those of any Buddhist monk, are bare, save for a chunky watch on his right wrist, and noticeably hairless. Almost brushing aside my offer of the katag, he gives me a firm Western handshake. His grip is strong and his palms cool. He sets me at ease straightaway, grinning broadly.

  ‘Your face very familiar because of TV.’

  Well, what can I say to the man who has stared at me from his book cover this past week.

  ‘You watch the BBC then?’

  ‘Practically every day.’

  I’m genuinely surprised. This is a monk I’m talking to.

  ‘Because I have more trust.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And…some beautiful documentaries on film, including your own sort of film.’

  My head is swimming. This is turning into some fantasy commercial, and there seems to be no stopping him.

  ‘And sometimes…I wish to journey with you,’ says the Dalai Lama. ‘I could see many places, and meet different people.’

  I can’t remember the exact details of the fact sheet I was given earlier, but I think that, since he first travelled outside India in 1973, the Dalai Lama has been to 50 countries or more.

  ‘From my childhood I always have curiosity…to know more about different people, different culture, and as a Buddhist monk I also, you see, have an interest to learn more about different religious traditions.’

  I tell him we’re going to Tibet next.

  ‘But I don’t think you’d want to come with us.’

  He laughs very hard at this, then says quietly and seriously, ‘Although I’m here outside Tibet, not inside Tibet, as a Tibetan I want to extend my welcome to you to visit my old country.’

  There’s pathos in this remark. A reminder that he speaks for 120,000 Tibetans living in exile.

  I ask what we will find there, what may have changed most.

  He cites Chinese immigration. Tibetans are a minority in Lhasa now.

  ‘These people find it very, very difficult to preserve their own cultural heritage. So that’s on the negative side.’

  Unexpectedly, he picks out the modern buildings in Lhasa as a positive, but is worried that the big new blocks are being filled up by Chinese, not Tibetan workers. The un
skilled Chinese make money more easily.

  Another positive is, he says, the growing interest in spirituality in China. There is great interest in Buddhism in ‘China proper’, as he calls it. Especially, he notes, among the richer Chinese.

  He’s engagingly happy to talk about everyday life.

  ‘One week ago I return from United States. Sleep not much problem, but my stomach still on American time.’

  He pats his midriff.

  ‘Toilet usually morning, but nowadays it’s evening.’

  He beams mischievously.

  ‘That can’t change through prayer.’

  I learn that he gets up at 3.30 every morning, but goes to bed around 8.30, and that he recently lost his temper, in a dream.

  I ask him if he ever loses his temper in real life.

  ‘Sometimes yes, but not remain long.’

  For his relatively robust health he thanks his parents for giving him a good body and his general peace of mind.

  ‘Sleep without sleeping pill, happy without tranquillizer.’

  For a world leader he seems extraordinarily well-balanced, natural and unaffected. His emotions are spontaneous, his judgements carefully pragmatic. He would justify the violence of a Second World War or a Korean War on the grounds of just causes, but not Vietnam, nor I sense Iraq.

  He feels that not enough was done to negotiate a peaceful solution with Iraq. He suggests that some council of wise men should perhaps have gone to Saddam Hussein. Those he admires and would have included, along with Muslim leaders, are Vaclav Havel, Bishop Tutu, Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter.

  He believes it is very important to enlist with everyone, high or low, on a personal level. To communicate the positive.

  Does he worry about his own safety when he travels?

  ‘Generally no. Friendly atmosphere should immediately happen. When I’m passing through a street I always smile, when I look at another…nice smile. But then sometimes you see the other side, no smile.’

  It all begins to sound a bit Mary Poppins when I write this down, but there is nothing remotely weak or woolly about the man himself. He just doesn’t do cynicism.

  We talk on well over our allotted 40 minutes, and even when an hour’s up he is happy to pose for a photograph. (I have it on the wall beside me as I write up these notes. The Dalai Lama is in the middle, clasping Nigel’s hand on one side and mine on the other. The crew are spread out on either side and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this hard-worked unit looking so happy.)

  The only sign of any tension is after he’s gone, when both the Dalai Lama’s private secretaries lay aside their two-way radios and pitch in to help us de-rig our lamps, wires and cables. The next interview (with an Israeli crew) is already 20 minutes late.

  Day Forty : Srinagar, Kashmir

  An hour and a half after the azan (the Muslim call to prayer) has woken me, replacing the barking of dog packs as the sound of the night, I’m reclining like a maharajah’s mistress on the soft cushions of a long flat-bottomed boat with a canopy above my head. Behind me a small, tightly built figure is propelling me slowly forward with a single paddle.

  A heron perches elegantly on a thin pole, ignoring us as we slip slowly through lotus beds towards a robust stone bridge beyond which I can dimly see and hear a clutter of canoes and the distant sound of voices.

  My hooded skiff, known as a shikara, has an English name board fitted above the bows. ‘Stranger In Paradise’, it reads, and it’s very suitable.

  Stranger I certainly am and Dal Lake in Srinagar, long, wide and lazy, with high mountains protecting its northeasterly shore, would give many paradises a run for their money. Except that this one is in Kashmir, where, nowadays, heaven and hell come pretty close.

  To get to this idyllic place we have had to undergo tighter security checks than anywhere else on the journey. Police and army posts, baggage and permit checks dot the road to Srinagar with increasing frequency.

  It’s not cosmetic, either. Within a couple of miles of this aqueous paradise 16 people have been killed by bomb and bullet in this last month alone, and to that figure can be added another 60,000 who have died in Kashmir since the conflict began.

  Why?

  In 1947, when India and Pakistan became independent, Kashmir was a Princely State of India, ruled by Maharajah Hari Singh. All 565 Princely States, comprising 100 million people, were required to sign instruments of accession to the newly formed country. What made Kashmir different was that 80 per cent of its population was Muslim.

  Hari Singh hummed and hawed and eventually decided, two months after independence (and not without some heavy pressure from Nehru), that his state would stay a part of India.

  The outrage of the new Pakistan government was predictable. After all, their country was set up as a homeland for Muslims and indeed the letter ‘K’ in its name stands for Kashmir. (The ‘P’ is for Punjab, the ‘A’ for Afghania (a romantic synonym for the North-West Frontier), the ‘S’ for Sind and the ‘Stan’ is an abbreviation of Baluchistan.)

  Some Pathans took the law into their own hands and moved into Kashmir, taking over an area which has since become known as Azad (Free) Kashmir. Indian troops moved in to counter them and the long cycle of violence began.

  In 1949 a ceasefire came into force, one of whose conditions was that a plebiscite should be held for the inhabitants of all Kashmir to decide on their future. It’s never happened. Instead, this spectacularly lovely land has become the arena in which all the fear and loathing between Pakistan and India has come to a head. Thousands of soldiers face one another across a Line of Control. By the late 1990s the potential of the Kashmir dispute escalated from destructive to catastrophic as the Pakistanis confirmed that, like India, they now had the power to wage a nuclear conflict.

  The houseboats that can still be found clinging to the shores of the lake are symbols of the days when Kashmir was not the problem, but a hideaway from all the problems elsewhere. If you can forget the roadblocks and the army patrols, the magic spell remains.

  Among reasons to be thankful for being on Dal Lake this morning is the ban on outboard motors, which keeps the mood of the place as reflective as its still waters. There’s time to take in the passing scene, admire majestic chinnar trees on the shoreline, the white walls and domes of an impressive waterside mosque and, alongside it, a run of multi-windowed three- or four-storey wood and brick houses that would not be out of place in a Baltic seaport.

  For hundreds of years the lake has been farmed by the Mihrbari people, market gardeners living on islands only accessible by boat. Thirty-five thousand of them still live on the water, farming lotus beds for food, cattle feed and the famed Kashmiri honey that comes from their pink flowers. Willow and poplar trees on the islands are cut for thatching and building materials, vegetables are cultivated in hydroponic gardens set among compressed bulrushes and all commerce is conducted from boat to boat in a floating market that starts at daybreak every morning. Suppliers from the city bring their barges down and bargain for turnips, potatoes, spinach, pumpkins, shallots, big fat radishes, aubergines, mint and okra.

  We’re here within an hour of dawn and the market is in full swing. Several boatloads of flower sellers, pushing through the jam make a beeline for us (we are, apart from an Israeli couple, the only people resembling tourists here today). It doesn’t stop at buying flowers. This merely spurs them on to sell you seeds as well. The more you resist the more they like it.

  ‘I have blue sunflower seeds.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘I have lotus seeds.’

  ‘I’ve bought some already.’

  ‘What lotus seeds you have bought?’

  ‘Blue.’

  ‘I have six-colour lotus seeds. And wild orchid and wild tulip.’

  ‘I have no money.’

  ‘You buy and send me the money.’

  At this point one would normally wind up the window and roar off as fast as possible, but as we’re both in paddle boats ther
e is no prospect of a quick getaway and either you drift along together for several miles or, as I did, you buy six-colour lotus seeds for all your friends. These disappeared mysteriously into a hotel wastepaper basket about a week later.

  It’s still only breakfast time as I get back to the houseboat moored on the western shore of the lake, which will be our home for the next couple of days. Mr Butt, the owner of Butt’s Clermont Houseboats, is worrying away at a table laid out in what was an old Mughal garden, believed to have been built by the Emperor Akbar and called the Garden of the Morning Breeze. Soon we’re chomping on eggs, pancakes, thick toasted bread, honey and Kashmiri tea, a fragrant alternative to the straight cuppa, made with saffron and almonds.

  Mr Butt circles nervously. He is a man of immense enthusiasm, very responsive to compliments and given to hugging the bearer of them with delight. On the other hand, the slightest thing that goes wrong produces intense anguish and much shouting at the staff. There seems to be no middle ground between euphoric happiness and utter despair.

  This makes him an anxious but attentive host and even before I’d checked in he was proudly showing off the signed photographs of previous guests that adorn the walls of his office. They range from Lord Louis Mountbatten, the man who partitioned India and Pakistan, to George Harrison, who stayed here in 1966 to learn the sitar from his friend and guru Ravi Shankar. I ask which boat George had stayed in and a small cloud passes over Mr Butt’s beaming features.

  Later I could see why. It lies in a side channel, half submerged with water. Mr Butt couldn’t afford to keep it afloat.

  Newspaper cuttings are displayed alongside the photos: recommendations from the Washington Post and the New York Times and a flattering inclusion, together with such high-tone places as the Regent in Hong Kong and the Lowell, New York, in Charles Michener’s ‘Hotels You Won’t Want to Leave’. These clippings are now yellowing and curled at the edges and there is none much later than the early 90s. When the troubles in Kashmir escalated, the press reviews turned to scare stories and the only foreign visitors were journalists covering the conflict.