Special Lassi

by Amrita Chatterjee

  At four, the cable car deposited us back at the park. River wanted to do some sketching, so we sat down amid the trees and I rolled up another spliff. River was starting to build a whole collection of landscapes, perfecting the gradient and degrees of greenness with every new piece.

  “What are you going to do with all these sketches?” I asked him at some point during the trip; not sure if it was at Gangtok.

  “I don’t know. I just like doing them. Painting and sketching are great ways to remember a place. When you take a picture, you look at it for a second and you’re done. But when you draw, you have to focus on so many little details that the image gets imprinted on your brain in a much stronger way.”

  “Hmm, I’d never thought about that.”

  * * *

  Our evening that day in Gangtok didn’t really go as planned. Back in the city, we did spend some time in a bar, but it was way too early. The plaza was filled with street dogs stretched out on their backs like lords. They briefly picked up their downy muzzles to give us a jaundiced eye as we tried to walk past them. I was exhausted and feeling a little sick, so I just went to sleep. River went out for dinner and another round of HIT, but even he was in bed by ten. I’ve been told that we missed out on the famous Gangtok nightlife, but we made up for it in Nepal.

  By the next afternoon, both of us were itching to move on to the Rumtek monastery, which is considered the most famous and the most spectacular gompa in the whole of Sikkim. It is also the main seat of the Karmapa in exile, who is the head of the Black Hat sect (Karma Kagyu lineage) of Tibetan Buddhism, just like the Dalai Lama is the head of the Yellow Hat sect (Gelug).

  All the hotels we stayed in during this trip had a standard check out time of 12 PM. But the number of times we actually checked out on time was, well, never! And who was to blame for this? River, of course! It has indeed become one of the biggest regrets of my life that I did not film him during his act of packing. And I call it an act because it was exactly like watching a contemporary interpretive dance. It all usually began at about ten minutes to twelve, when the sunshine outside was just the right amount of yellow. First, River would see me sitting on the bed, ready with my backpack and realize that he really had no other option but to get cracking. Then, instead of putting everything in, he would first empty the contents of his bottomless crap-holder and spread it out across the length and breadth of the room. After this, he would stand and stare at his belongings like he was doing some heavy calculus inside his head. Next came the actual chaos:

  River would shove something into the bag, then shake his head in an emphatic ‘no!’ and rush to the other side of the room to get some other useless article that needed to go in first. He would scratch his head, twist his face, jump around, whistle a frantic tune, brush his teeth on the side, do several little somersaults, make his special tea, dry his towel and have a mental breakdown over whether he should pack the shoes and wear the sandals or vice versa. And in Gangtok, to top it all, River wanted to smoke a joint while dealing with this mayhem. I told him, ‘absolutely not’, so he asked me to roll one to save time. When I flatly refused, he offered to pay me 500 to do it. I was going to say no again, but then I thought, fuck it, let’s roll one.

  Like a Prayer

  Rumtek is a stone’s throw away from Gangtok and this 24 kilometre jeep ride was fairly comfortable since we finally got to sit in the middle. I stared out of the window the whole way through and River was busy reading. The scenery was the usual mix of green hills and precarious little houses. I don’t remember much of the journey except a special moment, just as we were reaching the monastery. The sky was heavily overcast; it was grey all around, but somehow these two spectacular columns of sunlight, almost solid, had managed to pierce through. They beamed into the valley like the landing lights of a space ship from a planet far, far away.

  The jeep let us off outside a big iron gate where two armed guards were patrolling. Rumtek is perhaps the only monastery in India that is so heavily guarded. This is due to the dispute over the identity of the 17th Karmapa. Since the death of the 16th one, two candidates have been feuding over the position. One of them lives in Kalimpong near Darjeeling, while the other more widely accepted nominee – who escaped from Tibet a few years ago – has taken refuge under the Dalai Lama in McLeodganj. We were handed several flyers regarding this issue while in Sikkim, all demanding that the Indian government take necessary action and instate the Karmapa at his rightful position in Rumtek. But the government can’t afford to get involved in this, because supporting Trinley They Dorje (the one in Kalimpong) would surely antagonize a majority of the Dalai Lama’s followers. On the other hand, supporting Ogyen Trinley Dorje (the one at McLeodganj) could be interpreted by the Chinese government as an insult, thereby disrupting the not-so-subtle diplomatic horseplay that the two countries have been engaging in for a while.

  Not many tourists choose to spend the night at Rumtek as it is an easy day trip from Gangtok. But that is such a disservice to this little spot, which is a haven of beauty and quietude so close to a bustling city. The convenient little guesthouse right below the monastery is the perfect place to unwind. I couldn’t believe my ears when the young girl running the guesthouse told us that we were the only boarders for the night. I had no complaints because that’s why we got a double room at the price of a dorm bed. Our room’s windows opened right into the heart of the hills and I spent half my time here just staring out into the vast unknown.

  My first priority of the day was to indulge in a short but luxurious hot shower. Meanwhile, River fetched a pack of Tibetan hand-rolled incense sticks, that smelled like a potpourri of exotic spices and mountain mist. Then came a filling meal of yak cheese momos and pots of green tea. Finally, after a few quick drags on a spliff, we headed up to the gompa, accompanied by a gentle drizzle.

  The courtyard inside the monastery was filled with a stream of maroon robes swishing past us with great urgency. We had to stop for a moment, unsure of whether we could proceed. I had never seen so many animated monks in the same space anywhere before Rumtek, nor have I ever since. They all seemed to be playing some sort of a game that involved slapping each other’s palms as though it was a challenge. A closer look revealed that they were all split up in pairs, one monk played the aggressor and the other reacted in a restrained but confident manner. Some pairs took the exercise seriously, while others were just joking around.

  “What do you think is going on?” I turned to River.

  “Oh, they’re playing a game.”

  “I can see that, but what kind of game?”

  “It’s where one monk insults the other’s mother and the other monk has to be completely zen and not take the bait.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes!”

  Of course, not! River was simply taking the piss. After some research, I discovered that they were probably preparing for a formal debate, sort of like defending a doctoral thesis, which is a very important part of a monk’s education.

  Threading our way across the swarming courtyard, we passed through a narrow wooden door that led us to another enclosure that contained the prayer hall. The evening prayers were underway, so we quickly removed our shoes and went inside. The opulence of Rumtek was astounding; this was not how I had imagined the monks getting by. Vibrant murals embellished the entire hall. Dozens of butter lamps had been lit all around and their soft light was amplified by the generous splashes of gold paint on the walls. A narrow aisle in the middle led up to the main Buddha statue. On either side, rows of monks sat opposite each other on low wooden benches. The ancient books were kept in front of them on equally antique carved bookstands.

  As they swayed back and forth while chanting from their scriptures, I felt something move and then fall apart inside of me. With hindsight, I can say that this moment was my initiation into an alternative universe. Being in the presence of so many voices was like hitting a wall of electricity. I could sense the sonic vibrations flowing into my body all
the way through the marble floor. River and I stood back in a dark corner, closed our eyes and just let the wave like cadence of the chanting wash over us.

  Unfortunately, I cannot do justice to the intense yet soothing quality of Tibetan chants with mere words. It’s a thing to be experienced at least once in a lifetime. At the start of every phrase is a powerful, plosive Om that leads into the choral arrangement of raw syllables. The monks don’t really sing. There are no discernible notes or melodies in the chants, yet they sound so musical, like a number of different well-oiled engines vrooming at the same time. This technique is known as overtone singing, which is similar to Inuit throat singing. Both are equally guttural but there are certain differences in where the sound is produced and modified in the body. When I listened carefully, I could almost hear the monks singing at three different pitches simultaneously. It was ridiculous. It was beautiful. The decision was made right then; one time just wasn’t enough and we had to come back for more.

  * * *

  “That was something.”

  “Yeah, it was.”

  River had his hands behind his back and wore that distant look on his face, which always spelled trouble for me.

  “Oh look!” He suddenly came across a long flight of stone steps by the roadside, spiralling down to such depths that we couldn’t even see what was at the bottom. I made a face, clearly unhappy about where the evening was going. But to River, every new day is an opportunity to climb something. And when he starts bouncing like a bunny, eager to begin the challenge, you simply have to give in, which is what I did.

  And what was at the foot of this mysterious passage in the middle of nowhere? I was expecting a dead body; instead, we found a lovely wooden gazebo at the edge of the hill, with a 180 degree view of Gangtok on the opposite side of the valley. I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why someone would build such a gorgeous thing and then hide it away from the world. There was no other way to access the pavilion except by the staircase, which in itself was blink-and-miss. Perhaps we were on someone’s private property; it was the only plausible explanation.

  We sat under the gazebo for hours and I dedicated the entire evening to the sole purpose of observing how the night ‘falls’ on top of the earth. It was like watching someone gently pull a blanket over my face. I marked the gradual increasing intensity of the darkness by letting my eyes follow this girl, who was ambling down a sloping path on a hill to my right. Her bright red clothes were easy to spot and she was humming a pretty folk song while calling out to her sister, “O Bahini… O Bahini!” The faint rumble of jeeps, the mad barking of homeless dogs and the voices of strange men, all died down completely once we were officially in the twilight zone. And Rumtek grew even more magical.

  On the opposite hill, the lights in Gangtok came on one after another and the entire city turned into a giant Christmas tree decorated with fairy lights. River and I shared another joint here and my vision continued to get hazy. The air between Gangtok and Rumtek had become viscous and I was diving face first into this void, heading towards the bed of an ocean where lights glittered like jewels from a forgotten treasure chest. I have lost count of the number of times on this trip when we simply sat on a hillside and did nothing. Surprisingly, it never got boring, not even for a person like me who is always whining about wanting a change of scenery. Maybe I’m just getting old. Or maybe, after a certain age, when you’ve travelled a bit, there really is no physical change of scenery. It’s all in the mind, the perspective, the way we chose to look at things, both good and bad. And there’s also this need for stillness, a special hour just for contemplation, which is difficult to set aside in every day life.

  “Should we eat something?” River’s stomach roared in the surrounding silence.

  “Do we have to?” My eyes were half-closed. I didn’t want to move.

  “YES!”

  The following day, we kept our promise, and woke up at five to attend the prayers at the monastry again. It was incredibly misty and before we could traverse the handful of steps between the prayer hall and the guesthouse, the moisture reached its tipping point. It started raining heavily. The gates to the courtyard were still closed, so we had to stand in the rain and stare at the thick red columns supporting the painted archway. At six, two monks with umbrellas pushed the heavy wooden gates wide open and we ran towards the hall at full speed. Despite sprinting, we were soaked to the bone and the cold marble floor made me shiver. But nothing could be done about it and sat down, waiting for the chanting to begin.

  The monks were already in place and the lamps were being lit. A thurible, smoking with incense, was carried around the hall. The monks performed all their elaborate rituals with practiced ease after which, everyone, including us, received bowls of steaming hot Tibetan tea. I took a few sips to be polite, but couldn’t really stomach the salt-and-butter concoction first thing in the morning. Some of the young monks kept turning around to look at us, but the older ones didn’t even notice our presence. Finally, they readied their hand bells, dorjes and tingsha, which are finger cymbals tied together by a leather string. The ones sitting closest to the door held onto big drums and long brass trumpets, also known as dungchens. These sound like didgeridoos, but just a tad more chaotic. All the instruments were either embossed, painted or carved. There was nothing in the hall that couldn’t be considered a piece of art.

  This time, the chanting began with a loud thundering of drums; then the trumpets, bells and voices came tumbling down together in a powerful cascade. What was I thinking yesterday? My appreciation for this prayer service had nothing to do with me being high. It sounded far more intense today now that I was sober. Without even trying to meditate or concentrate on anything, I was swept off into a trance-like state. The monks established a steady rhythm by snapping their fingers and using odd little hand movements, which coincided precisely with the chanting.

  For the next hour or so, the energy in the room never died down. When a section stopped chanting or if there was a pause in the text, the monks continued to hum under their breath, like white noise from an old television set. During the pauses, the monks drank tea, turned the pages of their scrolls and then started again with a drum roll. River had brought his Dictaphone along and he recorded the whole ceremony. We listened to it many times during our journey. I still play it on blast in my room sometimes, but a recording cannot capture the spirit of such an electric performance. Perhaps religion’s greatest gift to humanity has been music, not morality, spirituality or a sense of order. Tibetan chants, Hindu bhajans, Sufi qawwalis, southern gospel, particle physics, the string theory, all prove that the only thing god ever said was, “let there be music…”

  Of Giants and Men

  Rumtek is a one-way street and in order to travel anywhere else in Sikkim, one has to trudge back to Gangtok. So that’s what we did while being squished to our cores in another crumbling jeep. While travelling around the Himalayas, it’s really important to get up as early in the morning as possible because as the day wears on, the travel options also begin to dwindle. There’s practically no driving after sunset as all the drivers like to get back home early and get drunk on cheap alcohol. We knew this, yet we never made it on time and consequently, spent the rest of the day moaning about the trials and tribulations of a backpacker’s life.

  I especially regretted the drive to Namchi because it was by far the most painful. We had to endure the hot and dusty crossing over the Teesta river again; the dam construction work was in full swing. But I have to concede, that in terms of the view, this drive was also the most winsome because we got to see Sikkim’s stunning tea gardens. Darjeeling was nothing compared to the sprawling plantations that we drove by. Even though I was perched on the edge of my seat between River and two other men for almost four hours, and my shoulders were hurting with the strain of trying to keep myself upright, I couldn’t help but admire the magnificence of the perfectly manicured tea estates covered in blooming shrubs. River described it perfectly wh
en he said, “God, it looks like velvet, doesn’t it?” It really did. The shrubs were so dense that they appeared like tufts of grass from above. And the varying shades of green lent them the exact soft, downy look of fur. If I could whistle, this would be the most perfect road in the world to do so. Fresh evening air wafted through the windows, a cerulean sky surrounded us and tall coniferous trees alongside the road formed a canopy above our heads.

  Halfway through the journey, the men to my left started talking to River in the familiar nonsensical English that I had heard from the mis-guide in Darjeeling. They kept pointing to the gardens and saying, “yes, tea, look tea, very good Sikkim tea.” River tried his best to move the conversation forward, but the only thing they could say in return was, “yes, Sikkim, yes, very good. My hometown, Namchi!” At the time I wrote it off as harmless banter, but as soon as we reached Namchi, one of these men grabbed River by the wrist and pulled him aside. He was dressed in a sharp suit and had quite a mane of black silky hair.

  “Sir, I tell you one thing, you don’t know Namchi. So dangerous! Come with me. I take you to very, very safe place.”

  He kept harping on the word safe as though Namchi was the crime capital of the world. I wasn’t keen on going anywhere with him, as I’m inherently suspicious of men in suits. But it had started raining and we were very tired. The town centre in Namchi was a close replica of the one in Gangtok. It was equally chic and well- kept. Hotels surrounded the plaza, but the man dragged us to the opposite end into a dark, shady lane that opened into a slum. I was getting uneasy with every step forward; we were practically fumbling in the dark.