Tibetan Foothold

by Dervla Murphy

  Because of its new strategic importance this road, which was never designed for heavy traffic, is now being widened and improved at top speed – though that is hardly the mot juste for any construction-work in this part of the world. It took us nearly four hours to cover the fourteen ‘cycleable’ miles, so frequent were the long delays caused by blasting operations. At each of these halts Roz and I were on one side of the closed stretch of road and the military convoys were queuing on the other side – thus I inadvertently did my good deed for the day by providing the troops with an intriguing and much appreciated break in the monotony of their journey. I myself was almost equally intrigued by the activities of the roadworkers – many of whom were Indians on this sector. After a piece of jutting cliff had been blasted away they swarmed over the road to move the piles of shattered rock by hand – and if a chunk was too big to be carried by two men then it had to be broken up with a mallet. An impatient traveller in a hurry would soon go berserk on this route.

  Five miles from Narkanda we ran into more trouble. Here the mountain was again wooded and, this being its northern side, the road suddenly became a menacing mass of black ice. Now we really were back where we had started from and as soon as I saw the stuff I could most vividly visualise the road from the ferry-berth at Dunkirk on 16 January 1963! I struggled on over this glassy slide for about half a mile, but both Roz and myself were continually losing our grip; with the road so narrow and winding, and the traffic so heavy, and the drop beyond the edge so horrific my nerve soon broke. Military assistance seemed the solution and having waited some twenty minutes we were rescued by an officers’ snow-chained Land-Rover, en route back to Simla; the officers had some rude things to say about my sanity, especially when I declined their kind offer of a lift all the way and insisted on being unloaded at Narkanda. Despite the lower altitude it’s very much colder on this treeless, windswept ridge than on the wooded Jalori Pass. This camp is in a fairly sheltered spot, on the southern slope, yet it’s still bitterly cold. There are about 300 adults here and 62 children, one of whom has pneumonia; I’m very much afraid he’ll die during the night. This crisis puts me in a heartbreaking position, because his mother comes and kneels in front of me at intervals, touching my feet with her head and beseeching me to give him pills. She won’t accept my repeated affirmations that I’m not a doctor, and at such moments I feel acutely frustrated by that inherent stupidity which prevents me from learning foreign languages; I would give anything to be able to talk to this woman.

  Near the tent in which the boy is dying another, larger tent has been converted into a miniature temple and here five Lamas have assembled to read the Bardo Thödol. They are all charming men, with simple, open faces and gentle manners, and they received me most courteously when I explained through the interpreter that though I couldn’t give the child any effective medicine I had come to pray for him – an action which, to my discomfort, reduced the mother to tears of gratitude. The usual elaborate thankas were decorating the sides of the tent and ancient, ceremonial vessels lay in rows before the Lamas. Unfortunately the eating of the dreaded (by me) torma was an inescapable part of the ritual: but having forced myself to swallow it I was able hastily to wash down the vile concoction with many cups of buttered tea.

  This is the only camp where I’ve found the majority of children in very poor shape and where many adults desperately need medical care. The explanation of the adults’ bad health and serious injuries must be overwork and the lifting of too heavy rocks – you can imagine the pressure put on roadworkers all along this stretch of vital communication. The pleading, trustful way in which they come to show me their injuries would wring a tear from a stone; yet the adults, like the children, are so amenable to affection that if you put an arm round them, pat them on the head and talk kindly to them they immediately relax and beam happily, apparently forgetting their disappointment at not being miraculously cured. Such a lovable people – it saddens me beyond expression to think that this is my last night among them.

  SIMLA: 31 DECEMBER

  While I was having my breakfast of buttered tea and moo-moo the father of the sick child came to tell me that his son had died during the night; the mother was too grief-stricken to appear.

  We had an easy forty-mile run from Narkanda to Simla. For most of the way the road ran level around mountain after mountain, giving me my best ever view of the Himalayas. What a spectacle! Hundreds of chunky, dazzling peaks stretch all along the horizon from Dharamsala in the west to as far as the eye can see in the east and the familiar peaks above the Nursery are seen from here to be the very beginning of the range – beyond them is only the bluish void of the plains. From these 16,000 footers the summits rise gradually to a triumphant climax of 23– 25,000 footers, lorded over by Nanda Devi on the threshold of Tibet. Looking at this magnificent barricade one has an odd feeling that nothing lies beyond it, so overwhelming is the impression of achievement and finality.

  Nearing Simla the road plunged steeply down, and on this descent we passed three recently crashed trucks which had skidded off at icy bends and gone hurtling over the precipice.

  When we arrived here at 4 p.m. Pauline took one horrified look and then metaphorically picked me up with a pair of tongs and dropped me in the bathroom. I can’t say I blame her, as my clothes hadn’t been taken off for a fortnight and I’ve never in my life felt so filthy – which is saying something! By now I’m bathed and fine-combed and have been pronounced free of vermin and fit to accompany the Menteths to a New Year’s Party.

  As I sit writing my last diary-entry for 1963, and reflecting on my experiences in the past year, it’s strange to think that when I left Ireland I was seeking only the satisfaction of adventure and discovery – but now, after spending the first half-year ‘travelling hopefully’, I have realised that it is far better ‘to arrive’. Though at this moment I impatiently long to be home in Ireland I am determined to return to the Tibetans in 1965.

  Epilogue in Europe

  On a cold, grey day at the end of March, five weeks after my return from India, I first met a Tibetan in Western surroundings. The setting was a London hotel lounge and the Tibetan was a young man of twenty-one who had just arrived from Switzerland, where he had been helping with a resettlement scheme since the previous December. I’m not sure what I had expected four months in Europe to do to a Tibetan but they seemed to have done no harm to Lobsang. He brought with him a calmness and dignity which I personally found very soothing at that time, suffering as I was from my first dose of concentrated publicity.

  Now I could see for myself the famous Tibetan adaptability. This boy was superbly at ease, though at the same time one was aware of his essential ‘differentness’. Unlike many Orientals met in Europe he was not striving to ape Western ways and attitudes but was simply accommodating himself to his new environment to the extent required by good manners.

  After the discussion for which we had met I accompanied Lobsang to Waterloo, and it was on the Underground that he made me realise how quickly I had become reinfected by the feverish maelstrom of our Western civilisation. As we descended the stairs a train could be heard approaching – whereupon everyone sprinted desperately down to the platform and leaped on board as though devils were following. Only one solitary figure was left behind – Lobsang, who crossed the platform at his usual pace and sedately entered the train a moment before the doors closed. Sitting opposite me he remarked with a slight smile, ‘It is not necessary to get worried and run to these trains. I have seen that if one goes away another comes very soon.’

  Before we said goodbye that evening we had arranged that Lobsang should spend his summer holiday in Ireland.

  Lobsang was the second youngest of a family of eight and both his parents died in 1945. To quote his own words, ‘My mother died when my youngest brother was born and my father died six weeks later because he was so sad.’ This cause of death being accepted as something entirely understandable reminded me once again of the strange fate of Sonam
No bo’s mother at Dharamsala.

  Lobsang’s father had been a government official in Lhasa and in addition to his Civil Service duties – or possibly as part of them – he practised as an oracle. This information was given me in matter-of-fact tones as we crossed St James’s Park, where the idea of anyone’s father having been an oracle struck a delightfully exotic note. Yet this reference to an occupation so remote from our world highlighted those barriers which always divide East from West, however easy the rapport between individuals.

  At the age of four Lobsang was adopted by his father’s brother, an Incarnate Lama of the Gelugpas who was then Abbot of Tubung Churbu Monastery, twenty miles west of Lhasa. This small community of a hundred monks was one of two monasteries which the Abbot had founded, and here Lobsang spent his school holidays. His childhood was secure and contented, despite the rigorous régime traditional to Tibetan schools, where a pupil’s powers of concentration are developed to the highest degree and the minimum of recreation is allowed. One of his aunts, who lived in Lhasa, was especially kind to him, and though his uncle was a very austere man, with whom it was impossible to have an informally relaxed relationship, Lobsang knew that he could rely on the Abbot’s constant affection.

  When the Lhasa uprising began on 17 March 1959, Lobsang at once fled to Tubung Churbu. Already his only sister – a pioneer of agricultural improvement – had been murdered by the Chinese and the family was sufficiently prominent for each member to be in grave danger at that time. In the Monastery preparations were being made for an escape to India, and two weeks later the Abbot set out with twenty-five followers – including Lobsang – and a train of sixty mules. Many of these pack-animals carried priceless loads, for the Abbot was intent on saving his library of ancient Sanskrit manuscripts and his famous collection of thankas. As the main routes to the frontier were then being vigilantly patrolled by the Chinese all refugee caravans had to use unfrequented tracks over high passes and this comparatively short journey – during which half the mules were lost through injury – took more than three gruelling months.

  The first man who heads for the moon will have a much clearer picture of what to expect on arrival than Lobsang had en route to India. In the course of this trek he suffered acutely from loneliness and often wept at leaving behind him his brothers, his friends and his country. As yet he had no conception of what it meant to be a refugee and his imagination could not begin to visualise the sort of world towards which he was travelling. In Tibet he had never known the significance of money; his needs had always been provided for and the idea of earning was completely foreign to him – but soon he was to be alone in an environment where money is the determining factor in most people’s lives.

  When the caravan at last reached Kalimpong the Abbot retired to a local monastery to recover from an illness brought on by his ordeal and Lobsang lodged for three months in the home of Sherpa Tenzing of Everest. Most of the Abbot’s retainers now dispersed to fend for themselves, but those who were too old or infirm to do so are still with him in Benares, where for the past few years he has held the chair of Sanskrit Studies at the famous Hindu University. Fortunately most of his manuscripts and all the thankas survived the journey, and these latter were one of the chief attractions at an International Exhibition of Oriental Art held recently in Delhi.

  At this stage Lobsang spoke only Tibetan and some Chinese, so his months in Kalimpong were spent studying Hindi, Nepali and English. Then he decided to find a job which would make him financially independent, while enabling him to perfect his English, and a few weeks later he had become house-boy to an American family in New Delhi.

  In our society this would not seem very remarkable but in the East such a step required considerable strength of character from a young man who had been accustomed to three personal servants and had never been allowed to put on his own boots. In some refugee circles Lobsang now found himself regarded as a fool; with his connections he could have lived comfortably in idleness. But to him this would have been infinitely more degrading than working as a servant and, apart from his desire to be independent, he also wished to equip himself with some means of helping the thousands of his illiterate fellow-countrymen who were then drifting about northern India in bewildered misery. Realising their difficulties he felt that a core of educated, English-speaking Tibetans could achieve a great deal by acting as liaison officers between them and the twentieth century.

  Lobsang’s employers were kind and appreciative but as a house-boy he found himself with insufficient time for serious study, so after nine months he left the Americans – despite their offer to double his wages – and went as a voluntary worker to Mrs Bedi’s School for Young Lamas. A few months later Miss Joyce Pearce, of Ockenden Venture, visited this school, met Lobsang and offered him the opportunity to study in England.

  For the next six months, while the necessary formalities were being completed, Lobsang worked as an assistant secretary in His Holiness’s office at Dharamsala. Curiously enough we never met there, though our terms overlapped by three months, but we had many mutual friends in the area – and a few mutual enemies, despite Lobsang’s reluctance to acknowledge any man as an enemy!

  * * *

  On the day of Lobsang’s arrival in Ireland flights to Cork were delayed by fog and I asked an official at the bus terminus to contact my hotel when Mr Lobsang arrived. In due course the telephone rang and a voice in rich Cork brogue asked, ‘Is that Miss Murphy? Well, I’ve got a Tie-bet-an here and I’m keeping him for you to take – would that be right?’ I replied gravely that it would indeed; the implication that a Tie-bet-an was a species of dangerous wild animal made me feel that I had been cast in the role of a qualified circus-trainer. Yet when I arrived at the terminus fifteen minutes later Lobsang and the official were deep in conversation, and as we left the building the Cork man whispered to me, ‘Gorr, he’s a terrible nice little fella after all – real polite and friendly-like – good luck to ye!’

  Two days later we left Lismore to hitch-hike to Galway, en route for the Aran Islands. Lobsang was an ideal travelling companion, so indifferent to what most Europeans would regard as discomfort that after a five-mile walk through pouring rain he still looked cheerful. Also he took it for granted that everything must be accomplished on a shoestring and this, when one belongs to a society in which all one’s friends have considerably more money than oneself, makes a welcome change.

  I had been looking forward to a return to Inishere – the smallest of the three Arans – during all my time abroad. The way of life on this little island is as primitive as one could find anywhere in Europe. The only roads are rough dirt tracks, the traffic consists entirely of donkeys, water is drawn from wells, clothes are home-spun, Irish is the spoken language, and apart from vegetables, milk, eggs and fish all supplies must come out from the mainland. There may seem to be little affinity between landlocked Tibet and an isle in the Atlantic, yet I had felt – and Lobsang soon confirmed this feeling – that a Tibetan would find himself at home on Inishere.

  The two and a half hour journey from Galway was Lobsang’s longest sea voyage, but luckily it was calm and when we anchored off the South Island a small fleet of currachs – frail craft of wood-lathe and tarred canvas – immediately surrounded us to ferry passengers and goods ashore.

  The island was looking its loveliest on this cloudless August morning, with the sharp Atlantic light heightening the contrast between silver sands and vivid little fields. On the strand sturdy donkeys queued to take sacks of coal, flour and sugar to the two tiny shops, and the community’s only mule-cart – a recent innovation – stood by to bring the mail to the Post Office. So still is the island on such a day that the rattle of the anchor-chain sounded almost aggressive, and so easily do the Islanders move about their tasks that my own impatience to board a currach suddenly appeared ridiculous.

  Boat-days are something of an event and a vast crowd of twenty or thirty people, plus three or four dogs, usually assemble to welcome the Naom
h Eanna. Inevitably Lobsang’s arrival created a sensation and I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed at the uninhibited curiosity with which he was regarded. But I needn’t have worried; it transpired afterwards that he had observed a family party weeping as they said goodbye to an emigrant daughter and with refugee understanding he had been much more aware of this pathetically permanent feature of island life than of his own conspicuousness.

  During the next few weeks we shared a friend’s rented cottage, washed at the well three-quarters of a mile away, slept flea-bagged on the floor and played Mah Jong by candlelight – and Lobsang obviously revelled in this escape from the suaveness of Europe to the sternness of Aran. He enthusiastically appropriated many of the daily chores and within hours of our arrival had dug a very splendid Asian-type latrine, while his zeal for fetching water soon earned him the nickname of ‘Choo-Lin’ – ‘Water-Carrier’. He was no less zealous to collect dung for the fire, but here slight complications arose; some cow-pats contained insects and were therefore not considered eligible, by a Buddhist, for burning. Similarly, forays to pick barnacles and periwinkles were quietly avoided.