“And what might that problem be, O wise and beneficent one?”
“Oh, come on. You’re supposed to be a smart guy.”
The House Special arrived, a mélange of vegetal ingredients. There was also some meat: A dead bee lay near the center of the pizza. When I showed the waiter, he groped for it with his fingers, contaminating half the pie. “For Christ’s sake!” Prince slapped the boy’s hand away. “We’d rather eat the bee.” I was about to weigh in with a quip of my own when I noticed the kid’s T-shirt: Don’t take life so seriously. Nobody gets out of it alive.
“So?” Prince was back to his riddle. “What’s your best guess?”
I thought for a few seconds before shaking my head. “The colonel fell out of the helicopter?”
Prince rolled his eyes. “I’ll give you a hint. How do you say ‘filming videos’ in Nepali? What’s the verb?”
“Come on, Larry, I don’t know. I didn’t even realize there was a verb.”
“That’s it!” he proclaimed, smacking his palm on the table. “There isn’t. They use our Western idiom: shooting. Within two days of the Patan demonstrations, news had gotten around—by word of mouth, as usual—that the police had been shooting into the crowd. The fact that they were shooting videos was omitted. All people heard was that the army was firing, from the air, at unarmed demonstrators. That was the last straw. It broke the stalemate. It got Kathmandu’s middle-class masses off their asses. People poured into the streets, outraged. And the rest”—he raised his beer glass—“is history.”
We clicked our glasses together. The story, true or false, spoke volumes about the way news travels in Nepal. The country’s information network, after many centuries, still relied heavily on rumor: a nationwide game of “telephone.”
Prince pulled a stenographer’s notepad out of his satchel. He thumbed to a specific page and pushed it toward me. “Every one of these,” he said, “was taken seriously at some point during late March or April.”
I looked at his notes:
LARRY PRINCE’S TOP REVOLUTION RUMORS
• Kathmandu’s water supply: poisoned by mandaleys.
• King sold Nagarjun Hill, used $$ to buy Sikorsky helicopter.
• Indian troops seen massing in the Terai, near Nepal’s southern border.
• Chinese troops seen massing in Tibet, on Nepal’s northern border.
• Thousands of disappeared demonstrators buried in mass grave near elephant ride at Gorkhana Park.
• Queen and royal heir, Prince Dipendra, have prepared an official document declaring king insane.
• A military coup, masterminded by king, to occur on the new moon.
• King placed a satellite call to Sylvester Stallone, asking for advice on how to respond to the mass demonstrations.
I laughed long and loud as I copied these absurd theories into my own notebook, well aware that every one of them might have been true.
MAHESH REGMI, THE firebrand publisher of the Nepal Press Digest, was less amused.
“What these rumors demonstrate,” the sixty-one-year-old journalist reflected later that day, “is a crisis of confidence that will come back to haunt us, even if democracy does take hold.”
I’d known Regmi for years, and considered him one of my most reliable sources. His weekly Digest, a collection of tidbits cunningly arranged to highlight social irony and governmental hypocrisy, was Nepal’s answer to “Harper’s Index.” Unlike other activists, Regmi had managed to stay out of prison. He did so by keeping a low profile; his genius lay in the art of quiet subversion.
We met in his office. I sat on a metal chair; Regmi reclined on a green velour couch. The room’s two wooden desks were piled high with reports, local newspapers, and stacks of cloth-bound books bearing soporific titles like Land Tenure and Taxation in Nepal. The first time we met, I’d asked Regmi how he could possibly read such books. He dryly replied that he had written them.
Regmi was cautiously pleased by the recent turn of events, but curled his lip when I brought up a much-debated hypothesis: The Nepalis had compromised their prospects for true, irreversible freedom by failing to hang the king.
Regmi sighed. With his pop-bottle glasses and toaster-shaped head, he looked a bit like Jean-Paul Sartre. “I’m rather skeptical of all-out revolutions,” he said at last. “They tend to bring all-out anarchy.”
Nepal still needed a king, he insisted, if only to hold the fabric of this maddeningly diverse nation together. “I don’t like this king personally,” Regmi confessed. “He really is a fool. But we can make him harmless without removing him.”
“Yes, but why take the chance? It worked in Romania . . .”
“Not so fast.” Regmi wagged a finger at me. “This brings us back to that list of rumors provided by your friend, Mr. Prince. It’s why the ‘crisis of confidence’ I mentioned is so dangerous. Birendra may not be the world’s most charismatic monarch. But he has been sanctioned, by time and tradition, to fill that seat.” He lit a cigarette and raised his eyebrows. “Tell me. Do you think a Sherpa villager would ever accept a southern Tharu as king? Or that a middle hills Gurung would accept a Magar? What is it the Arabs say? The enemy you know is better than the enemy you don’t know. Keeping Birendra in the palace may seem like folly,” Regmi concluded, “but removing him opens Pandora’s box.”
“But how can liberation be gained if the old system, with its class values and tradition of subservience, isn’t dismantled?”
Regmi leaned back with a puzzled expression, disappointed by my naïveté. “An awful lot is heaped on that word: liberation. But liberation, as you must have discovered by now, is not a final condition. It is not a state of affairs, in either politics or in personal life. And it’s certainly not something that follows automatically from a revolution. It is a process—and it usually creates as many issues as it settles. Like democracy! Okay, we have democracy. What are we going to do with it? Okay, we’re liberated. What are we going to do with ourselves?
“There’s the sense that democracy is a magic wand that will make all of Nepal’s problems disappear.” Regmi swept his hand between us. “Not so. Nepal’s economic problems are intractable. No one will be able to solve them locally. To do so will require a partnership with India and China, and God knows what they will demand in return. There also remains the unsettling fact that, as people in Romania and Eastern Europe are discovering, right after a revolution, things can get worse before they get better. Much worse. And there’s no guarantee they’re going to get better at all!”
Though I agreed with Regmi’s cynicism, the idealist in me hoped otherwise. I wished that Nepal, freshly revolved, might somehow become an exemplary republic: a jewel of life and liberty in the arrhythmic heart of South Asia.
“Whether things get better or worse is up to the people,” I spouted. “Democracy is meant to be of the people, by the people, for the people. Whether or not it works depends on one thing alone: whether or not the people participate.”
Regmi squinted at me, trying to decide if I was joking. When he finally spoke, his voice was wreathed in smoke-rings of sarcasm.
“Oh, really? And is everybody participating in American democracy?”
“No, but everybody is supposed to.”
Regmi carefully extinguished his half-smoked cigarette, wrapped the remainder in a scrap of paper, and tucked it into his jacket pocket. “Well, then! That is what we shall do, as well. We shall also have a democracy where everybody is supposed to participate.”
33
Why Westerners Love the Ocean
WE SAT TOGETHER cross-legged, on a Tibetan carpet patterned with dragons and coins. Two narrow bolts of yellow light rose from the floor and shot through the holes in a tattered curtain. The dais was covered with pomegranates and tangerines: offerings to the lama. There were other people in the room, but I didn’t see their faces. I kept glancing at my brother, watching his reactions, wondering if he was taking it in.
The teaching was profound,
and I remember thinking to myself, This is amazing. I had been certain that Jordan was dead, and now it turned out that it was all a sham; he was alive, and here we were, together, in the Rinpoche’s audience room. When Chokyi Nyima paused to consult his translator, I turned to whisper something to my brother, something about the way I had spent my time when I’d thought he was dead, but he was craning forward with an intent look on his face and held up a hand to silence me. I fell back, chastised, remembering that he understood Tibetan.
Chokyi Nyima turned back to the small assembly and raised his eyebrows. “Any other question? No? Finished?”
Jordan held up his hand. The Rinpoche nodded, and my brother cleared his throat. “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”
I flushed with embarrassment, but Chokyi Nyima took the query in stride. “Three bags full,” he replied.
The extraordinary thing was, I recognized this as the right answer. My brother concurred. He nodded once, a slight smile on his lips. Then he turned to me.
“Thank you for bringing me here. I’m afraid I can’t stay.”
This made no sense. We were living together near Nag Pokhari. His toothbrush and Drakkar Noir were in the medicine cabinet. He had nowhere to go, no home I knew of.
“Where are you going?” I asked. And then I understood, as one does in dreams.
“I’ve got a small place.” He chuckled softly, and raised an eyebrow. “It’s not half bad. Know that your efforts, which I would have dismissed as nonsense two or three months ago, were of some use.” His tone changed. For the first time in many years, I heard a softness in his voice. “You saved all my letters?” I nodded. “Do you remember how we used to dare each other to dive into the biggest waves at West End Beach?”
“Of course I do. God, that was ages ago. And we would sing in the back of the car, on the way home.” I stalled for time. “And do you remember how we used to go into the bathroom and piss together, making an X? You’re the only one who remembers these things. Deb wasn’t born until I was nine.” I was talking out loud, but no one in the room seemed to notice.
“Do you hate me? I was so mean to you sometimes. We fought really hard. We’d punch and kick each other, and I think I really hurt you a few times. Do you remember? Do you remember when I called from California and asked you to describe Mom’s new husband, and all you said was, ‘How he loves meat!’? That was so great. You’re so funny. You’re the funniest person I ever knew. I love you, man. I love you so much.”
“Walk with me to the door.”
We stood up and stepped over people’s legs, making our way toward the long hanging curtain that separated the foyer from the altar room. Jordan parted the cloth. We stepped onto cool marble and clasped hands. Blue sky bloomed all around us. I didn’t know what to say.
“Kali shú.” He pronounced it expertly.
I placed my palms together. “Kali pei.”
He inclined his head and parted. I watched him vanish down the stairwell.
Oh God, I suddenly realized, he left without his shoes. I turned around to pick them up from the shoe pile, but stopped short. There was nothing there. The corner was empty. All our shoes were gone.
CHOKYI NYIMA OFTEN talked about the meaning of “emptiness.” Everything, from a statue of the Buddha to one of our eyelashes, is composed of atoms; and atoms are essentially formless. The closer we look, the more ambiguous their existence appears. Even on the subatomic level, change is continual. One can neither step into the same river, nor observe the same atom twice, a fact that indicates that matter, for all its apparent stability, is not very different from time.
The amazing thing is that it all carries on. You and I will die, but the party won’t stop. Empty or not, the stuff of the world will remain: railroads and lakes and highways, chocolate chip cookies and papayas, tapered candles and birch trees, dinosaur bones and pianos, tortilla chips and the pyramids. We shuffle around the globe, encountering a few hundred thousand of the world’s five billion people during our stay, then take our leave, turning planet Earth over to the next shift. The lights stay on. Music continues to blare from taxi radios, and kites sail over Kathmandu.
The whitewashed dome of the Boudha stupa radiated fresh prayer flags, undulating in a warm breeze. A few pilgrims made their rounds. Although the shrine was unusually quiet—compared to the last time I’d seen it, at Lhosar—another holiday was in the offing. Next Wednesday would be Buddha Jayanti, the full moon of Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death, all celebrated on the same day. The morning pujas would be held at Swayambhu, then the festival would move to Boudha. Sometime in the afternoon, a geriatric elephant would circumambulate the plinth with an image of Buddha on its back.
Before I’d left Kathmandu in early March, Chokyi Nyima had issued a clear directive: Next time you come Nepal, you see me first thing. Understand?
I had broken my promise. Though I was eager to see the Rinpoche, my knees weakened at the thought. Time and again, I’d avoided opportunities to visit Boudha. The longer I waited, the more difficult the pilgrimage became.
Ten days after returning to the kingdom, I overcame my trepidation.
I led my motorcycle around the cobbled kora, slogged down the dusty road to the monastery, and climbed the familiar stairs. It was before eleven; the Rinpoche should be in. I hoped he was alone.
Entering the foyer, I beheld a large and chaotic shoe pile. There was a teaching in progress, possibly a week-long class. I took a few deep breaths before letting myself into the crowded altar room. The Rinpoche spied me immediately and clapped his hands together.
“Oooh! Giraffe! Back from the zoo!” He beckoned me toward him. I approached, knelt, and presented a silk kata. “You got here when? Today? Just now, yes?”
Lying seemed a poor idea. “No, Rinpoche. I’ve been here for a few . . . for two weeks.” His eyes narrowed, and I came to my own defense. “I had some very bad news in America. Can I talk about it with you after the teaching? Privately?”
“Hmmm . . .” He looked into my eyes, one at a time. “Sure, sure. But today is very busy. See me after. Okay?” He wrapped the kata around my neck, slapped his palm on my skull, muttered a prayer, and pushed me away. “You sit now,” he commanded. I moved to the back of the room, crossed my legs, and leaned against the wall.
“Okay. What we talking?” Silence. “Nothing? What? No one remember? Oooh, maybe all getting old.”
A German woman with stringy blond hair waved her hand. I’d seen her on the kora, ticking off prayer beads on an antique malla. She fingered them now, rocking forward and back in an agitated manner.
“Rinpoche, some weeks ago I bought a Tibetan calendar, one of those books that gives all the holidays. Inside it talks about the ‘Four Great Festival Days.’ I see that the Buddha’s birthday, next week, is one of them.”
The Rinpoche nodded. “Yes? And? Your question?”
“Well, according to this calendar . . . On such days, the karma you generate by your actions, good or bad, is multiplied . . .”
“Millions of times. Billions of times,” Chokyi Nyima completed her sentence.
“Yes. Yes! Rinpoche, this frightens me! I think I must stay in bed the whole day, because I am afraid of what I might do!”
“No no no.” Chokyi Nyima shook his head mischievously. “Not enough to stay in bed. Because even if you stay in bed, how do you know your mind won’t ‘do’? Remember, if we check well, we notice: Each day—each hour!—our mood changes.
“Certain special times,” he explained, “are connected with special mental power. On such days, if we think something is good, the good feeling might multiply. Meditation may come more easily. When we think of this day as a suggestion, for controlling our thinking, it makes sense. But we must not let the idea of a ‘bad day’ take over our minds. Otherwise, bad things will definitely come! So occupy yourself with good thinking. Just relax . . . and let mind balance.” He glanced down hopefully. “It’s good enough, what I sa
y?”
“Not really,” the woman sighed. “I still think we must have a lot of problems on that day.”
“‘We’?” Chokyi Nyima declared. “You bought the calendar!” The room erupted with laughter. The Rinpoche waited for us to settle down.
“But one thing more to say. Very important.” There was immediate silence, as if a crocodile had slid into our pond. “Listen carefully: Impermanence. Suffering. Emptiness. Egolessness.
“Understand? This is what Buddha taught. This is what you study. This is what you practice. Everything else is dogma, and superstition. Okay?”
I stared at the Rinpoche. With a few simple words, he had laid bare the core of Tibetan Buddhism. None of its rich, papal trappings—the gilt statues or silk robes, prayer flags or skullcups, bells, bones, or whistles—need distract me again.
The man sitting beside me, a young American with a billy goat beard, waved his hand. “Rinpoche . . . the world’s a mess. Why isn’t Buddha around right now?”
“Ha!” Chokyi Nyima slapped his knee and straightened his back. “Did you hear the question? Very sharp! Why doesn’t Buddha appear right now? Hm?” He scanned the room, but there were no takers. “Does Buddha have no power, or what?” Nobody would touch that one, either.
“Okay,” the Rinpoche said. “I explain. Buddha’s power is always same. Buddha’s kindness and compassion are always same. But these appearances seem to change. Like moon! The moon is always the same size and color. Yes?” We nodded, able to agree on this. “But different type of vessel or lake, with different types of water, create a different type of reflection. Understand? Some water is very clean, very clear! Makes a very good reflection. Some water is dirty, muddy; then the moon is not so clear. Is this a problem with moon, or with water?”
“Water . . . water . . . water . . .” The word tumbled through the room, as if from a chorus of desert rats.
Snake Lake Page 31
