“In every age,” the Rinpoche continued, “only one Buddha appears. Why? Because the world can absorb only one Buddha at a time. But even when Buddha doesn’t seem to be present, the Buddha’s activity in the world is still amazing, seeking liberation for all beings. And we need to be connected with this activity. Because any connection, even a bad one, will lead to liberation. Even if you punch the Buddha! At that time you will create very bad karma; maybe you will need to suffer a little bit! But even the connection of punching a buddha, or bodhisattva, will eventually cause you to liberate!”
“Really?” This from an impish Israeli woman. “So if I punch you now, will that help me later on?”
“Not necessary!” Chokyi Nyima laughed. “Better, I think, you meditate. It takes less lifetimes that way! Otherwise, you may be reborn as an ant . . . or a worm . . . or as Gadhafi . . . isn’t it?” He peered gleefully around the room.
“But what I tell you is true. Buddha said, ‘Whoever is related to me, in a good way or bad, at the time of their death I strongly wish them to liberate. ’ It’s very interesting,” he mused. “This kind of teaching exists only in Buddhism. No other.”
His cordless telephone chirped, and Chokyi Nyima took the call. From his casual tone and comments about a clinic, I guessed Dr. Dan was on the line. I hadn’t seen Dan since February; he’d been visiting the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London, researching a new strain of intestinal parasite.
The conversation ended. Chokyi Nyima drew his eyebrows together. “That was my doctor friend,” he confirmed. “A good man, but very confused. He cannot relax! Mind always busy! Marry this woman, or that woman? Maybe marry soon, maybe never marry? Maybe want child, maybe not want child? Maybe stay in Nepal, maybe leave Nepal? Hmmm? Hmmm?” He scanned the assembly.
“Mind is very funny. Very funny! You know? Without too much choice, it is quite peaceful; with too much choice, it becomes crazy. This is one of the problems of developed countries. Too much choice, and too much suffering. Too much worry, and too much fear. Some years before, in Paris, I went to a restaurant. Even I had a hard time. The choice was too much. Two hundred and fifty things on the menu—all cheese!” A monk approached with a thermos, but Chokyi Nyima waved him off.
“So many times, Western people are thinking, ‘Oh, I’m free! So free!’ Always talking about freedom. But it’s not really true. Western people, if you examine well, are not very free. Many rules, many laws. You must do this, you must do that; you need to buy this, you need to buy that. They always need to choose. They always need to judge.”
The Rinpoche looked out the window, toward the saucer-shaped stupa of Boudha. “I think,” he said, “that I now understand something. I understand why Western people love the ocean. Because the ocean is the one thing, really, that you cannot judge. The ocean is the one you cannot change. Even if you judge, even if you complain, it makes no difference. Even if you worry—‘Oh, wave too small, wave too big, water cold, water hot, big shark coming’—no difference! I think this must be why Western people feel so relaxed near the ocean. It is the one thing, the only thing, they cannot change.”
THE RINPOCHE USUALLY stayed at his dais after the teaching, distributing medicinal pills and red blessing cords. Today he stood up as soon as the session was over, moving directly toward an adjacent room. I followed nervously.
“Rinpoche, you mentioned we could have a few words . . .”
“Now is not so good. What’s problem?”
I couldn’t rush into it. Chokyi Nyima sensed my discomfort and gestured to the carpet-covered couch against the wall. We sat down together.
“Rinpoche. I don’t know if I ever spoke to you about my brother. My younger brother, Jordan.”
“No.” He straightened his robes and thumbed the beads on his malla. “Never mentioned. Some problem? Sick?”
“Rinpoche . . .” To my annoyance, tears were pooling in my eyes. “My brother was a great man. He was a scholar. He was a philosopher, and a student of language. He was also a fine athlete. And a very kind man.” The Rinpoche nodded. I wondered if my use of the past tense, in referring to Jordan, had showed him where this was going.
“But he was also very depressed. Very unhappy about his life. I don’t know why. During the past few months, while I was here working, and visiting you, he sent me letters. He told me about his troubles. That was why I went home: to see if I could help.”
“So? Result?”
“I was too late, Rinpoche. Two days after I returned home, my brother killed himself. With a gun.”
“Two days!” The Rinpoche’s eyes widened. He reached over and put a hand on my leg. “Ohh. Very bad. I’m sorry.” I nodded. “You spoke to him? Tried to stop him?”
I shook my head. “We didn’t speak. I’d only been home two days.” Mercifully, the Rinpoche said nothing. “It was on the weekend, right after my birthday. He was waiting for me to come home, so I could be with my mother. Rinpoche, he had planned to do this for a long time. I don’t know . . . I don’t think I could have stopped him.” But even as I said the words, I knew they were untrue. Had I reached Jordan the day I got home, the world might be a different place.
“Rinpoche, I must speak with you about this. I don’t know what to think about my brother—how to balance the goodness of his life with the way he died. I know you’re busy. But I need your help.”
The Rinpoche studied my face with an almost stern expression, as if he were reading my palm. Then he opened a drawer in the low table in front of us. He pulled out a pen and pad. They had been taken, I couldn’t help but notice, from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.
“Write your brother’s name,” he instructed. “You have picture, also?” I did: a wallet shot of Jordan in upstate New York, standing self-assuredly beside a horse. Chokyi Nyima studied the photograph intently, as if to see through my brother’s facade. “Tonight I will put his name and picture on my prayer wheel. I will also make a special blessing in my meditation. But right now, no time for answers. Can you come Friday? In two days?”
My heart sank. “I’m so sorry, Rinpoche, I’ll be on trek that day.” But I’d waited two months and could wait a few days more. “Will you be here next week?”
“Mm. Buddha Jayanti coming. Very busy time. Many pujas. Like Lhosar! But maybe Friday after. Okay?”
“Yes. I’ll be here.”
“No, not here. At that time I stay at Nagi Gompa. North of the valley. You know?”
“Yes, Rinpoche, I’ve been up there.”
“Good. You come that day, ten o’clock. We talk brother. Okay?”
“Very well. Thank you, Rinpoche.”
He nodded, tucked Jordan’s picture into his robe, and cloistered himself away.
A single pair of shoes lay outside the altar room entrance. I slipped them on and left the monastery.
34
Milk and Cookies
ON AN OVERCAST Thursday morning, Grace and I took a taxi down Ramshah Path, veered around the statue of King Tribhuvan, and hopped out by the ornate iron gates leading into Singha Durbar, Nepal’s parliament compound. We passed our credentials to a sober Gurkha guard, who motioned us inside.
The government building is an overcooked neoclassical architectural omelet, a high-cholesterol Rana-epoch monstrosity stuffed with white columns, ovoid archways, frothy fountains, and a generally unconvincing air of grandeur. As with all official Nepali buildings, from the government ministries to the university, any illusion of elegance vanishes the moment one steps inside.
Our appointment with Nepal’s new prime minister was at ten. Though we’d arrived thirty minutes early, there was plenty of time to panic as we lost ourselves in the labyrinthine corridors of the durbar. Up one flight of steps, down two; through a rotunda, down the hall, and smack into a dead end; around the corner, under a tree; I felt like a hapless photon, trapped in a cruel video game. At length we spied an open door, which led into a room that fit the description I’d been given on the phone. Inside were a threadbare couch
, a wooden desk, and a closed door, separating the waiting area from the inner sanctum. We sank into the couch and waited to see what would happen next.
Out in the hallway, biscoot wrappers, cigarette butts, and dust bunnies swirled in a vortex. The carpet in the reception room appeared to have been freshly peed on, and the head of a deer, or some similar creature, regarded us sympathetically from the wall. The wooden desk was bare, though in the layer of dust veneering its surface some local sly had finger-painted the word puti: vagina.
“Classy place,” Grace observed.
The door to the inner office creaked open, and a slight, elderly man wearing a yellow darwa-surwal and neat brown vest approached. We rose to our feet.
“Hello . . . I’m Jeff Greenwald, a writer with the San Francisco Examiner. This is Grace Modena, my photographer.” I extended my hand. He gripped it warmly while his eyes grazed upon Grace with undisguised lust. I felt like waving my hand in front of his face. “Sir? We have a ten o’clock appointment with Prime Minister Bhattarai?”
“I am Rajdoot,” he declared. “You are German? French? Israeli? English?”
“We . . .”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The PM’s office, I will show you. But please, you will first take tea?”
I glanced pointedly at my wrist. “We’re already running a bit late.”
Rajdoot wagged his head and without another word led us out of the room and back into the maze of corridors. Pointed at long last to our elusive destination, we were relieved to enter a clean, carpeted waiting room with a handsome leather sofa and polished brass fittings on the doors. It was easily the most elegant official habitat either of us had seen in Nepal.
A middle-aged secretary accepted our introductions. “Please take a seat. The prime minister will see you in a moment.” He pushed a button on his desk. A servant entered, carrying jasmine tea in china cups.
“This is more like it.” Grace tightened a butterfly screw on her tripod and tested the grip. “Got your questions ready?”
I nodded and leafed through my pad. “Everything from the Tibetan refugee situation to the new tourist visa regulations.”
“Really? Wow . . . maybe he’ll grant me a permanent visa on the spot. Can you imagine? Full-on residency, with no money-changing requirements?”
“You’re aiming too low. I’m going for honorary citizenship.”
The door to the prime minister’s office opened, and we were summoned inside.
The room was large, oddly windowless, and appropriately ostentatious, lined with teak paneling and acres of maroon wallpaper. A tiger skin lay upon the floor, the dead cat’s jaw agape. Portraits of the king and queen hung above the enormous desk, their expressions as glazed as doughnuts.
Krishna Prasad Bhattarai stood to greet us, his engaging smile revealing horrible teeth. Silvery hair gushed from beneath his black topi like spun fiberglass. His hand, when I took it, felt dry and fragile.
Bhattarai was a remarkable man. Every moment of his adult life had been dedicated to the Nepal Congress Party, including the fifteen years he had spent in prison for prodemocracy activities. A notorious bachelor, he’d lived with his sister for the past two decades. We had met for the first time in February. I’d visited the NCP office during a strike and found “K. P.,” the party’s secretary general, sitting on the floor of the litter-strewn room. He had somehow avoided arrest and was drafting a formal letter demanding the king’s resignation. It was a heartbreaking scene: a political pygmy, shooting pumpkin seeds at a rogue elephant.
And now this unassuming, congenial loner was prime minister of Nepal: a “caretaker” position he’d assumed only three weeks ago. He seemed stunned into docility, like a teenager who’d been tossed the keys to an aircraft carrier.
Bhattarai motioned us toward the overstuffed chairs facing his desk. As he eased back into his own seat, Grace and I exchanged glances. There was something . . . off. The massive desk, the office, the corn-fed faces of the king and queen seemed to dwarf the prime minister, who didn’t know what to do with his hands. Except for a blotter, two phones, and a pen set, his desktop was empty. As for the tiger skin, it seemed as appropriate in Bhattarai’s domain as it might have in PETA’s headquarters. I was struck by the feeling that none of this was real, that Grace and I had landed in one of those dreams in which a long-anticipated event falls horribly short of one’s expectations.
The prime minister must have sensed our discomfort. He smiled lamely and stretched his lanky arms into a broad shrug. “I am only filling a seat!” he declaimed.
I smiled, charmed by what I took as humility. It took a full half hour to realize that he had spoken the absolute truth.
The interview was tragic. Despite his enthusiasm, Bhattarai had no grasp whatever of the issues of the day. It was as if his whole political life had been spent in a vacuum, wrestling with political concepts that would never be put into use. Most of his responses to my questions were vague and uncertain. Others were so misinformed that publishing them locally would cause widespread panic. When I asked, for example, about the Congress Party’s plan to create jobs for the thousands of young Nepali men and women who would graduate from Tribhuvan University during the next decade, Bhattarai waved his hand as if shooing away a fly.
“Most of our unemployment problem is solved,” he observed, “by people going off to work in India or the United States.”
His responses to questions regarding Tibetan refugees (“We will tell the Chinese that the Tibetans are harmless people, and that we will not allow them to attack China from Nepali soil.”) and Nepal’s future prospects (“The one thing I am sure of is, I will remain unmarried!”) were patently absurd. My biggest shock, though, came when I asked him about the rumors that the king and queen had transferred millions of dollars from Nepal to their Swiss bank accounts. Bhattarai peered at me quizzically.
“I also hear these stories,” he allowed. “But I don’t understand: What could be the source of such income?”
Was he lying? Or just totally, unforgivably naïve? At that moment, I realized that Larry Prince was right: The revolution had stopped short of its goals. Demonstrators should have stormed the palace and placed the royal family in chains, demanding an unflinching investigation into years of corruption, smuggling, and human rights abuses.
Instead, cowed by the monarchy, the new government had floundered with protocol. Their waffling—deciding whether, and in what capacity, the king should stay on—had given the royal cronies time to secure their holdings and destroy all evidence.
It came as no surprise. Centuries of fear and conditioning had left their scars. The Nepalis were simply unable to confront their king. Where this would lead, no one could say. But it seemed unlikely this new government would fulfill Virgil’s immortal goal: “To establish peace under the rule of law.” Hamstrung by tradition, Nepal had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
GRACE AND I had been granted thirty minutes. As our time ran out, I tried to wrap things up. Our host would have none of it. He rang a bell; a servant entered with a tray of tea, milk, and assorted cookies. Settling back in his chair, a Nilla wafer in his fingers, Bhattarai sighed with contentment and allowed his wandering eye to bivouac upon Grace. He smiled. She smiled back and kicked me with the side of her shoe. Taking the cue, I pitched a final question.
“Um, Mr. Prime Minister? The previous administration was rather inhospitable to foreigners—to nonofficial visitors, at least—who wished to spend extended periods of time in Nepal.” Bhattarai gave a low whistle and nodded sympathetically at Grace, whose afflicted expression recalled the girl in William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s The Broken Pitcher. “Some of us,” I continued, “for example, Ms. Modena and myself . . .”
“Grace,” Grace said.
“. . . like Grace and myself, have dedicated our professional lives to Nepal. We would like your permission, sir, to stay here as long as we wish: without having to follow arcane visa restrictions, leave the country several times a year, or
change large sums of money each month. Is there any way that you might grant us this privilege?”
Bhattarai leaned forward, placed his palms on his desk, and drummed lightly. It made a rich, hollow sound. I would have bet money there was nothing in the desk but a pencil, three paper clips, and a plastic spoon. The prime minister threw himself back in his chair.
“Yes, why not!” he cried jubilantly. “You are welcome! We welcome beautiful girls also! You are all welcome! Most welcome!” He grinned at Grace, displaying Halloween teeth. “Are you married, my dear?”
“Nooo . . .” She giggled girlishly.
This was the critical moment. The point was to get a letter, an official document signed by Bhattarai, to show the authorities at Immigration and the Home Ministry. At the moment I started to speak, however, the telephone on Bhattarai’s desk began chirping. He held up his hand for silence, answered ceremoniously—“Bhattarai speaking”—and listened intently, blocking his other ear and squinting. He muttered something in rapid Nepali and replaced the receiver without saying good-bye.
“Affairs of state. Key garney: what to do?”
“Problems with the king?” Grace commiserated.
“No, no. An incident in Pokhara. Some crazy thing. No, don’t worry about the king. That is finished. He will remain head of state, this much is of course true, but only if he behaves. Otherwise . . .” He made a slicing gesture across his throat.
I tried to recapture lost ground. “Mr. Prime Minister . . .”
But Bhattarai rose to his feet, and we were compelled to follow. “Thank you very much,” he said. “A pleasure to see you. Come and visit anytime.” He circled his desk, accosted Grace, and seized both her hands. “You, especially, are welcome. You are always welcome, my dear.”
OUTSIDE OF SINGHA Durbar, under the now blazing sun, Grace waved to flag a cab.
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