The Dalai Lama's Cat

by David Michie

  And it didn't.

  At least, not to begin with. Well ahead of schedule, Mrs. Trinci brought out the chocolate zucchini cake and carob nut balls that she’d prepared overnight for dessert. Anxious, drawn, and laboring under the superstition that bad things always came in threes, Mrs. Trinci arrived soon after His Holiness had gone to a midmorning appointment in the temple. She was leaving nothing to chance.

  The asparagus niçoise was soon plated, the basmati safely consigned to the rice cooker and the vegetables to the grill. It was time to begin the coconut green beans.

  But on opening bags of beans from the fridge upstairs, Mrs. Trinci discovered that they had spoiled. Somehow, as they were transferred from kitchen fridge to staff fridge, they hadn’t been thoroughly checked. While the top layer was all right, beneath it many of the beans were limp and slimy. They simply wouldn’t do.

  Mrs. Trinci’s features became more foreboding than the monsoon clouds that rolled across the Kangra Valley. Barking at the three hapless monks who’d been assigned to kitchen duty that day, she sent two to the market to find replacement beans, the other to Namgyal Monastery for emergency staff. Stressed, snapping, gold bracelets clashing every time she shook her arms, Mrs. Trinci took the bean oversight as a bad omen of worse to come.

  Which it surely was.

  The two assistants still hadn’t returned from the market with replacement beans. The clock was ticking. The third assistant had failed to find any replacement helpers at Namgyal. Mrs. Trinci roared at him to ask upstairs. This is how His Holiness’s executive assistant Chogyal found himself in the unlikely role of sous chef for as long as it took for Mrs. Trinci’s full complement of staff to be restored.

  His first task was to fetch the raspberries from the staff fridge, to begin preparation of an Ayurvedic raspberry sorbet.

  “There are no raspberries,” he reported, when he returned to the kitchen after a few minutes.

  “Not possible. I checked last night. The red bag in the freezer.” Mrs. Trinci jangled percussively as she gestured for him to return upstairs. “The red bag. SACCHETTO ROSSO!”

  But it was no good.

  “They’re definitely not there,” he confirmed on his return a short while later. “No red bag.”

  “Merda!” Mrs. Trinci slammed a drawer she had open back into its cabinet, unleashing a jangle of cutlery before storming upstairs. “Watch the vegetables under the grill!”

  No one in the kitchen could avoid the heavy footfall on the staircase, or the staccato of her heels as she strode across the staff kitchen, or her howl of exasperation as she confirmed the terrible truth for herself.

  “What’s happened?” she demanded on her return. Face flushed to puce and eyes blazing, she poured the collective frustrations of the past week into this particular moment, a sabotage so shocking that she was still reeling from disbelief.

  “They were there last night. I made sure. Now, nulla, niente—nothing! Where are they?”

  “I’m sorry.” Chogyal shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  His relaxed shrug did nothing to placate her.

  “You work up there. You must know.”

  “The staff kitchen—”

  “I had strict instructions: they mustn’t be touched. They can’t be replaced. I ordered them especially from Delhi. Not like that, stupido!” Mrs. Trinci pushed Chogyal away from the grill, where he was turning the zucchini too slowly for her liking and grabbed the tongs from his hand. “I don’t have all day!”

  She seized each vegetable, flipping it over and slapping it on the grill. “What must I do? Send out the monks of Namgyal to look for raspberries?”

  Chogyal wisely decided to keep quiet.

  “Phone every restaurant in town?” she continued, fury building. “Ask our VIP guest to buy some on his way through Delhi?”

  Finished at the grill, Mrs. Trinci turned. “I am asking”—she brandished the tongs threateningly in Chogyal’s face—“what am I to do?”

  Chogyal knew that whatever he said would be wrong. Cornered and compliant, he opted for the obvious: “Not worry about the raspberry sorbet.”

  “Not worry?!” It was as though he had thrown high-octane fuel on a barely contained fire. “Incredibile! Whenever I try to do something really special, something above the mediocre, you people sabotage it.”

  Her back to the door, Mrs. Trinci couldn’t see what caused Chogyal sudden concern. Far greater concern than the missing raspberries. “Mrs. Trinci—” he tried to interject.

  But she was in full, Wagnerian flow. “First, it’s the unreliable facilities—the fridge. Then it’s the gas supply. How am I supposed to cook without a stove? Now, porca miseria—damn it—I have people stealing my ingredients!”

  “Mrs. Trinci, please!” Chogyal pleaded, a half smile accompanied by an anxious frown. “Harsh speech!”

  “Don’t you ‘harsh speech’ me!” The ride of the Valkyries was nothing compared to Mrs. Trinci in full flight. “What kind of idiot would use the only bag of raspberries in the whole of Jokhang the day before a VIP lunch?” White flecks appeared at the sides of her mouth. “What selfish fool, what imbecile, would do such a thing?!”

  Venting her fury on the unfortunate Chogyal, she didn’t expect an answer. But through the maelstrom, a reply came nevertheless.

  “It was me,” a voice said softly behind her.

  Mrs. Trinci wheeled around to find the Dalai Lama looking at her with immense compassion.

  “I am sorry. I didn’t know they were not to be used,” he apologized. “We will have to do without them. Come and see me after lunch.”

  In the middle of the kitchen, the deep, red color in Mrs. Trinci’s face rapidly drained away. She gaped like a fish, her mouth moving but no sound coming out.

  Bringing his palms together at his heart, His Holiness bowed briefly. As Mrs. Trinci convulsed in the kitchen, he turned to Tenzin, who was accompanying him.

  “This … sorbet, what is it exactly?” he asked, after they’d left the kitchen.

  “A dessert, usually,” said Tenzin.

  “Made from raspberries?”

  “You can make it in a variety of flavors,” Tenzin explained. After they had walked a little farther, he added, “Actually, I think Mrs. Trinci was planning to offer it as a palate cleanser, between courses.”

  “A palate cleanser.” Was that a glint of amusement in the Dalai Lama’s eyes as he mulled over the concept? “The mind of anger is a strange thing, is it not, Tenzin?”

  Later that afternoon Mrs. Trinci presented herself in His Holiness’s room. From the cushioned comfort of my sill, I watched as she arrived, distraught and apologetic, awash in tears within moments of arrival.

  His Holiness began by reassuring her that the guest had been highly complimentary about the lunch, especially the carob nut balls, which had reminded him of a family recipe.

  But Mrs. Trinci knew that the Dalai Lama hadn’t asked her up there to talk about carob nut balls. Tears pouring from her amber eyes and mascara running, she confessed to having a bad temper, saying unforgivable things, lashing out at Chogyal and anyone else who was there at the time. As she stood there sobbing, His Holiness held her hand for a long while before saying, “You know, my dear, crying isn’t necessary.”

  Lifting a perfumed handkerchief to her face, Mrs. Trinci was startled by this notion.

  “It is good, very good, to acknowledge a problem with anger,” he continued.

  “I’ve been high strung my whole life,” she said.

  “Sometimes we know we need to change our behavior. But it requires some sort of shock for us to realize we must change. Starting now.”

  “Sì.” Mrs. Trinci gulped down another wave of tears. “But how?”

  “Begin by considering the advantages of practicing patience and the disadvantages of not practicing it,” the Dalai Lama told her. “When one is angry, the first person to suffer is oneself. No one who is angry has a happy, peaceful mind.”

  Mrs. Trinci lo
oked at him intently with red-rimmed eyes.

  “We also need to think about the impact on others. When we say hurtful things we don’t really mean, we can create deep wounds that can’t be healed. Think of all the rifts between friends and within families, divisions that have led to a complete breakdown in the relationship, all because of a single angry outburst.”

  “I know!” Mrs. Trinci wailed.

  “Next, we ask ourselves, where is this anger coming from? If the true cause of anger is the fridge or the gas or the lack of raspberries, then why isn’t everyone else angry at these things? You see, the anger isn’t coming from out there. It’s coming from our mind. And that is a good thing, because we can’t control everything around us in the world, but we can learn to control our own mind.”

  “But I’ve always been an angry person,” confessed Mrs. Trinci.

  “Are you angry right now?” asked His Holiness.

  “No.”

  “What does that tell you about the nature of an angry mind?”

  For a long while Mrs. Trinci looked out the window at the temple rooftop, where the late afternoon sun had set the dharma chakra wheel and deer statue ablaze in gold. “I suppose that it comes and goes.”

  “Exactly. It is not permanent. It is not part of you. You cannot say, ‘I’ve always been an angry person.’ Your anger arises, abides, and passes, just like anyone else’s. You may experience it more than others. And each time you give in to it, you feed the habit and make it more likely you will feel it again. Wouldn’t it be better, instead, to decrease its power?”

  “Of course. But I can’t stop myself. I don’t set out to get angry. It just happens.”

  “Tell me, are there some places, some situations, in which you are more likely to get angry than others?”

  Mrs. Trinci’s reply was instant: “The kitchen.” She pointed downstairs.

  “Very good,” the Dalai Lama said, clapping his hands together with a smile. “From now on, Jokhang kitchen is no longer an ordinary place for you. It is, instead, a Treasure House.

  “Think of it,” His Holiness continued, “as a place where you will find many precious opportunities that are not available to you anywhere else.”

  Mrs. Trinci was shaking her head. “Non capisco. I don’t understand.”

  “You agree that the anger you experience is at least partly coming from within, yes?”

  “Sì.”

  “And that it will be very beneficial to you—and everyone else—if you can gradually get rid of it?”

  “Sì.”

  “For this to happen, you need opportunities to practice the opposing force, which is patience. Such opportunities will not often be provided by your friends. But you will find many of them here at Jokhang.”

  “Sì, sì!” She smiled ruefully.

  “This is why you can call it a Treasure House. It offers many opportunities to cultivate patience and conquer anger. There is a word for this way of thinking.” His Holiness’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Reframing, we call it. Yes. Like that.”

  “But what if I … fail?” Her voice was shaky.

  “You keep trying. There are no instant results for a long-standing habit. But step by step you will definitely progress if you see the advantage.”

  He looked at her anxious expression for a while before saying, “It helps if you have a calm mind. For that, meditation is most useful.”

  “But I’m not a Buddhist.”

  The Dalai Lama chuckled. “Meditation does not belong to Buddhists. People from every tradition meditate, and those who have no tradition benefit from it, too. You are a Catholic, and the Benedictine order has some most useful teachings on meditation. Perhaps you can try?”

  As Mrs. Trinci’s audience came to an end, they stood.

  “One day”—His Holiness took her hand and looked deep into her eyes—“perhaps you will see today as a turning point.”

  Not trusting herself to speak, Mrs. Trinci only nodded as she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.

  “When our understanding of something deepens to the point that it changes our behavior, in the Dharma we call this a realization. Perhaps today you have made a realization?”

  “Sì, sì, Your Holiness.” Emotion tugged at her lips. “I certainly have.”

  “Remember the words of the Buddha: ‘Though one man may conquer a thousand men a thousand times in battle, he who conquers himself is the greatest warrior.’”

  My own realization occurred only a few weeks later.

  I should have heeded the first warning—a remark I overheard Tenzin make to Chogyal when I strolled into our office one day.

  “HHC is filling out,” he said. It was typical Tenzin, an observation so oblique that I had only the vaguest idea what it actually meant, so I couldn’t possibly take offense.

  No diplomatic training was needed when I returned to Jokhang kitchen the following week for dinner courtesy of Mrs. Trinci.

  An unfamiliar air of serenity had pervaded the kitchen on every one of Mrs. Trinci’s visits since the Raspberry Sorbet Crisis. Not only did calm prevail that afternoon but Mrs. Trinci had even brought in a CD player from which the heavenly Sanctus chorus of Fauré’s Requiem floated through the afternoon.

  Walking into the kitchen, I greeted her with a friendly meow. I didn’t jump onto the counter for the simple reason that I knew I wouldn’t make it. So I looked at it instead.

  Attentive as ever, Mrs. Trinci picked me up.

  “Oh, poor little dolce mio, you can’t jump up any more!” she exclaimed, smooching me demonstratively. “It’s because you’ve put on so much weight.”

  I’ve what?

  “You’re overeating.”

  She can’t be serious! Was this any way to talk to The Most Beautiful Creature That Ever Lived? To Tesorino? To Cara Mia?

  “You’ve become a real piggly-wiggly.”

  I could hardly believe what I was hearing. The very idea was preposterous.

  Piggly-wiggly? Me?!

  I would have bitten deep into that tender spot between her thumb and index finger if it weren’t for the succulent wonder of the lamb shanks in rich gravy that she placed in front of me. Lapping up the piquant sauce, I was instantly engrossed in the savory stickiness of it. Mrs. Trinci’s bizarre and cruel remarks went completely out of my head.

  An even greater humiliation was needed for me to face up to my expanding problem. Returning from a morning visit to the temple with His Holiness, I started up the stairs to our private quarters. Because my hind legs are so wobbly, I need to make this ascent at some speed. But in recent weeks, achieving the required velocity had become more and more of a challenge.

  That morning, as it happened, it was a challenge too big.

  As I leaped up the first few steps, I could sense that my usual energy was failing me. I made it to steps two and three, but instead of accelerating, something seemed to be holding me back. The usual buildup of momentum just wasn’t happening.

  At the critical moment, when I was about to reach the midpoint of the flight, instead of sprawling on the landing in a safe, if undignified heap, I found myself in midair, paws flailing desperately for contact. In surreal slow motion, I was tumbling backward and onto my side. I landed heavily, half on one step, half on the step below. Then, lurching lopsided and backward down the staircase, I made a terrifying and ignominious descent, only coming to a halt at His Holiness’s feet.

  Within moments the Dalai Lama was carrying me to our room. The vet was summoned. A towel was draped over His Holiness’s desk, and I was subjected to a full examination. Dr. Guy Wilkinson didn’t take long to conclude that while I was physically unharmed by the fall, and in every other respect the very model of good health, there was one particular area in which my health was seriously off kilter: I was carrying far too much weight.

  How much was I being fed every day? he wanted to know.

  That was a question none of His Holiness’s staff could fully answer and not one I cared to respond to d
irectly. Humiliated enough by the tumble, I had no wish to embarrass myself further by revealing the full extent of my uncurbed appetite.

  But the truth came out.

  Tenzin made a few well-directed phone calls, and by the end of the day, he reported to the Dalai Lama that in addition to the two meals a day I was supplied at Jokhang, I was eating three elsewhere.

  A new regime was soon agreed on. Henceforth, Mrs. Trinci and Café Franc were directed to feed me half portions. I was to receive no food at all from Mrs. Patel. In the course of a few hours, my daily regime had been subjected to drastic and permanent change.

  How did I feel about all of this? Had I been asked about my eating habits, I would have admitted that they should be improved. I would have readily conceded that yes, five meals a day was an excessive amount for one small—but not small enough—cat. I had known all along that I should cut down. But my knowledge had been intellectual until my humiliating tumble. Only then did that understanding become a realization that would change my behavior.

  Life, post-tumble, would never be the same again.

  That night, in the cozy darkness of bed, I felt His Holiness’s hand reach out. All it took was his touch, and I’d purr with contentment.

  “It’s been a hard day, little Snow Lion,” he whispered. “But things will get better from here. When we see for ourselves there is a problem, change becomes much easier.”

  And indeed it did. After the initial shock of smaller meal portions and the absence of any food at all outside Cut Price Bazaar, it was only a matter of days before I began to feel less lethargic. Within weeks, there was a new spring to my wobbly step.

  Soon, I was again able to hop up on the kitchen bench. And never again did I tumble down the stairs to our quarters at Jokhang.

  One Friday morning, a rectangular polystyrene box addressed to Mrs. Trinci arrived at Jokhang by courier. It was taken directly to the kitchen, where she was preparing a meal for the prime minister of India to the accompaniment of Andrea Bocelli. Surprised by the unexpected delivery, she called out to that day’s sous chef, “Bring me a knife to open this, will you, Treasure?”