The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Art of Purring

by David Michie

  “Then today is no exception,” said Sid. Taking a yellow daisy from a vase in the hallway, he fashioned it into a flower garland and placed it around my neck. “I prostrate to you, little Swami,” he said, bringing his smooth, manicured hands together at his heart. As I looked into his eyes, I saw great tenderness.

  Then he was opening the door for Serena, and we were making our way back down the hill.

  “We are so lucky to have such a wonderful teacher,” said Serena.

  “Yes,” agreed Sid. “Ludvig—Ludo—is exceptional.”

  “My mother says he’s been in McLeod Ganj as long as I’ve been alive.”

  Sid nodded. “Since the early ’60s. He came at the request of Heinrich Harrer.”

  “Of Seven Years in Tibet fame?” asked Serena. “The Dalai Lama’s tutor?”

  “That’s right. Heinrich arranged an introduction to the Dalai Lama very soon after Ludo came to McLeod Ganj. It is said that he and His Holiness are good friends. In fact, it was His Holiness who encouraged Ludo to set up the yoga studio.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Serena said. Glancing at Sid, she was suddenly aware of how much he knew of local affairs. After a few moments, she decided to test this further. “There’s a guy walking behind us in a dark jacket, felt cap,” she said under her breath. “Someone said he’s the Maharajah of Himachal Pradesh. Is that true?”

  They continued down the hill for a while before Sid discreetly glanced over his shoulder. “I’ve heard the same thing,” he said.

  “I’ve seen him around here quite often,” Serena said.

  “So have I,” observed Sid. “Perhaps he usually takes a walk at this time of day?”

  “Could be,” mused Serena.

  The very next day I was padding along the corridor of the executive wing when Lobsang called out to me. “HHC! Come here, my little one! There’s something you’ll want to see.”

  I ignored him, of course. We cats are not given to kowtowing to every plea, entreaty, or even humble petition made by humans. What good would it do? You are so much more grateful when we do eventually throw you a bone—if you’ll excuse the whiff of dog about that particular metaphor.

  Lobsang was not to be deterred, however, and moments later I was being picked up, taken to his office, and placed on his desk.

  “I’m Skyping Bhutan,” he told me. “And I spotted someone I thought you’d like to see.”

  His computer screen revealed a sumptuously furnished room and to one side of it, a window seat on which a Himalayan cat was lying on her back, sunning her tummy. She had her head tilted back, her eyes closed, and her legs and bushy tail splayed in what Ludo might have termed “the pose of the starfish.” For cats, this is the most defenseless, trusting, and contented of all poses.

  It took me a few moments before I realized … Could it really be? Yes, it was! But how she had grown!

  “Her official title is HRHC,” Lobsang told me. “Her Royal Highness’s Cat. So one more letter than HHC. And they tell me she is as adored at the palace there as you are here at Namgyal.”

  I watched the rise and fall of Snow Cub’s tummy as she dozed in the sun, remembering how miserable I’d been just days earlier when Chogyal had removed the beige blanket from the bedroom and with it had deprived me of the tender memories of my little girl.

  Or so I’d felt at the time.

  Since then I had come to learn that my unhappiness had been inflicted not by Chogyal but, unintentionally, by myself. By wallowing in my own nostalgic memories, spending so much time thinking about a relationship that had moved on, I had been needlessly carrying pain. Suffering.

  Meanwhile, Snow Cub had grown into a new life as the beloved palace cat of the queen of Bhutan. Could any mother wish for more?

  Turning, I stepped closer to where Lobsang was sitting at his desk and bent down to massage his fingers with my face.

  “HHC!” he exclaimed. “You’ve never done that before!”

  As he responded by scratching my neck, I closed my eyes and began to purr. Ludo was right: happiness was not to be found in the past. Not in trying to relive memories, however beguiling.

  It could only be experienced in this moment, here and now.

  CHAPTER THREE

  What would happen, dear reader, if you were to achieve your most longed-for dream? What if you were to succeed in your chosen ambition, beyond your wildest hopes?

  There’s no harm in contemplating this happy prospect, is there? Imagine, for example, opening the front door of a beautiful home and discovering your family inside, a picture-book image of familial bliss and pleasing demeanors, with delightful aromas wafting from the kitchen and no squabbling over the TV remote.

  Or, in my own case, venturing into the cold storage room of the kitchen downstairs to discover 10,000 portions of Mrs. Trinci’s diced chicken liver, stowed in pristine condition and awaiting my personal delectation.

  What an enchanting prospect! How alluring the image!

  Little did we know down at the Himalaya Book Café that someone who had achieved something equally amazing was about to enter our midst.

  We barely noticed him at first. As it happened, his initial arrival coincided with one of my own late-morning appearances. It was shortly after 11 when I made my way down the road from Jokhang at the exact moment he happened to be striding toward the café. He was a rugged-looking, middle-aged man with auburn hair graying at the temples, a craggy face, beetle brows, and inquisitive eyes. There was a marked contrast between his face, lined and lived-in, and his expensive outfit—cream linen jacket, cream pants, gleaming gold watch. He was walking faster than the meandering stroll of most tourists and carrying several guidebooks on the travel highlights of northwest India.

  I made my way through the café, pausing to touch noses with Marcel and Kyi Kyi in their basket under the counter. With Franc’s departure and the arrival of Serena and Sam, it was as though an invisible thread had drawn us nonhuman denizens of the café closer. Having been through all the changes together gave us a shared experience, a common bond. Not that it went any further than a touch on the nose and polite inquiry. You wouldn’t expect me to climb into their basket with them, would you? I’m not that kind of cat, and, dear reader, this is certainly not that kind of book!

  Taking up my usual position on the magazine rack, I observed our nattily dressed visitor as he made himself comfortable on one of the nearby banquettes. Summoning a waiter with an imperious hand, when he spoke it was with a Scottish burr: “Has lunch service started?”

  Sanjay, a fresh-faced young waiter in a crisp, white uniform, nodded.

  “I’ll have a glass of your Sémillon Sauvignon Blanc,” the visitor told him. Spreading his travel books across the table in front of him and taking a cell phone from his pocket, he soon appeared to be busy researching travel plans, cross-checking details from one book to another, and keying them into his phone.

  When the glass of Sémillon Sauvignon Blanc arrived, he took a tentative first sip, swirling the liquid around in his mouth with a searching expression. Thereafter he didn’t so much drink the wine as inhale it. Four sips and, only a few minutes later, his glass was empty.

  This fact didn’t escape the attention of Headwaiter Kusali, whose omniscience was legendary. He dispatched Sanjay with the bottle of SSB to freshen the visitor’s glass. A third glass, then a fourth soon followed before the visitor asked for his bill, cleared away his books, and left.

  It was half an hour later when developments took an unusual turn. Looking up from my own lunchtime treat—a delicious serving of smoked salmon cut into dainty, bite-size strips—who should I see at the café entrance but the same man, this time accompanied by his wife.

  A matronly woman with a kind face and sensible shoes, she glanced around the café with an expression of appreciation. It was one we were quite used to. By the time many Westerners had made their way up to McLeod Ganj from Delhi, they were overwhelmed by India, with its chaos, crowds, poverty, traffic, and shocking v
ibrancy. The moment they stepped through the doors of the Himalaya Book Café, however, they found themselves in altogether different aesthetics. To the right of an ornate reception counter, the café had a soft-lit, classic quality, with its white tablecloths, cane chairs, and a large, brass espresso machine. Richly embroidered Tibetan Buddhist wall hangings, or thangkas, bedecked the walls. To the left-hand side of the counter and up a few steps was the bookstore section, its well-stocked shelves interspersed with a treasure trove of lavish cards, Himalayan artifacts, and other gifts. It was an exotic fusion of casual European chic and Buddhist mysticism.

  Many visitors, on first encountering this, heave a visible sigh of relief.

  The visitor’s wife wasn’t quite so emphatic. As she looked anxiously at her husband, she seemed to be hoping the café would suit him, which it did. Eminently!

  Stepping forward to greet them, Kusali showed them to a window table, where the husband studied both menu and wine list as if for the first time, before ordering precisely the same bottle of wine. On this occasion he sipped his SSB with slightly more restraint, but during the course of the lunch, he sailed effortlessly through most of the bottle with minimal help from his wife.

  Watching the two of them from a distance, I sensed something awkward about the way they were together. There were long pauses in their conversation, during which they looked everywhere but at each other, followed by exchanges that soon petered out.

  Most Western visitors had such busy itineraries that they would visit the café only once or twice during the course of a brief stay. Not our dapper friend and his wife. The very next morning at 11 A.M., the hallowed moment at which alcohol was served, he arrived at the café, walked to the banquette, and ordered a glass of SSB. Foreseeing a rerun of the previous day’s events, Kusali made a gracious appearance, pouring the visitor’s wine personally before suggesting, “Would you like me to bring a wine bucket to your table, sir?”

  The visitor decided that, on balance, yes, he would. Helping himself to refills as he paged through a travel brochure with somewhat less interest than the day before, he soon dispatched the contents of the bottle.

  Once again, half an hour after leaving, he reappeared at the café entrance with his wife, this time telling Kusali, who was at the reception desk, that they had enjoyed the previous day’s visit so much they had decided to return. The ever-diplomatic Kusali smiled politely as this official, somewhat edited version of events was established.

  Dear reader, would you believe me if I told you that the exact same Groundhog Day reenactment occurred the following morning? Well, perhaps not exactly. On day three, the visitor walked straight through the door to “his” banquette at 11 o’clock, whereupon Kusali had a waiter deliver his preferred wine in an ice bucket. Serena, who had been on a visit to Delhi for the two previous days to order new kitchen equipment, watched this happen and approached Kusali a short while later, eyebrows raised. During their tête-à-tête, when the visitor stared at his cell phone with a somewhat downcast expression, Kusali indicated it was safe for her to look in that direction.

  As soon as she did, she froze. Then she quickly ended her conversation with Kusali and headed toward the bookstore. Moments later she was standing beside Sam, who was sitting behind the counter at his computer.

  “Can I jump on for a minute?” she asked urgently.

  “Sure.” As he slid off his stool she quickly opened a search engine.

  Gordon Finlay. Sam read the name as she keyed it into the search field.

  “You know who he is?” she whispered.

  He shook his head.

  “I think he’s over there,” she said, tipping her head in the direction of the banquette. “Bagpipe Burgers.”

  Sam’s face lit up. “That’s him?”

  The two of them stared at the Wikipedia entry, which featured a photograph of the Bagpipe Burgers founder.

  “‘Started as a single-outlet burger bar in Inverness, Scotland,’” Sam was reading. “‘Now one of the biggest fast-food franchises in the world.’” Skimming down the page, he pulled out highlights: “valued at half a billion dollars”; “presence in every major market”; “famous tartan uniforms”; “creators of the gourmet burger”; “commitment to quality.”

  “Is it him?” Serena prompted.

  Sam studied the photograph in front of them before turning to look at the restaurant patron. “Our guy looks … less jowly.”

  Serena snipped her index and middle fingers together. “Dr. Knife.”

  “You know about the drinking these past couple of days?” Sam asked her.

  “Occupational hazard in our line of work.”

  Sam gazed intently into her eyes. “But what’s he doing in McLeod Ganj?”

  “That’s what I’m …” She reached over him to the keyboard and tapped in something else, nodding as another page opened up on the screen. “Yup. This happened when I was leaving London. He cashed out for five hundred million dollars.”

  “That guy over there?” whispered Sam, wide-eyed.

  “Exactly.” Serena squeezed his arm before stepping away from the counter for another discreet peek.

  She nodded. “People in London couldn’t stop talking about it. It’s every entrepreneur’s dream, and for the restaurant business, it’s an inconceivable amount of money. People either love him or hate him.”

  “Which side are you on?”

  “Admire him, of course! What he did is amazing. He got into a sector with a whole lot of poor-quality associations and created something that was genuinely distinctive. People liked it, and it took off. He made a pile of money, but it took him twenty years of incredibly hard work.”

  “Weird guy, though,” Sam said, shaking his head.

  “You mean the multiple visits?”

  “Not only that. You know, he spends hours in the Internet Shop down the road.”

  It was Serena’s turn to look surprised.

  The Internet Shop, which catered to an almost entirely local clientele, was dirty, overcrowded, and poorly lit.

  “I see him going in there every morning.” Sam lived in an apartment over the café with windows facing the street. “He’s there from eight in the morning. Afterward, he comes here.”

  Over the next week, Gordon Finlay was a regular fixture at the Himalaya Book Café. He did miss a couple of mornings, during which the rear banquette felt curiously vacant. On the first occasion he and his wife were seen climbing into the back of a tour van that took visitors on all-day excursions through the surrounding countryside. On the other occasion, a waiter reported having seen him in conversation with Amrit, one of the vendors who plied their trade beneath the tangled chaos of telephone wires along the street.

  Of all the vendors, the ragged Amrit was the youngest and least popular, struggling to interest passers in the deep-fried dumplings he retrieved from a filthy-looking pan. What Gordon Finlay found of interest about the ever-disconsolate Amrit was hard to fathom. But when Finlay missed both his preprandial bottle of wine and his lunch, Kusali looked out the window and noticed that Amrit was no longer at his stall.

  The mystery was solved the next day when Amrit was seen back in position, in bright yellow-and-red overalls and cap, with the blackened pan replaced by a shiny silver outdoor-barbecue wok and jaunty bunting fluttering around a Happy Chicken sign. As he flipped chicken breasts for a growing line of customers, Gordon Finlay stood behind him in his trademark cream jacket, giving instructions.

  At 11 o’clock sharp, Finlay was back in the café.

  Exactly what Gordon Finlay was doing in McLeod Ganj became a subject of growing conjecture. Surely he hadn’t picked this modest little town in the Himalaya foothills as the starting point for a new global fast-food chain? Why bother coming here only to spend so much time drinking? Wouldn’t somewhere in Italy or the South of France be more agreeable for this? And what about all the time he spent in the Internet Shop, when he could so easily have gone online from the far greater comfort of his hotel?r />
  I am pleased, dear reader, to claim a vital part in discovering the answer to these and other open questions. Like many of life’s most intriguing developments, this one didn’t arise from any deliberate action on my part. My simple, if admittedly irresistible, presence was all that was required to unleash the most unexpected flow of pent-up emotion.

  Occupying my usual spot in the café, I had adopted what Ludo might have called the pose of Mae West, lying on my side with my head propped up on my right front paw. It was getting close to the time that Gordon Finlay usually made the first of his two daily appearances. But when I glanced up from where I had begun to groom the fluffy white fur on my tummy, who should appear at the door but Mrs. Finlay. She looked anxiously about the restaurant before making her way toward the book shop. She had never ventured this far before; she and her husband usually occupied the same table closer to the front. She had almost reached the magazine rack before Serena approached her.

  “I’m looking for my husband,” Mrs. Finlay told Serena. “We’ve been here a few times.”

  Serena nodded with a smile.

  “It’s become his favorite place in Dharamsala, and I was hoping …” Her lower lip was quivering, and she drew a deep breath to compose herself. “I was hoping I might find him here.”

  “We haven’t seen him today,” said Serena. “But you’re very welcome to wait.” She was gesturing toward the banquette at the back, the one at which Gordon Finlay enjoyed his morning bottle of wine, when for the first time Mrs. Finlay looked at the shelf where I was grooming myself.

  Sensing I was being stared at, I looked directly at her.

  “Oh, good heavens!” Mrs. Finlay’s already fragile composure was threatened again. “Just like our little Sapphire.”

  Stepping toward me, she reached out to stroke my neck.

  I looked into her red-rimmed eyes and purred.

  “This is Rinpoche,” Serena told her, but Mrs. Finlay wasn’t listening. First one tear, then another began to roll down her cheek. Biting her lip to stem the flow, she stopped petting me and reached into her handbag for a tissue. But it was too much. Within moments she had let out a great sob of emotion. Serena put her arm around her and gently guided her to the banquette.