by Sarita [Cherry] Armstrong
2020
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Chapter 2. The Journey to Delhi
For a long time we had been hearing of the encroachment of the Chinese troops into northern India, one line of attack in the east, another in the west dangerously near Dalhousie. Every evening we sat silently attentive around the transistor radio as it crackled and spluttered out the latest reports of fighting and death. Every evening the news became worse. For this reason many of the tulkus' gurus (spiritual teachers) who were living in the frontier areas very near to the fighting, had asked Freda not to send the tulkus back to them as was customary for the winter months. Freda agreed and in a manner typical of her, turned the situation into something positive for everyone. The entire school would move to Delhi for the season. Moreover, the journey to get there would become a 'visual educational tour' of the Punjab for the tulkus.
The school hired a bus to take the 25 tulkus accompanied by the men volunteers, and a minibus for Freda, the women volunteers and the Indian staff. Refugee rations -- sacks of rice, lentils and potatoes -- would be prepared for evening meals each night by Suju-of-the-sad-smile, Freda's Indian cook. A dormitory and one or two small rooms could be hired very cheaply at any of the local rest houses along the way.
On the day we were to leave, a burly man in a leather jacket, crash helmet and sunglasses, the rest of his face covered with a bushy black beard, arrived on the doorstep. At that moment Johnny appeared and yelled, "George! I never thought you'd make it!" But he had made it, riding his motorbike across Europe, Turkey and the Persian Desert. Now here he was sitting down to breakfast with us. He ate as though he had not seen food this side of Istanbul.
"I'm so glad I got here in time," he said between mouthfuls. "I see you're all planning to leave. The coaches were at the bottom of the hill as I came up. This tour sounds marvellous. Freda won't mind if I tag along, will she? Of course I'll pay my way. Say, is there any more of that porridge?"
So that is how our two buses came to have a motor-bike escort. Despite initial appearances, George was gentle as a lamb and had a heart of gold. All the tulkus loved him, the little ones especially coming to take his hand when we were walking anywhere, and a ride on the motorbike became the ultimate thrill for them. He enlivened our company too, with unending tales of his adventures and jokes about his mishaps along the way.
Everything, including bedrolls, sacks of rice and cooking pots, was piled onto the roof of the buses. Swarms of Tibetans from the refugee camps added to the crowds that came to bid farewell to the tulkus and to receive their final blessing. At last we started the long winding journey down through the mountains with George and Johnny on the motorbike looking like a police escort, sometimes behind, sometimes in front, often out of sight if we passed through a village, for they could never resist the temptation of stopping for tea and fried pakoras. [6] [Little chunks of spicy vegetable fried in batter; a standard Indian street food.]
I felt glad that we were going downhill, for the engine of our bus coughed and spluttered at the slightest acceleration.
"It is because of the high altitude, Memsahib," the driver explained to Freda. "Soon she will be quite better. Immediately we are on the plains she will be going very well." The other bus was not doing so well either and it was not long before it pulled to the side of the road and stopped. A row of shaved heads popped out of the windows and arms waved excitedly. The driver, a white-haired Sikh in the usual khaki costume of a bus driver, came over to us smiling apologetically. He hardly needed to explain, for the flat tyre at the back was obvious.
Luckily he had a spare wheel and it was a good opportunity for us to get out and have a look around while the wheel was changed. The air was much warmer already, although we were still in the hills. Everything was quiet, save a cricket chirping continually in the dry shrubs. Waves of terraces were cultivated on the hillside and a little way below us an Indian was driving two sheep and a goat along a narrow path. The goat stopped whenever possible to take a swift bite at any thorny branch as it passed.
"Mummy! Mummy, we are going now!" called little Tulku Pema Tenzing, the youngest at the school, who was hardly more than ten years old. As the bus moved off we noticed that Trungpa Tulku's seat was empty and presumed he must have decided to travel in the other bus. When we reached the barrier at the end of the one-way section of the road, where I had had to wait in the bus on the way up a few days before, Freda hurried round to the other vehicle.
"Is Trungpa Tulku with you? Is he there?" she called, but he was nowhere to be found. In fact, no-one remembered seeing him after we had stopped to change the wheel.
"I'll go back and see if I can find him," said George. He turned his bike around and roared back up the hill while we went to the Rest House to get a cool drink. The Rest House was a relic from the British Raj days, kept by an elderly Sikh who spoke perfect English. He remembered with nostalgia the Dalhousie that had been a popular hill station for the British. Oh yes, they had done a good trade then, but now very few people came to Dalhousie and certainly no British people. He regretted to inform us that as so few people came this way now, the cost of the fizzy orange we were drinking had gone up considerably.
After sitting around for about an hour we at last caught the sound of the motorbike's engine and round the corner speeded George with Trungpa Tulku riding pillion. He was grinning gleefully over George's shoulder, his long red robes billowing behind him. Between delighted giggles he told us how he had gone to sit in the shade of a tree and when he came back, there was no sign of anyone.
"Oh dear!" I exclaimed. "You must have been worried."
''No,'' he replied grinning, "I knew someone would come back, so I waited. And I could have a great opportunity to ride on the motorbike!" I suspected that the prospect of a bike ride had been the main reason for his disappearance.
We took the road to Dharamsala and after a short time stopped again for lunch. It looked as though someone had sent a message on ahead of us, for all the villagers were out in the street cooking spicy titbits for us to eat. Curry and rice was handed round on banana leaves, hot pakoras on pieces of paper that seemed to have been torn from a child's old exercise book, and thick, creamy buffalo yogurt in the little disposable earthenware bowls in which it had been set. Wonderful!
We passed through the beautiful Kangra Valley in the foothills of the mountains where the countryside sloped gently, the land looked fertile and the people happy. Newly cut grass was lying in the fields and large deciduous trees gave shade, making a pleasant change from the pines of the high hills and the brown treeless plains. Women with shiny brass pots on their heads waved and smiled as we passed. Freda told us she was planning to buy a small place here where she could spend her final days in retreat.
Early evening, and with much hooting and shouting the buses negotiated the crowded bazaar of Dharamsala. There was always a large encampment of Tibetans here, for the Dalai Lama lived in a bungalow on the top of the hill and the stream of pilgrims was unceasing. Swashbuckling Tibetan men in knee-high leather boots, broad-brimmed hats and thick, though often worn and torn traditional knee-length coats stood in groups gossiping. Old men with their prayer-wheels of silver and polished wood wandered up and down, absorbed in their introspections. For them prayer was not a supplication to God for this or that to happen, for wealth or health, but a state of intense yearning for purity or completeness. The Buddha is no Almighty God who fulfils mankind's wishes (at His whim) but an example of what each being can become. Gautama Buddha himself said, "Buddhas do but point the way."
Many of the Tibetans here would be camping out under the stars and under the frost, for we were still a good 6000 feet above sea level and it was the month of November. Others would huddle together in makeshift tents. We heard that the only hotel was full, so returned to the lower bazaar and (rather incongruously for the tulkus) found rooms at the Soldiers' Rest House.
***
"Prepare to meet thy God!" Jonathan said sternly as we climbed the steep track that led to the residence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. A visit to the Dalai Lama was of exceptional importance to the tulkus. Freda also wanted to have the permission and blessing of His Holiness to take the elite of the Tibetan incarnate lamas on this rather unusual trip around the Punjab. Undoubtedly she felt a great responsibility for them. All morning the tulkus had been rather quiet, but otherwise they did not seem disturbed at the prospect of meeting the incarnation of the Lord Chenrisi, the God of Compassion and Mercy, their spiritual and temporal Lord. But Jonathan's teasing was lost on me for I believed neither in a heavenly god nor one incarnated in a human body.
From left, behind H.H. the Dalai Lama: George, Duncan, Tulkus, Freda, Attar Singh, me, Jonathan, Tulkus. 1962.
After a meticulous examination of passports and identity certificates by Indian guards, and the frisking of the tulkus to see if any were a Chinese in disguise, intending to assassinate the Dalai Lama with a knife concealed in his voluminous robes, we passed the armed guards and entered the grounds of the modest bungalow where the Dalai Lama lived. Later we understood there had been an attack on the Dalai Lama by a Chinese man dressed as a lama, and we were the first people allowed into his presence since then. Our visit was only by special concession because we were all either Europeans or tulkus, several of whom the Dalai Lama knew personally, also Freda was an ex-Indian Government official.
I felt nervous as I clutched my white muslin Tibetan scarf of greeting that I would present to the Dalai Lama. Thank goodness I would not have to do three prostrations, as all the tulkus automatically performed. He stood at the door to welcome us and my turn to present my scarf came almost before I realised it. I placed it across his hands; he seemed shorter than I and looked up at me smiling, his eyes twinkling behind his glasses. I bowed slightly, and he placed the scarf hack around my neck as a blessing. Then we all sat down on the thickly carpeted floor. The high throne on which the Dalai Lama usually sat had been covered with a yellow cloth, for today he would sit with us on a cushion on the floor, as an equal with the other tulkus, who sat with bowed heads hardly daring to raise their eyes.
The Dalai Lama asked about the school: who was the best in each class? The tulkus showed him their exercise books and presented an album of photographs taken at Kailash. If he spoke to any tulku individually they would blush and stammer a shy reply. Yet the Dalai Lama was as charming as anyone could be, and perhaps felt rather sad that everyone was so in awe of him. After a long talk to the tulkus, he asked if any of us volunteers would like to ask him questions. Most of these were of a political nature, and he thought carefully before answering each one. He spoke through an interpreter although he appeared to understand English quite well and often corrected the interpreter if he felt he had failed to convey the exact meaning.
His sincerity and openness shone in his countenance. It seemed as if his emotions were written on his face as they passed through his mind: love, sorrow, laughter and query followed fleetingly like sunshine and cloud across a meadow. He talked to us Westerners of the necessity for each person to practise religion rather than simply to study it. He spoke of the Tibetans left behind in Tibet, of the famines there and the dreadful hardships his people were undergoing, while overwhelming sadness filled his face. He also considered the good that could grow out of their present unfortunate situation. He realised that many nations would now access the Tibetan knowledge which had been totally closed off in the past. He saw the trauma of their exodus from Tibet to be a kharmic result of this closure to outsiders, and he looked to the benefits that would develop from the expansion of the culture.
We visited the two tutors of the Dalai Lama, and the school for Tibetan children run by the elder sister of the Dalai Lama, Mrs. Tsering Dolma, a motherly woman with a child in each arm and a dozen of them clinging to her skirts. The conditions at that time were terribly hard and almost all the children must have been suffering from worms and dysentery. Thirty-seven would die during that winter. We were not shown into the dormitories where the little ones were sleeping seven sideways on a single bed, but we did see the tray of lumpy rice, welcome food rations from the Indian Government, being distributed with incredible orderliness by the hungry children themselves. Later they gave us a brave and moving demonstration of Tibetan dancing in their national dress.
We left as dusk was falling and took a small path down the hillside to another set of bungalows where the older children lived. They had eaten their supper and were standing on the veranda singing with all their might the songs of Tibet. I have never heard children singing so lustily, filling the whole valley with their voices. It seemed so sad and so moving: these little children bravely facing the world, standing up straight, sticking out their chests and letting the entire world know how they loved their homeland and their precious "Kundun" (a familiar name of the Dalai Lama used only by Tibetans).
***
Next day we moved on again in the two buses followed by George and Johnny on the motorbike. We crossed stony dry river beds, forded a small river, passing through many little Indian villages with boys selling bananas, trinkets, or wreaths of flowers for the local Hindu temple. Cyclists were hooted out of the way amidst a clamour of boys running beside the bus. The smell of the villages and the oppressive airlessness of the plains when we stopped soon became no longer worthy of comment. It was a strange part of the country between the foothills and plains: a stony, uninviting country. Large antimalaria slogans were whitewashed on any suitable piece of rock-face in large English letters that few Indians of the region would have been able to understand.
In one dry and dusty village a beautiful Indian lady and her husband greeted us in the street and invited us to lunch with them. As we stepped through the door in the high wall that surrounded their house and courtyard, it was as though we stepped backwards in time. The seclusion from the outside world was complete, for the high wall shut us away from the bazaar and the sound of raised voices outside. It enclosed a lush garden with the sound of tinkling water from a fountain making one more aware of the dryness beyond the wall. It reminded me of the story of how Prince Siddhartha, later to become the Buddha, grew up in sheer luxury, shielded from any unpleasant sight. Gardeners even picked the fading flowers before he would see the dead petals. Then one day he went outside in disguise and discovered how life really was. He found disease, people begging, a funeral procession, and naturally, this was a turning point in his life. He left his luxurious home and family and meditated until he understood the reality of life and formed the doctrine we know as Buddhism.
But for now we could enjoy the secluded serenity behind the walls that separated us from the actual world outside. They placed cane chairs under shady trees. A servant in uniform brought glasses of fresh lime juice on a silver tray and handed round plates with a choice of spicy titbits. These were friends of Freda from many years before who had heard she would pass through their village. We would discover as time went on that there were many such people glad of the opportunity to repay Freda for some previous gift, or to show appreciation for what she was doing for the Tibetans.
Continuing on our way, we arrived at a large open green space with vast ruins beyond. This was a fort built by Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC and must have been the furthest outpost of his empire. They had built it on a peninsular surrounded on three sides by a sweeping curve of the wide river Beas, which flowed hundreds of feet below at the bottom of the steep valley. When his soldiers baulked at proceeding further east, they turned back along river Indus. Not long after, Alexander died of a fever but many of his soldiers settled in these outlandish parts and brought some of their culture, including their music and their love of sculpture. Hundreds of years later they were the first to sculpture images of the Buddha, and very beautiful they were too, for they amalgamated their Grecian love of beauty of the body with an eastern fluidity of form.
We spent our nights on the journey at a variety of cheap lodgings. Usually it was a village Rest House formed around a courtyard whose central feature was a fountain for washing, though rarely did any water come out of it. There would be a stone fireplace where sadly-smiling Suju and his Tibetan helper would kindle a fire and cook our cauldron of refugee ration rice, lentils and vegetables.
Maretta's initial task on arrival each evening was to set up a little shrine with her figure of the Buddha. Until I became accustomed to this routine, I watched in amazement. Maretta and I were very different in outlook, which was unfortunate as we were living closely together for some time. Our differences were discernible in our perspective on Buddhism. Maretta knew the name of every deity and each motif and brought to it a Christian-style of faith. I was interested in the fundamental spirit of the religion, and in the Buddhist attitude to life.
One village was renowned for a holy flame that had been burning since time immemoriaL After dinner, Maretta and I slipped away to explore. We walked through a small bazaar where gaudy pictures and toys, beads, bangles and beachshoes jostled each other on market stalls. The shops in Indian bazaars stay open until the shopkeeper falls asleep behind his counter. No six o'clock closing here! A young boy saw a cow nuzzling an open tin of biscuits· at his father's stall and ran shouting to frighten it away. A tune from one of the latest Bollywood films blasted out, making a suitable soundtrack to the sights. The air was filled with that unique smell of all Indian villages, a mixture of biri8 [Biris are Indian cigarettes, each made of a single tobacco leaf rolled up and tied with cotton. They need continual puffing to keep them going, while the tar and nicotine drip visibly from the end.] smoke, curry and cow pats.
Groups of men with hand-woven shawls draped over their shoulders were gathered around little charcoal braziers to warm themselves, now that the blazing sun had set and left a chill in the air. The soft light from the glowing coals emphasised the ridges and folds of their wraps and silhouetted the angular, animated faces of the gossiping men.
We climbed on up a steep cobbled street, hurrying in the dark places between the lights of the shops, until the road forked. As we hesitated, a barefoot man in a traditional dhoti and long shawl appeared out of the shadows.
"You want to see very fine temple of Hindu god?" He asked in broken English.
"Oh yes," we replied in unison, "Which way is it?"
"Come," was the terse reply.
We followed his bare cracked heels as they climbed the steps ahead of us, until we arrived at a large whitewashed archway, the entrance to the temple. Monkeys inhabited the place, squawking and chasing each other over the roofs. They stopped and glared at us, their eyes glinting in the light. They appeared like evil spirits and not to be ignored!
As custom required, we slipped off our shoes at the door and bathed our feet in a pool of water. As we padded across the cold slippery marble of the sanctuary, we glimpsed exquisite inlays and carvings on the walls. We entered the inner shrine and paid our respects to the god Shiva. His image regarded us with painted eyes that implied, "Do not come with scepticism in your hearts or you will encounter strange powers here of which you know not!"
Our guide pointed to a fissure in the floor where a blue flame spurted directly out of the rock. He explained that the fire had been burning since time immemorial. Watching for our reaction, the man slowly lowered his hand to the flame and held it there. He bent close as he murmured, "Look, it is cold flame, eternal flame, it does not burn you. Please try." Cautiously at first we dashed our fingers through and then kept them in for longer. It was cool, as he had said. We were suitably amazed. He bowed reverently before the miraculous flame, backed away a few paces, then turned swiftly and beckoned us to follow. He had done his duty and led us to the entrance, dodging between the screaming monkeys that stretched out grasping hands as we passed. We found our shoes with some difficulty and mustered enough coins to satisfy our guide.
It was hard to find our way back in the dark. Strange figures lurked in doorways. "We shall be safe," said Maretta, as she pulled her little Buddha image from beneath her blouse, "Buddha will show the way." I wished I had brought my torch, though I knew the road was downhill until we came to the Rest House.
In the morning the whole school made its official visit to the temple. In broad daylight there seemed scant mystery about the blue flame. George had a physical explanation for it, and Frank a geological one. The tulkus, naturally unafraid, couldn't wait in their eagerness to plunge their hands into it.
Some of India's modern achievements, such as the great hydro-electric dam at Bakra Namgyal, were also on the itinerary. We sat on the steps overlooking the enormous construction site and ate a picnic lunch of chappatis doled out of a bucket and boiled potatoes mixed with chillies from another bucket, washed down with fizzy orangeade. For the tulkus it must have been quite an experience to see such a vast engineering project and the gigantic pieces of machinery cranking away. Some of them were quite dismayed and perhaps associated it with their first experience of mechanisation: the building projects that the Chinese had undertaken in Tibet during their occupation.
Since time immemorial the Tibetans - like many so called 'primitive' cultures - had never plundered the sacred earth for gold and minerals, and so this wealth lay untouched for those with fewer scruples. The Chinese were well aware of the mineral wealth lying beneath the soil of Tibet and it was said to be one of the prime reasons for their invasion of the Tibetan plateau.
Chandigarh, the new capital of the Punjab designed by the notable French architect Le Corbusier was another overnight stop. I don't know what the tulkus thought about it, but to me it seemed drab: 1950s-style concrete box houses where their way of life in an urban environment. It just didn't work.
Soon we were on the Great Trunk Road heading straight for Delhi, with the horns blowing continually to warn the buffalo carts and cyclists of our approach. Just at the point where the new bypass travelled alongside the broad River Jumna, stood a most unusual oriental building. It formed the shape of an E, the centre part being a temple with a double pagoda-style roof. The rest of the building comprised compact rooms and dormitories, the ground floor surrounded by a veranda, the upper storey by a balcony. The gateway made a circle that framed the temple building. This was the Ladakh Buddha Vihara9 [Now on Tripadvisor!], built by monks from Ladakh, combining a temple with living accommodation. We gasped with surprise and anticipation when the buses drove straight up to the building and stopped at the gate. So this beautiful place was to be our home for the rest of the winter!
Map of Cherry's North Indian Journeys