Darjeeling Dreams (PART ONE)
And Mothers and of Lamas...
All my work is free. Please consider supporting my work and writing by subscribing, sharing, commenting and even buying me a coffee… some have generously pledged for my work but I still do not know how to transition into paid subscriptions. Any advice welcome…
This is an extract from Shadowmothers, A Memoir of Motherhood…
I remember spinning through the dripping forests as we climbed into the hills on the rickety bus from New Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling- I had a thought I had never had before. I thought how lovely it would be to have a baby. I could see the sweet brown eyes of this baby in my arms. I was about as far from motherhood as I could get on my quest to acquire the Tibetan language, on my way to live with a dysfunctional Tibetan family who lived by the tea gardens in Darjeeling. But something deep inside me was stirring.
Amala, (my Tibetan ‘Mother’) and I used to spend the early morning eating barley porridge with butter tea, looking out at the Mountain, before I went to my Tibetan lessons. I needed a mother. I wanted to be a good Tibetan girl, study at the school in Darjeeling, attend weddings and fund raising events and school shows with my Amala, making offerings to the Buddhas and the Gods on the Mahakal hill with her.
Such was my life in Darjeeling.
KING GYANENDRA DEPOSED
Yes, I wanted to be good. I wanted to forget the mad Tibetan lama with whom I had parted a few months before, who lived in the Dublin Mountains squatting a mobile home that in the end had burned to the ground, taking in its pyre his motorbike, his savings, his religious icons and scriptures. Gone, as he would go. Back to Kathmandu he went, and I thought I’d never see him again.
I was here, in Darjeeling, to forget him. Yet there was nothing but news from Kathmandu: King Gyanendra deposed, violent democracy riots on the streets. He was in fact just beyond the tea gardens- a few hours’ jeep ride away. But he would never know I was here, nestled in a shanty town in Darjeeling with my Tibetan family. My Amala scolded me when I came home late. My Pala (father) scolded me when my Tibetan dress was not folded correctly at the back. And what was that safety pin doing there? Would I not go to the tailor?
Amala used to take me up the Mahakal Hill on Sundays to make offerings of barley flour and fruit at the temples. There had once been a Tibetan monastery on this hill but the British, irritated by the clatter of drums and horns from the Tibetan monastic ceremonies, had torn it down. Darjeeling still had capsules of Britishness, having been the Britishers’ favourite hill station, being close to Kolkata and a cool reprieve from the deathly heat of the plains. It was more British than any place I had been in India and is home to St. Paul’s, the Eton of India where the teachers wear gowns and the boys play cricket on clipped lawns.
Mahakal Hill, which had irritated the British so much, still has shrines and temples to Hindu and Buddhist deities, gods and demigods. It sometimes confused me, this melange of Hinduism and Buddhism.
“Why are you making offerings at the Hindu shrine?” I would ask my Amala. “And why is that monk reading scriptures beneath her?” I asked her, in front of a large image of the ferocious black goddess Kali, from the Hindu pantheon.
“This is Palden Lhamo.” said Amala, matter of factly, hiding her bag of bananas from the monkeys who were eyeing them up. She stuffed juniper twigs into the burning urn. Kali was Palden Lhamo, the great protectress of Tibet. Ganesha the elephant God was beloved by Buddhists and Hindus alike (He had after all helped the great Karmapa build his monastery in Sikkim).
Sometimes you couldn’t even see the Mahakal Hill, there was so much fog. Come April, down came the fog covering Darljeeling’s gardens and rickety hotels. It used to disappoint me, in India, when I encountered rain, and fog. I used to want to run further up the mountains, to get away to some dry crevice in the Himalayas. Dampness frightened me. It reminded me of home. Dear, sodden Ireland. Darjeeling itself reminded me of Bray, my home town- the dry old cakes in the tea shops on Chowrastra could have been from Molloy’s café in Bray. How far I was from Bray, from my own dear Mother.
Dear Mother, I have a Tibetan Amala, I told her in a letter. We drink butter tea and look out over Kachenjungma, we eat barley porridge together in the mornings and she picks crumbs from my morning dress, as mothers do.
MY MOTHER
My own dear mother had, in my own mind, never fed me beyond when it was necessary in my growing years. She had, in her time, been a great cook of Provençal and obedient to the recipes of Maura Laverty, but as we grew, her interest waned. Mother, in her detached, heated double glazed house, with her shares, pensions, dividends and bonds would tell me, after I left home at seventeen years old, on every visit, that there was nothing to eat in the house. Nothing. In all the cupboards, in the depths of her freezer, nothing to feed a starving daughter.
“Hello, Mum? Anything to eat?”
“Don’t expect to be fed.” she would say. Never. Ever. Never expect to be fed. Becoming a mother seemed impossible and yet this hidden clock inside me was ticking. It wasn’t that I decided that I would become a mother, but that I would allow my body to prepare to become one. The contraceptive pills had plagued me with fierce migraines during my relationship with Karma Lama, and at the end of each month I often found I could hardly see or stand with the blinding pain. I had blamed him, of course, for his relentless policing of my life and for his never ending dishonesty, for his wiliness, for his secret plans that always involved women and money. The shadow of him still seemed to be over me, and here in Darjeeling, being so close to the Nepalese border, I could still almost see him. As we watched the reports of escalating violence in Kathmandu after King Gyanendra had been deposed and the Maoists were thrusting for power, I wondered if Karma was alright. I wondered would I ever see him again.
Darjeeling is hidden in fog from April to September. It is a fog that makes everything, everywhere dull and mouldy. You would walk down the streets not knowing what ghosts moved through the fog with you. There is no escaping that unbearable shroud. The endless days of fog, with no beginning and no end. No Kachenjungma to peer at, no tea gardens to gaze over. Everything disappears. At this time, I discovered that Chatral Rinpoche, one of the greatest Tibetan yogis alive, lived nearby.
An American told me that the great Tibetan yogi was currently at his temple in Siliguri, near Darjeeling. He usually resided in Pharping, west of Kathmandu. I was suddenly amazed that this man even existed. Karma Lama had spoken of him so much, and had been his student in Pharping for many years. His picture used to hang over his bed in the mobile home- a gnome-like sage with a red woolen hat and yellow robes.
I used to think that he saw everything in the mobile home, and beyond. Karma had told me that this was the greatest teacher he had ever known. He was a yogi, and Thomas Merton had admired him hugely. But after a psychotic westerner had tried to strangle the Rinpoche some years ago, audiences with this lama were almost impossible to acquire.
“Can I meet him?” I asked the American.
“Very unlikely, since that guy tried to strangle him, he hasn’t had much time for westerners.”
“But he is there, in Siliguri.”
“Yes, that’s where he is these days, when he is not in Pharping in Nepal, where he has a house.”
“I’m catching the train to Delhi from New Jalpaiguri. I’ll be passing there.”
“Well, good luck. I mean nobody I know has had an audience…”
I resolved to go there and find him.
I was just finishing my three month Tibetan course at the Manjushri centre in Darjeeling. I planned to leave before the celebrations for Saga Dawa (the day of the birth, death and enlightenment of the Buddha) began. It was a disappointment for my Amala, but she understood how much I wanted to meet Chatral Rinpoche. For some reason, I could not get him out of my head. I chose my best blue silk chuba with dragons that had been made by a drunken but very talented Muslim tailor, I packed my bags, and made promises to my Tibetan family that I would call them once I got back to Ireland.
I took the rickety bus back down from Darjeeling to Siliguri, where, back on the plains, the heat was sweltering. I found my way, with all my bags, to the Temple in Siliguri, down a dusty lane. I banged on the corrugated yellow gate. A surly monk answered. I told him in Tibetan that I wished to see Chatral Rinpoche. You can’t, he told me. Can I go to the temple? I asked. Go there, and wait, he said. I thought I would see him, then. I don’t know what came over me, but I began to prostrate like the most zealous Tibetan in that temple. I took out my mala beads and began to pray and recite purification mantras, as if I had committed every sort of sin that you could imagine. I begged the Buddhas to open the doors and get me an audience with this lama who I had decided would change the course of my life. And still, all I really knew of him was the colour photocopy of him that hung over Karma Lama’s bed.
After a couple of hours of sitting under the shade of a fig tree, sweltering in my silk brocade dress, they called me into the dining area and told me to sit down and eat some dal and rice. The surly monk who had opened the yellow gate came back, and handed me a red sung rab blessing cord and a little packet of men drup, medicinal pills blessed by Chatral Rinpoche himself.
“He’s not well. You can’t meet him.” said the monk, sourly. So I left, sweltering in my blue dragon dress, and took the Rajdani Express to Delhi.
All my work is free. Please consider supporting my work and writing by subscribing, sharing, commenting and even buying me a coffee… some have generously pledged for my work but I still do not know how to transition into paid subscriptions. Any advice welcome…
Extract from Shadowmothers, a Memoir of Motherhood © Siofra O’Donovan, 2013
Really evocative piece about a place I have never been to.
Maybe some day....?
Absolutely wonderful Siofra