By: Ganesh Saili
One could not have asked for better neighbours than the Tibetan and the Bhotiya communities living next door in the urban sprawl of Landour’s Mullingar.
After last night’s wedding celebrations, the DJ’s music fell silent punctually at ten o’clock. One could set one’s watch by it. Carefully, youngsters had placed garbage bins which they made sure were emptied before the monkeys raided them next morning. It’s a minor miracle to awaken to a whistle-clean world, where the day after carries no memories of the day before. Indeed, good neighbours are – a priceless treasure – a blessing that radiates love, compassion and a warm consideration for others living next door. From them have I learnt what it means to cross the road for one another.
Meanwhile, a flutter of colourful prayer-flags or lungtas catches my eye.
‘They are not at random,’ explains Sekul patiently, who is in her eighties now and adds: ‘They are arranged in odd numbers whereby they go from blue to white, red to green and end with the yellow.’
Way back in 1959, the Tibetans built a Temple in Happy Valley to house the sacred scrolls ferreted away by refugees forced to flee their home on the Roof of the World.
‘Refugees? We are model-refugees!’ thunders the Harvard-educated Lobsang Sangay, the last Prime Minister of the government-in-exile. ‘Our gratitude for the support we get from Indian businessmen in the Punjab, where all you say is that you are Pemba or Tashi or Dorji from Happy Valley, and doors fling open as if by magic!’
‘Incredible but true!’ says an old timer at the Gaydeling Café. ‘It’s a way of life – to die in debt for us is the greatest sin.’
Looking for old pictures, I come across some of the old Visitor’s Book at the Savoy Hotel; that green-and-gold edged cover had seen better times and is a spread of the Who’s Who of Mussoorie’s early history. Two pages leap out at me. One has the name of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and on the opposite page are the signatures of the 10th Panchen Lama. What brought the two together in the dead of winter? They were destined not to meet again.
‘God laughs at those who make plans!’ the Sufis have taught us. And life took a turn as, fearing for his life after the Spring Uprising, the Dalai Lama crossed over to India on April 18th 1959. However the 10th Panchen Lama stayed on. He had hoped that the Chinese socialist reforms would work. When they didn’t, he refused to back down and reported the Tibetan famines of the 1960s. The Chinese jailed him for eight years and afterwards he died in Shigatse under mysterious circumstances aged only fifty-one years.
In May 1995, the Dalai Lama recognized Gedhum reincarnated as the 11th Panchen Lama. The Chinese retaliated by abducting the child and his family, and six months later they selected their own Panchen Lama, whom the Tibetans with derision call ‘Panchen Zuma’ or the false Panchen. He lives in Beijing heavily protected by armed guards and rarely visits Tibet.
In his well-known book, Seven Years in Tibet, Harrer describes his escape from an internment camp in Dehradun and his arrival in Lhasa, where he meets the eleven-year-old Dalai Lama and introduces him to the world outside Lhasa.
One day the Dalai Lama asks him: ‘Tell me what you love about climbing mountains, Heinrich?
Heinrich (after a pause): The absolute simplicity, that’s what I love. When you are climbing your mind is clear, free from all confusions, you have focus and suddenly the light becomes sharper, sounds are richer, and you are filled with deep, powerful presence of life. I’ve only felt that way one other time.
Dalai Lama: ‘When?
Heinrich: ‘In your presence.’
In his eighties now, I wonder if the Dalai Lama too feels homesick? Do the cries of the wild geese and cranes and the beating of their wings as they fly over the Potala resonate in his ears?
In answer, I hear the chants of ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’ before returning to my world of faith, prayers and prayer-beads.
Ganesh Saili born and home-grown in the hills belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their own pictures. Author of two dozen books; some translated into twenty languages, his work has found recognition world-wide.
