Darjeeling is the nicest place on the face of the earth when complemented by some generosity from the sun. However, the weather today is abysmal and uninspiring. In the game of hide and seek with the low laying clouds, the sun is doing more of the hiding than otherwise. A flock of haze has overwhelmed Kunchenjunga* adding to the murkiness of the town. Everything is gloomy and obscure, and it doesn't seem long before the clouds burst in to a gush of downpours.
On a typical Darjeeling morning like this, most people would prefer dreaming in their cosy beds than venturing outside, but not 74 years old Ama Yangchen. The weather rarely deters her from tracing the trail leading to the cliff on Wednesday mornings. In the duel between her devotion and the forces on the land of the living, more often than not the former is expected to emerge victorious, and so it again has today. One could unfailingly spot her vague figure trudging through the deserted Chor-Rasta* almost every third dawn of the week. Today she is accompanied by 8-year-old Tashi, her youngest grandson.
Ama Yangchen is five feet nothing, and her chubby criss-crossed face is rapturous with life and stimulates affection. Her seventy-four years are evident in her slouching back, myopic eyes and plaited hair of no distinct colour. She has the traditional bag for incense, juniper twigs and other mysterious stuffs hanging loosely down her shoulders. Her left hand harbours her trademark brown rosary, which is seldom kept idle. In her right, she clutches a long black umbrella belonging to her late husband, which also comes in handy as a cane. This wrinkly woman from Tenkey Dzong, Tsang is the only one in her family who could tell stories about Tibet to the young ones with a certain degree of precision. She is the only mortal link between the old home and the new one.
“Grandma, I'm tired” Tashi complaints. The prospect of seeing monkeys swinging from one tree to another at the hilltop might have appeared fascinating minutes ago, but the poor kid is not really enjoying the long ascending trek. “We are almost there, Tashi.” She assures spreading her hand over Sonam's head. “You know when your father was of your age, he single-handedly used to herd Yaks and Dris we had back in Tibet , and he never felt tired. He was a man at 8. Aren't you the one like him ?” Tashi promptly responds in affirmative. The bonny little lads like him have an extraordinary desire to grow up quickly, and being addressed as a man is a rare honour to them. As for Ama Yangchen, she surely knows how to keep children enthusiastic- no doubt for she has raised an equivalent of a football team by herself.
The steep slopes and narrow bends are not at all new to this old lady. Approximately forty years ago at the height of the Cultural Revolution she and her husband braved some of the world's highest mountains with three young boys and an infant girl. It was one long tiring journey from the barley fields of Tenkey to the terraced tea gardens of Darjeeling . After nearly four decades, she looks back to that colossal trip with an assorted feeling of agony and achievement. She has never undertaken an odyssey of such magnitude since then, but that one trek does make her weekly visit to the hill somewhat insignificant.
“Do we have monkeys in Tibet , Grandma?” Tashi questions with a childlike innocence. “Yes we do. We have monkeys, antelopes, wolves, bears and a bunch of other wild creatures. But they are not as gruesome as the monkeys you see at the hill. We have an understanding- they don't harm us and we don't make life difficult for them.” Ama Yangchen elaborates, occasionally gasping for breath. She is full of fond memories and influencing nostalgia, and is happy to see that her grandson is spellbound by her country. If granted a wish, Tashi's second emphasis would definitely be on a visit to his Grandma's mystical land; first one, of course, on being a Tibetan Spiderman.
After negotiating an uphill path, they finally reach the summit. The prayer flags hanging in thousands from the trees, the aroma of juniper and cedar from the ovens, and the serenity of the location provide a divine look to it. Tashi instantly mingles with the surroundings and Ama Yangchen allows him to play a spectator to the monkeys and their hullabaloos as she busies herself praying.
“With a wish to free all beings
I shall always go for refuge
To the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
Until I reach full enlightenment”
She murmurs the verse as she lofts grains of rice in air. She burns incense, adds some dry juniper branches in the ovens and makes offerings of butter and tsampa. The amount of time she spends reciting verses, prostrating and doing the holy Kora* is utterly incredible. Religion is like the very essence of her survival. She hardly says a word without reference to Kunchok* and her faith in the infallibility of karma is as unflinching as a physicist's conviction in the three laws of motion.
The prayers said and the rituals conducted, she sits down on a rickety wooden bench for a breather. Her eyes search for Tashi and soon discover him following the notorious apes. Apart from his sporadic misdemeanour, he is a well-disciplined lad- thanks to Ama Yangchen. He is good at studies and even better at singing. His vocal talent doesn't fail to make his grandma proud. She vividly remembers how profusely she cried when Tashi sang a ballad on the 6 th of July last year.
“White crane, my dear
Lend me your tender wings
I shall not fly far
To my fatherland
And thence I shall return.”
It was a masterpiece by the sixth Dalai Lama and aptly captured the sentiments of the Tibetans longing for their homeland. Apparently, very few could managed to hide their silver tears that day. For Tashi and his older siblings, Ama Yangchen has always been an inspiration. She might not have seen the portals of the school during her childhood but she is as intuitive as any learnt individual in the town, and the amazing thing about her is that most of her intellect is inborn and instinctive. She is, of course, not familiar with the alphabets and vowels taught in the schools but she surely knows the lessons of life, and endeavours to impart them to her grandchildren. The aphorism- ‘If the mother's son has the insight, the Ganden's throne is not a far cry' - is the one she uses time and again to enkindle in them a craving to make their lives worth living.
It can be said of any elderly Tibetan that if religion ranks first in their priority list then the music finishes a close second- Ama Yangchen, in this regard, is not exception. Every afternoon she tunes into the Tibetan language broadcast of the All India Radio, Kurseong*. News doesn't mean much to her but she surely enjoys the indigenous music aired by them.The traditional songs and dances take her back to the time and back to her country. Every now and then she reminisces the jovial ditties sung by the people while harvesting the season's first barley produce. When in high spirit, one could discover her humming-
“In the world of ours,
No worries we have.
No worries of gold and silver,
No worries of gold and silver.”
Truly enough, the Tibetans of her comtemporary had very few worries. They were full of life and merriment, and bizarrely happy in their small isolated existence. It is not that she is entirely discontented in exile; she still finds happiness in trivial things but a sense of belongingness is missing and that makes her happiness, in a way, momentary and incomplete. The romantic world to which she belonged has ceased to exist and now the reality stares hard at her.
The wind howls violently, signalling the mood of the heavens. This brings Ama Yangchen back to life from her melancholy deliberations. On her skin, she feels the first drop of rain and then the second. “It is time we left.” she shouts to her grandson. She collects her belongings, Tashi bids farewell to the monkeys and the pair start their descent in a harum-scarum. She would embark upon a similar trip to the hill next week. She will again pray for the long life of her saviour, for the well-being of all sentient beings and for a speedy return to the homeland. Keeping her age in mind, she calculates a very slim chance of seeing her last prayer being answered. But she is hopeful against hope. She very often quotes- “Tibetan persistence is the persistence of the simpleton.” The so-called realists may suggest her to stop dreaming but her Tibetan heart still expects a miracle.
Footnotes:
*Kunchenjunga- The third highest Himalayan peak (Tibetan- Khangchen-jong-nga).
* Chor-Rasta- Darjeeling's equivalent of mall road in Shimla.
*Kora- The Buddhist practice of taking rounds of a holy place in clockwise direction.
*Kunchok-The three refuges i.e. Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
*Kurseong- A relatively smaller town, 32 km from Darjeeling .
