January 30, 2011
As Phuntsok’s prime aim of visiting his aunt’s home is to watch TV programmes, especially the hottest news now, about the 17th Karmapa’s case that Indian media has taken rather naïvely. But, as being a few days old now, we can only have some passing catches in some tried programmes. But the press conference held at Gyuto monastery is telecasted briefly with the HH Karmapa’s spokesperson relating about the background of the incidence and the purpose of HH Karmapa’s coming to India, the five reasons. From the spokesperson’s English accent I have the impression that he isn’t a Tibetan but a Sikkimish and so I’m going to find out later that he is what my impression guesses.
As having nothing to do for the time, with more people gathering for His Holiness’s teachings ahead, I accompany Phuntsok to camp # 5 as he has got to pay a receipt to the monk at Thoding monastery. Walking along the dust coated road that diverges from the main but badly potholed and damaged road at the turn, we head towards the monastery, which is known for having those historic relics and antiquities that have been attracting Tibetan and Himalayan devotees from outside. It stands next by the road on the upper part of the sloping fields and at the entrance of the camp from this side.
Entering the main gate, I find the partly paved courtyard of concrete is scorching and dazzling in the afternoon. He finds the monk, who looks nearing fifty with dark complexion working as the curator of the museum cum monastic shrine of simple concrete structure, who welcomes us inside to have a glimpse of the antiquities set on an old wooden table just before the altar on the one side. I find them a clutter of grimy items. As Phuntsok knowingly says it would take almost 2 hours to get the backgrounds of those holy items, the monk backs so too. As they are and should be treated in deferential way, I do lower my head to touch the lower part of the table. It’s over now.
And the other aged monk in such grubby robes who Phuntsok knows as a distant relation. His deformed nose with those protruding dark warts accentuates his being part of the antiquity too, the oldest one here. Following Phuntsok to his room on the ground floor of the two storey building (of the three straight line monks hostel blocks around the court yard), next to the short concrete staircase with curved concrete rail on either side that leads the way off the ground on to the raised ground floor veranda with concrete banisters, I find his single small room that stuffy with those crammed clutter, so shabby for being an aged one’s quarter. I wonder what can be behind the grimy cloth-veil partition against one side of the wall from the door but protruding like sacks of grains. Even in such crammed space there is an extra bed. The upper parts of the wall around are occupied by those old framed holders of holy images. Everything inside is a mess.
Phuntsok steps inside and talks with him and I remain outside beside the doorway. After the brief conversation we head for his aunt’s home next to the monastery taking the access through the back of the building. The low mud tiles roofed cottage with a veranda and entrance at ground level; the first room, which is narrow with black stone-slab floored, serves as the sitting room with a matted bench next to the entrance but it’s dark and the parts of the walls blackened by the smokes from the wood-fuelled fireplace set against the wall next to the gas stove. The fireplace exudes the air of quaint warmness spoken by the invigorated blackened well-sawed wooden beams, rafters and ribs. It leads to the other room on the one side and the real TV room next to it. Entering the TV room as Phuntsok enters knowingly, I find it well arranged and clean. There are three carpeted beds; a sofa set is, yet, a luxury here at Tibetan settlement. There is an interior room, its door way veiled with a white cloth (Goyol) printed with Tibetan designs in colours. From the opening I can see a table and a hand-prayer-wheel of medium size laid on it: it says it’s Chokhang, the household sanctum. The TV room is accentuated as it’s by the SONY wide flat screen rested on the glossy dark-teak TV table with open closet set with the dish operating box covered with a piece of cloth and the others and the big almost 8 feet long and 5 feet high cupboard showcase with wide white glass-shutters revealing the inset crockery of various types and qualities, mostly Chinese porcelain tea cups and mugs and a few side standing Indian porcelain plates leaning against one another. It looks well arranged and clean.
His aunt, almost above 65, in a grubby Tibetan Chuba and apron is actively warm, serving Tibetan butter salted tea, sweet milk tea and Cola from the new 2 litres plastic bottle one after another and asking repeatedly to have more. Even in her household fervour she is warm and giving. And here, yet again, the reminiscence of my late mom from her appearances and warmness, especially, when later we’re leaving, finding her busy with roasting corn in heated sand in the sort of dark thin pan put on a crude fireplace outside next to the house for grinding roasted flour, Tsampa, the staple diet of early Tibet. How many times I had seen my beloved late mom carrying out the same thing but of wheat or barley; I can remember tasting a handful of freshly roasted stuff Yoe given by her as I had been waiting by the site for the same.
I am going to learn later from Phuntsok she had served her aged bedridden mother for a year till her death at almost 86. Had her only son Tobden, the ex-army guy almost in his early forties, been of any help for her during the ordeal? He, as Phuntsok told me about, wears that look of being straightforwardly isolated. He was once married but without a trace of a wife and any child at home: Phuntsok says he has never asked about it even to his aunt. Yes, he seems to wear this look of dignity-based isolation in his rather vacant expression in a dark purple polo shirt that accentuates his crooked shoulders. But there must be his hand in those modest but well arrangements inside the low roofed sitting room from the way he stalks with the seeming air of independence.
An aged guy, the husband of his aunt, is lounging on a bed in the veranda. Phutsok talks to him and asks about his health before we go to his aunt by the fireplace to tell her we are leaving. “Do come again”, she says raising her head as she is busy by the site bending over the pan. Phunstok later tells me her husband hasn’t been well.
*
June 20,
2013
A Complement
Now, sorry
for being rather belated in adding this complement, I remember almost a year
ago Phuntsok telling me about the demise of the curator monk rather like a
mystery as he was only in his fifties. He shared it with me like a confidant or
the one who was concerned for going with him and meeting the monk then.
Blinking his busy eyes as usual and rubbing the tip of his pointy nose with his
right hand fingers tips, he said with an air of both gravity and ironic easy
touch (the part of his personality that’s hard to get penetrated into), ‘So he
is no longer in this world like a vanished dream.’
He could
conceal the inner jumble brewing within for himself alone. I got such somehow.
I felt so sorry too for the late curator.
And so
surprisingly and sadly he had got to share with me, only a few days gap before
or later, that his aunt’s only son, who wore the air of dignified independence
or isolation, passed away as well after developing an ailment. It’s like a
double shock to me as well; then why not for the aged kind aunt of him, a
reflection of my late beloved mom could be made out of her appearance. Oh, The
Triple Gems, Konchok Sum Kheno! And Phuntsok looked far graver when he shared
it as of such accidental mishap to his aged aunt with a bed-ridden husband. And
for her son being in his early forties only. Could such be related to his
isolation after a failed marriage—the isolation, the brunt of self-torture as
ensued by his own failure in the broken marriage or by the other side? A
mystery, a sad real life drama. I could only pray for them and all. And I could
guess how the air in the low mud-tiles roofed refugee household presented as the
most heart-wrenching, the heaviest burden only for Phunstok’s aged aunt, a simple
Tibetan woman in her seventies. I was so sorry. And I do feel so. And this complement
has to be added as a token of what I did and share as well. I wonder how she can
be now and her immobile husband… And to breathe on.
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