A Scene During Kalachakra At Sarnath, Varanasi: 1990

Even if it was at cleaner Varanasi as Ngodup had found then after the last Kalachakra empowerment at Bodhgaya, now it seemed to be badly challenged as of the thronging streams of crowds. But thanks for the archipelago of huge old mango groves that saved it, not like at Bodhgaya where it was like arid sloping mounds around the Maha Bodhi stupa. Here the camps were not cramped but scattered afar. As Ngodup and Dorjee were walking back after taking a walk around the Dhamek stupa, along the paths by the low hedged lawns with greyish stubble-tufts, around the greyish temple with the relics of Lord Buddha and up to the end of the proper asphalt road past Chinese temple, they took the straight road from the intersection with the high iron lamp post rising up from the round concrete base in steps in the middle. They had had time to browse at those tin-shed-stores by the road on one side of the intersection selling Banarasi Pan and cheap sweets. They were bit fed up now. They were going back to their camp. Even if they had walked by the Chinese temple with the same concrete gate with the sloping slated roof, Ngodup wasn’t sure, or couldn’t identify, if it was the place behind which they had camped during their sojourn five years back. It looked changed, maybe as of the better road now or he hadn’t been able to hold in well then. He found the Chinese temple didn’t seem to have such a mango grove behind.

They had been here for a week now. The three days long rudimentary teaching that His Holiness the Dalai Lama cared more was over. The proper Kalachakra empowerment was to be commenced the next day. As they were about to reach the confluence point of the two asphalt roads as the other looped around the vast open part, they found a group of Tibetan hawkers on one side hawking their wares, clothes stacked on khaki canvas mats on the ground. People were huddling up at different points. There were young Indian youths teeming around one.

‘Look Ngodup! See how they passed jeans from behind one to another. How they steal,’ said Dorjee by gaping at them.

Ngodup saw it and was bewildered. He had heard about it like young Indians stealing so, especially from those who hawked jeans and imported wears brought from Nepal. They didn’t have minds to shout at them but looked on like seeing a rare spectacle. How many times they had watched at those jeans from paces away with desirous minds. They hadn’t been able to touch them. Now they saw those foppish looking but poor youths were stealing. As Ngodup winked at Dorjee in a taunting way like asking him to do the same, he widened his eyes.

‘Don’t even think about it. Let’s go now or we will be blamed for remaining silent. Move, move!’ He hurried ahead.

As they were almost fifty yards away and nearing the turn from where they had to walk off the asphalt road to their camp in the field, Dorjee slowed down and turned back.

‘You are going to watch movie tonight? I will show something special too,’ said Dorjee with a luring smile.

‘Okay. But it’s freezing at night. I have to get up stealthily as not to stir my master from his sleep. You know the dried hay beneath make damning rustling sounds. I want to go. Do come to wake me up,’ said Ngodup out of eagerness to learn about the special thing that he knew couldn’t be that worth-wondering.

‘You know around 12pm. Lie down ready. You know.’

Dorjee had happened to find such a nook on the outskirts of Sarnath a few days back and led Ngodup there. Ngodup had found Dorjee had found it through some seniors. It was far behind Institute for Higher Tibetan Studies and the teaching ground, a spacious square ground as part of the institute hemmed in by high compound walls next by the road. It was a poor usual village with a huge tree in the middle marking the main square. There were low sheds selling deep oil roasted yellowish fritters and dark sweet tea. What could be Dorjee’s special thing? Ngodup was, however, eager to find out.

They walked down the mango grove dotted with huge tents rimmed with freshly excavated shallow trenches around. They broke off from the path of greyish battered soil. They meant to walk past the monastic kitchen. They walked past the kitchen tent with an open furnace next by loaded with a huge smoke-darkened aluminium cauldron. The flat lid was closed but a trail of steam was rising from one side of the lid. A westerner guy like in his early fifties was lounging just next by the entrance of the kitchen tent. He was reclining his back against his grimy rucksack and holding an oblong aluminium bowl in his hand filled with rice gruel, the day’s dinner for the monks. He was taking it with a spoon. Everything about him exuded a dejected air. His one leg was tucked under the other that was crooked with knee turned out supporting his one hand. Ngodup had a fleeting view of his fatigue-worn face and sturdy lanky physique with sort of wasted limbs. His shaggy grizzled hair was spiky as the defying nihilistic air that he seemed to maintain with the balanced twisted expression. His whole bearing was of mountaineering one marked by the rucksack, dark-blue nylon trousers, heavy trekking boots but in a dark purple shirt with its sleeves tucked up to his elbows. As Ngodup remained standing next by and looked on him from a few paces away, Dorjee nudged at him asking him to move off. Ngodup was sort of struck with a thought like tracing a past memory that he couldn’t get hold on to. He looked once back and found him still in the same nihilistic twisted expression that pretended not to care of Ngodup’s being bewildered. He seemed to have been prepared for such.

Ngodup stealthily entered the tent. Everyone was seated at the end of his bedding and having dinner in silence but the slurping breathing sounds of sucking in rice porridge that was plain and salted. Dadul frowned at Ngodup who inched up to his bedding, took out his steel bowl, fetched his share from the utensil placed in the middle by the wooden pole and sat at the end of his bedding. As he was about to put a spoonful into his mouth after turning the stuff several times like in search of a piece of meat or nut as the catalyst to arouse his appetite, Dadul cleared his throat.

‘Where have you been all the day after the morning congregation? I haven’t taken back the money offered during the congregations for the last days thinking that you need it. But you have begun to loiter more and longer. You know we aren’t here for picnic but to attend Kalachakra empowerment. His Holiness, the omniscient one, is here but you can behave like you haven’t got a whit of sense. Now beware of what you do. Now limit yourself,’ said Dadul with his frowning face set aslant and fixed even after saying it.

Ngodup remained quiet but his heart was readying for the flight at night. He felt soothed just by thinking so. He was really sort of pampered after loitering for days now, especially late at nights for the last two days. He wondered how Dorjee could be managing at the same time under the more ferocious glare of his home-master. And Dorjee, too, was going to relate later how he timidly entered the tent and how his home-master scowled at him all the while during dinner. But he wasn’t thrashed that he took as ‘luck’.

After dinner Ngodup got out of the tent and remained around the temporary camp with other novices playing across the open area. The slanting rays of the sinking sun made the golden nebula visible like golden dust as aroused by the novices playing across the hardened strips of field in steps. A village almost three hundred yards away, too, looked aesthetically stood like in a paintbrush work of a rural splendor: the overlapping mud-tiles ridge-roofs of low cottages fronted by playing children, stationed or abandoned bullock carts, those lounging on straw-cord woven beds placed in the narrow front yards of trampled yellowish pale grounds, the trees with spiky branches in the background, two or three kites flying high up. The village lying at plain level from the tent-camp now looked so as played by the mirage of golden tint of the setting sun and screened by the golden nebula. Ngodup stood and looked long. He had never had such view of any nearby Indian villages back at the monastery at Mundgod, Karnataka state. He wished to see Dorjee. Tashi had been with his parents in a hired house somewhere. He didn’t stay at the camp. Dorjee stayed in the next long tent of cheap cloth. Ngodup walked casually through the entrance to find Dorjee there. He was there with Gelek who smiled at Ngodup. Their home-master wasn’t there. Ngodup walked up to them.

‘Your master not here? You two doing what here?’ Ngodup looked around and found the tent was virtually empty.

‘Sit down, Ngodup. We are reciting some memorized scripts. Our master has just gone out. He will be back right away. But it’s okay. Sit!’ Gelek was receptive and smiled all the time.

‘No, it won’t be good to find you here, Ngodup. Just go away. We will meet later at the fixed time. You know?’ Dorjee was decisive in his low tone against Gelek’s wonder.

‘But it’s okay.’ Gelek persisted.

Dorjee just scowled like irked by Gelek being importunately stupid. As soon as Ngodup had hesitated for a moment and thought to leave then their master entered. He was wrapped up in a thick maroon shawl. He went to his bedding and stayed at the head of them. He then eyed at Ngodup and gave off a faint ambiguous smile. Ngodup got the sign and retreated off. As he was just outside the tent, he heard their reciting voices rang like reminding him of his being too free. So he went back to his own bedding, sat down and tried to recite something alone despite Dadul’s absence. An aged one at paces distance was sort of taken aback to find Ngodup doing so.

‘Hmmm, good day it seems. What made you come back and do so? These days novices are like stray dogs,’ said he with a broad smile on his round face. He was sitting cross-legged at the far corner like he had been lurking there to take someone by surprise but Ngodup had seen him. He was turning the dark beads of a rosary in his right hand. ‘Dadul isn’t here. He will be pleased to find you sitting here and reciting something like you have become yourself somehow,’ he added and chuckled ironically, ‘Really good day!’

Ngodup didn’t turn towards him. He laughed within. He wanted to guffaw at him but controlled himself. At such sudden mischievous urge Ngodup at once remembered his sister Yangzom: if she had been here with him, she would have taken the time to taunt him through her pranks. But she was at home again after the handicraft in Thimphu had come to halt. She must be subjected to fiercer ordeal under the sisters after Dolma's passing away. Yes, even the letter writing had ceased. But Ngodup didn’t know anything about such. The aged monk looked fixedly at him while turning on his rosary punctuated by dry coughs. Ngodup could hear Dorjee and Gelek’s reciting voices rising and falling at the end of each set of prayer-text. He, too, recited one short prayer after another. He wished Dadul would appear in any instant to find him so. Tsering and Kaldor stayed in another tent some fifty yards away. Nyima, his aged bent master, Kalsang and his bespectacled school master were staying in a small hired tent around. Ngodup had seen Kaldor and Tsering were walking together with a few novices following them alongside the road in their sprees. Kaldor had waved at him but distanced himself as to lead the following novices or as to prove his being more venturing despite being crippled.

So around 11.30pm when Ngodup had stayed up all awake, when Dadul was snoring, he stealthily got up as he had just heard Dorjee’s low cough, their pre-planned way of signaling to each other. It was chilling outside. They hurriedly strode over the taut cords held by the poles around the tents. There was a faint light of the bow-shaped moon somewhere above that helped them to walk off the ditches through the mango grove up to the asphalt road. It was calm and the road was deserted but the distant wailing noises of stray dogs. Dorjee walked swiftly ahead like a shadow with his upper part bit bowed up to the huge mango tree on the roadside. He then slowed down. Dorjee talked about his home-master tightening the noose with scowls and rebukes while they were reciting the prayers. He sounded sort of being fed up like trying to hear himself like grown up now. It was new to Ngodup. He found it interesting too like gloating over his own privilege of Dadul’s being less strict and not having to pay all he had earned during congregations.

After walking up to the end of the narrow asphalt road that joined with the broader road, they crossed the broad road to take a narrow path that winded through a copse off the high compound wall of the institute. They walked swifter through it till coming out on the narrow asphalt road that led to the sleepy village down divided on either side of the road with low mud-tiles roofs. As they were next by the old tree with waist high square stone-built base Dorjee turned to Norsang.

‘Ngodup, I told you to show you something special. It’s there. You see the eatery there,’ said Dorjee by pointing his finger towards the low open shack lighted up by a single fluorescent bulb dangling down from a length of cord.

Ngodup could see long crude wooden benches and tables looking sort of yellowish under the light bulb. A few senior novices were huddled at one table next by the greyish mud-splattered furnace, the workstation of a feeble middle aged Indian guy of lanky figure in grimy white Dhoti and village singlet busying himself with plucking a piece from a mass of darkish dough, balling it in his hand before flattening it between his palms, flattening it into a round thin Chapati with a wooden roller and sticking it within the furnace with a swift thrust before pulling out his hand. He seemed sort of doing all mechanically before them who were dining at such hour. The two others, an aged one at the grimy counter with a wood-framed glass case arranged with yellowish oily stuffs inside set before and a young boy in grubby clothes serving them like a group of hungry caravan at a roadside stopover that ran day and night. As Ngodup looked at them with wonder, Dorjee stood next by and seemed to be sated.

‘See, you don’t know yet. The secret is if you pay three rupees, you can eat as much as you can. So they are hogging on thus. See, how Ngawang takes one Chapati after another. He has gained a sort of name by taking 25 pieces of Chapati last night. See how he hogs on, see how the guy works that hard to prepare more for him,’ said Dorjee in one breath.

Ngawang was a senior novice like in his late teens. He was dark and heavily corpulent, of medium build. He had taken off his upper wear and was in a yellow singlet. The rest were following him too. There were six of them.

‘We can sit next by and have some if you wish. Just to taste it,’ Dorjee said timidly.

‘Okay, lead me then. Are you hungry? I am not hungry.’ Ngodup didn’t have mind to try his surprise.

But as they were served with each a big round steel plate filled with rice, three types of watery vegetable and two pieces of Chapati over it, as they were having it, Ngodup found it not bad but tasty. Ngawang and the rest had just finished. He smiled over them with his stupid name as such. As he saw Ngodup and Dorjee next by, he smiled more.

‘Well, have more. Just have as much as you can. You can’t find such anywhere in whole India. Ha, ha….’ He guffawed and led the rest out to the plastic covered temporary video-hall.

Dorjee paid for it saying ‘you can pay the next time’. Then they followed them there.

The young Indian guy, the one who ran the business of screening Hollywood and Chinese martial arts movies, looked smartly dressed in dark jeans and a white polo-shirt with black stripes. He was smiling and receptive. It was at the end of the village just next by a bigger mud-plastered house with its wall serving one part of the temporary gallery. It was oblong and spacious so far inside with a color TV and VCR set on a table at the head and those flimsy iron chairs in rows. It wasn’t packed like last night. But there were almost 15 of them, more elder novices. After Dorjee’s gained interest in martial arts, especially his favorite JC Van Damme, Ngodup had happened to favor thus as well. Dorjee was going to make himself known later as Van Damme through his growing interest. When the show had started, everyone fell silent, gripped with admiration within a few minutes but the mild blaring from the TV speakers that pierced through the deep silence of night. Again Van Damme followed by others till past 3.am.