Too much and too much agaain

Do you ever have that feeling when there is so much to say that you clam up completely because it all seems impossible to get out. Sometimes writing this is a bit like that - I go through my day thinking, oh that would be good, or remembering something and thinking that should go in. Then I open up the blessed Mac and all those thoughts elude me.

I've now got three half finished blogs in edit mode - either not good enough or simply rambles without any point or real meaning to them, Two of them are, I think fixable and you may see them soon.

Most of you know by now that this is the skeletal embryo of a book - one that moves between now and then so that the tension inherent in the now informs the pathos and nostalgia of the then. Darling Dubby emailed this morning and said, "At last my Joanna begins to bud;" and oddly enough I think I do.

When I was small the aunties, along with the Kalimpong Homes, organised a dance festival in the gardens of the homes - they were very keen that the Tibetan children placed at the strict Presbyterian mercy  of Dr. Graham's inheritors  might forget their heritage. The children all performed charming Tibetan folk dances waving their overlong pink sleeves rhythmically with their singing and gentle body movement.

There was sudden pandemonium as down the hillside came a procession of horsemen, wild Khampas all, though dispossessed of home and their culture - the procession shone a light into a time gone be. The King of LIng, for it  was he leading was greeted most reverently with white scarves and led to the VIP seats at the front.

His arrival was for the monks from the gompa to start. All the dancers were masked, masks made with reverence over the centuries to the same pattern and each dancer became more that a man as he danced. There was the story of Guru Rinpoche fighting the the black hats and their tantric shamanisn, the use of the animals to prove his enlightenment.

Those monks that were the deer leapt and twirled in a way that would have made Nijinsky weep with envy. And then, just as we all needed a break - the clowns with their red devil faces would come out and taunt the pretty girls, who gave back what they got with interest. It was joyous and a glimpse into another world and time   that was fast disappearing.

Some five years my parents and I were invited to the Setchu dances in Pairo, Bhutan. No fresh faced children here - this was one of the great Bhutanese lamaseries and this year was more special than most for a giant thanka(religious painting on cloth), was to be hung from the roof of the gompa. There were only four such thankas in existence: one in Lhasa, one in Gyantse, one in Leh and this one in Pario and thus this was a day of high religion and joy to the people of the Paro valley.

We sat behind a carved wooden screen with the Queen, Ashi Kesang, her two daughters, the Crown Prince and his two tutors, Major Cann and Michael Airies (who later became fellow of Oriental Studies at Oxford and married Aang San Syu Ke. Plus the usual rat tag mob of Desmond, Mum, my sister, me, the ubiquitous Tibetan entourage and the (assumedly CIA) American Consul and his wife and daughter. One the first day the Thanka was lowered and it was huge, depicting the great wheel with the Buddha in the centre. Pilgrims had come from all over Bhutan to see it and help toward their enlightenment.

The dances were, if anything even more stunning - higher leaps performed in slow motion with only the discordant note of cymbals and drums played to keep away the evil spirits. This seemed to me to be magic that I was watching not men and I was transported to another world, time place. Whatever fascination I have with religion now comes from those days of watching not just the lamas dancing but the reverent people, young and old to whom it meant so much to see all of this as if the gods themselves danced before them.

I was very, very  privileged.

PS At this point I would love to show you photographs and videos of mine but my sister has custody and those of you who follow me regularly know that means no chance. So apart from the picture of me everything else is courtesy of Google image search.

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Brief Break

The story will be continued tomorrow I promise but I felt the need for more immediate contact with you - silly I know but I was missing the one sided conversation.

Calcutta was and is a very small community - little goes on that is not public knowledge within a few hours. An example of this is when a friend of mine became pregnant - I went with her to a clinic off Elliot Rd. and waited in the waiting room while she saw the doctor then took her home.

I walked in to the sitting room at home to find my parents, white faced, clutching large whiskeys begging me to tell them the truth. The nurse at the clinic had worked for Dad once and phoned him as soon as she saw me. It took several hours to convince them it wasn't me having a baby but my friend. I never really stood a chance of being really bad - there were too may eyes watching - if they didn't have links to Mum or Dad they would almost certainly have links to Desla  or Dubs,

Despite this, or maybe because of  it I always felt entirely safe - the only bad experience I ever really had was one to be savoured for its tattered glamour.  I spotted a rather attractive young man in Trincas one night and was told that he was the young cousin the Tripura family. I wangled an introduction and was asked out to dinner.

You must understand  that we were in our own way very innocent. Jaideep, having just  returned from being educated in England was used to young women who has embraced the sexual revolution ans took their places as equals/ I still expected a car door to be held open for me.

After dinner he invited me back to the Tripura Palace in Ballygunge and showed me around an echoing ghost of a house with huge marble halls and neo classical nymphs draped coyly on plinths in alcoves. Unsurprisingly the tour ended in his rooms and the usual rough and tumble ensued. As it was getting close to midnight I asked  if he could arrange for a car to take me home.

The atmosphere changed - there were no cars - I hadn't slept with him yet - who did I think I was? We were locked in for the night. I took matters into my own hands hands ran out to the main hall and shouted for the Durwan to  go and find a taxi. The resultant noise woke the Maharani's bearer and he sat me down, made me tea and organised the taxi in what seemed like seconds. Jaideep was banished back to his room.

The old bearer saw me home and apologised for the shame of his mistress's nephew.

The postscript came when Jaideep turned up the next night and tried to bully his way past Abdul and the two dogs. Winnie, I am glad to say bit him!. I fell to Abdul to have the last word." Ek dum budmash baba!"

Strange Bewildering Time 2

Continued from Part One

Charles stood looking like a ruffled blond crane with his bare feet only inches from the rat's tail. "Kill it," shrieked Charlotte: Anne by this stage was in a foetal position on the bed rocking backwards and forwards sobbing and muttering, "There is a place called Surrey. I live there. I will wake up soon and I will be at home." She would open one eye occasionally and the shuddering and sobbing would increase still more.

Charles looked down at the rat and said," Big old chap isn't he? " He lent forward and clapped his hands loudly: perhaps the rat took this as approbation for it made determined jump towards his nose. Backing away hastily he said. "Stay calm girls - I'll get the wallah." and left.  Beautiful, fey, tranquil Charlotte whose never raised her voice or showed any real sign of irritation was beside herself with fear and indignation. Anne was now catatonic, whimpering,"Leatherhead," or "Guildford." It became fairly obvious that as the only one who was still showing some sign of sanity this was going to be my  problem.

I armed myself with my book and my remaining sandal stood up and brandishing them both while making wild howls and yelps I managed to force a retreat from the rat into the bathroom. I hastily shut and locked the door whereupon Charlotte, until now a total fiend, collapsed into peals of hysterical laughter - "Why did you lock the door? It can't turn the handle."
'You'll see," I muttered darkly, a little hurt that my heroics had not been appreciated for their valour.  Charles returned with the manager - not a happy man to be woken at three in the morning. Charlotte explained about the rat - unda. No he said smiling piteously at this memsahib and her little knowledge of Indian vermin - a chooha , a small mouse - no harm. "Show them," she said to me. I told her it would get out again and they were no help - let them look in the morning. We all agreed that this was best, lights were turned off and we tried to close our eyes and sleep.

"Ow, bloody hell, who locked the stupid sodding door," was all it needed for Charlotte to roll over and tell me I was a genius - Charles meanwhile limped down the passage way looking for another toilet. All to soon it was time to get up, wash, avoid the rat and the breakfast and head for the border. Raxaul on the Indian side was calm and sleep in the early morning: beyond the border guards we could see lines of buses and people hurrying about.

We hurried across and with a brief look at our passports and visas we were nodded through into Nepal. Charles volunteered to go and find our bus and we sank gratefully on to a bench at a tea shop and drank that reviver if all people and all ills , gurum chai. We also noticed they seemed to do a nifty line in alu parathas so polished off two each before Charles returned. He looked a little worried - apparently our bus tickets were for a bus that didn't exist and all the buses to Kathmandu were full. Cometh the hour cometh the woman, Charlotte with that eccentricity of spirit that only rare souls are given, took the tickets from Charles and walked to the nearest bus. There was no shouting, no arguing just a beautiful girl speaking classically beautiful Hindi and enchanting the man as she did so. I caught the words chooha and unda several times so I suspect she was appealing to his better side. At one point they both looked at Charles and laughed, a little unkindly I thought, after all he had a nasty bruise on his toe from the door.

She beckoned us to come quickly and by some miracle had got us seats on the last bus out of Bhirgunj that day. Anne was so relieved that we would soon be on the last leg of the journey that she walked quite perklily to the bus and hopped aboard. These were not tourist buses - oh they existed complete with air conditioning and upholstered seats - these were country buses; they took families home, goats to market, children to hospital and old grannies to see their families. All of these and their luggage needed to be loaded and then there was us. Charles refused point blank to ride on the roof - very foolishly I felt - he would have had plenty of leg room and lots of lovely fresh air. Charlotte had  commandeered three seats at the back of the bus and feeling Charles had missed his chance with the roof, we took them, A toothless, wrinkled Nepali lady offered him her bedroll to sit on and he, rather, ungraciously accepted it and settled into the middle of the aisle. The engine turned over and there in front of us was the road already climbing away from the heat of the terai towards the blue of the mountains and the promise of journey's end.

I t is theoretically  an eight and a half hour drive from the border to Kathmandu, in reality it is more like thirteen to fourteen hours, The road climbs from the sea level of Biharbaba, I looked out of the window, and gave my  grown up heart to another city.

The GAP year traveller had not really been invented yet so the travellers that were there were visiting for religion - like the Maharishi man - cool dude, or drugs - found some primo dope yesterday man - up at that monkey temple - I was like so stoned. Or those, like us seeking adventure and new experiences. There were place to go to find out where to go, like Aunt Jane's for breakfast. Aunt Jane had been in the Peace Corps and started her little breakfast shop when she realised no one was having a cooked breakfast. Her porridge was fabulous as were the pancakes and maple syrup. You got there at about 8.30 met up with people you vaguely knew and were told the good things to go and see that day. Having delivered us safely Charles was catching up on his sleep and trying to restore his somewhat battered ego. Anne was recovered from the journey and Charlotte and I were in our element. An old friend from Calcutta - Peace Corps again came in and told us we should go to Bhaktapur as there was a huge festival there and it was very special. Bhaktapur is the most beautiful of the three cities, steeped in history and culture and truly lovely to visit. I deferred because Desmond and Dubby were flying in that afternoon so Charlotte and Anne set off alone and I went to my friend Yeshe's restaurant for a game of backgammon and a discussion of the merits of Fulham making it to the FA cup final. An eclectic mix of clientele.

By the late afternoon Desmond and Dubby had arrived at the OM where we all sat drinking rum and hot lemon and after catching up with faraway Calcutta Dubby asked me where my friends were. I told him I had no idea where Charles was and that Charlotte and Anne had gone to a festival at Bhaktapur. There were intakes of breath around the table and just as they were about to explain Charlotte and Anne were escorted in by our Peace Corps friend of the morning. They looked grey and Anne had some sort of red dye on her white kurta and in her hair. I reached out to brush it away and she leaped to her feet. screamed and ran off to the hotel. The regulars in the bar drew closer - even though they knew what had happened this should provide some entertainment for a  few nights to come.

"It was a festival," Charlotte said weakly, " a festival of sacrifice. Hundreds and hundreds of buffalo having their throats slit, the blood sprayed round as a blessing and then decapitated and spread across the square. The blood didn't catch me but it did poor Anne and the crowd was so thick we could only move forward to that awful carpet of buffalo heads". Mr Peace Corps had realised his error and gone to look for us and by sheer fluke did find Charlotte and Anne and get them out. They left the next morning choosing the safer option of river rafting and a visit to Varanasi.

I stayed on - I was having way too much fun and besides I had met someone. After the girls left he moved into the hotel room with me and shared my bed and made me laugh and gave me nits. And then - he was a heroin addict - clean when I first met him - using by the time I left. I was told, truthfully or not, that he, along with several others, died at a beach party in Goa where the heroin had been so pure they had all overdosed. I would like to think he is a middle aged regenerated ex hippy somewhere but I think he probably lies in an unmarked grave in Goa. He came from Wimbledon. Drugs are wicked and evil and destructive and they take our dreams and flatter us for awhile and destroy.

So I flew back to Calcutta on a plane, with an itchy scalp and a sore heart for someone who laughed me into bed and let me rabbit on as much as I wanted to and listened to my silly theories and demanded like a sultan to be told a bedtime story and had no self control when he saw the needle. But the rest of my heart knew it would be back to these mountains and this city that I loved.

NB - Fulham did make to the cup and the gentleman in question chartered a plane and took  all his friends to Wembley to see them win.


My kind of Kathmandu: An artist's impression of the emerald valley