Roses for Rinpoche
Photo: Karan Madhok
Fiction: ‘It is his image which comes to me now, teaching me mastery over illusion, instructing me how to transform my present suffering into future fortune. When we met him in the flesh, he blessed me with the name Tashi Tsomo. Auspicious feminine ocean.’
War killed me. Of course it did. Whom does it not destroy? Even the survivors, even the perpetrators of atrocities, are haunted for the rest of their poor spectral days by rubble, murder, bomb blast, shattering, poverty, desolation… Must I go on?
To read this tale, at this time, on this Earth, you must have at least seen the pictures, if not actually inhabited this all-too familiar terrain. And if not this time around, then for sure in your previous incarnation. It’s just a question of how much you remember, how much you have annihilated in the white fire of despair, under blankets of sorrow.
This is what I remember happened to me; and mark you, whatever torture they inflicted, my memory stayed vital to the bitter end, which is why I can recount it all—an entire lifetime later.
*
I was born on the high Tibetan plateau of Chantang, whose scant or invisible borders meant that we roam—like generations of pastoralists before us—wherever the herds grazed. We pitch on whichever high-altitude meadow would ensure our dzomo gave the sweetest milk, would help produce the best butter, yoghurt, and cheese. As wealthy nomads, our baku are woven from finest yak wool, our trunks full with brocade and turquoise. Under the fathomless blue overhead, we live in the midst of an almighty buzz of insects pollinating those elysian fields. I remember a rainbow of flowers between my toes, a sky to make you believe in celestial pure lands.
*
In march the armies of little red books under the armpits of soldiers. They are keen to confiscate our world view. My mother refuses to relinquish her right to roam. She is the first to be re-educated. It is a lesson that the soldiers believe will lever compliance from the rest of her extended family. But we are a hardy, faithful people. And we do not easily give up.
Buddha only knows the number of times, the number of times I scream into the void as they rape me, relentlessly, wordlessly, mercilessly, soldier upon soldier. And when I froth at the mouth with insane aftershock, Buddha alone can count the number of injections they give to silence my rabid tongue. It’s a miracle they do not cut it out and eat it, as they did my sister’s. They eat the babies we birth, then electrocute us with batons in our mouths until our teeth fall out for sins that are not ours.
In our language, Bod, we have no word for sin.
After they split open our faces, sometimes one of their doctors is obliging enough to stitch us up again, though not with anesthetic. Great big unruly stitches like those holding together a madman’s threadbare robe as he cackles his way from door to door of some abandoned village.
Through all my days and nights of physical, mental, subjection, I receive visions of my past—no drug is strong enough to knock these out of me. Once, long ago before this red madness, we had gone on a pilgrimage to my mother’s land of Kham, to Pelyul Monastery. My parents had taken me to be named by the head lama there. It is his image which comes to me now, teaching me mastery over illusion, instructing me how to transform my present suffering into future fortune. When we met him in the flesh, he blessed me with the name Tashi Tsomo. Auspicious feminine ocean. I remember the line of pilgrims behind us: each had travelled far for this meeting. Many were in tears of awe.
I remember my father’s strong arms lifting me up to the throne. I remember the thwack of the prayer book on my head. I remember his eyes, his arresting eyes, boring deep into mine.
During that short gap in time, monasteries have been razed, holocausts have obliterated tribes and lineages, and the one who named me has become a refugee. Wave upon wave of children cross the Himalayas to escape their ransacked homeland, to put down tentative, impoverished roots in new places.
All that happened long ago. I have been in the prison camp for many years now, maybe eight, maybe ten. I am no longer the rosy cheeked beauty of the plateau, pride of my clan. I am all hollowed out, clad in stark gulag uniform which hangs off my bones like an old skin in need of shedding.
I stare down at my hands, so wrinkled, so wizened. Something, someone, tells me to touch the cloth of my uniform. It puzzles me how warm it feels, yet as I stroke myself, I find it is my chupa that I am wearing, woven from the wool of our own sturdy yak. My hair, shorn short as a monk’s, dangles long and luxuriant in its hundred and eight braids again, each one ending in a bright rock coral bead. My skin, now pock-marked by infection and scribbled over with broken scars, feels smooth. My cheeks tingle and if lightly sunburned.
I smile, and though I am sure I am now toothless, my tongue can feel an arc of enamel.
The guards approach. It is time, they say. Before they shoot me, I laugh in their faces with my dazzling new white smile.
*
It is twenty years since they shot me dead. During that short gap in time, monasteries have been razed, holocausts have obliterated tribes and lineages, and the one who named me has become a refugee. Wave upon wave of children cross the Himalaya to escape their ransacked homeland, to put down tentative, impoverished roots in new places.
The millions of us who were murdered choose our rebirths with utmost caution.
*
The winter wind is bitingly familiar. It whips around me now as I snuggle deeper into my pushchair. I am two-years-old, and being propelled through Trafalgar Square, past its column and four bronze lions, up the Mall towards Buckingham Palace, where great crowds have amassed to witness the New Year’s Eve fireworks. There is jubilation on the streets, in spite of the miners strikes and rise of the National Front: for people-power is gaining a hold and London at least is home to vibrant communities from many lands. The sky explodes in stars and the crowd swoons with oos and ahs.
Buckingham Palace, looming at the end of the street like some squat, severe fat dwarf, is not at all like the Potala. It is not built on any hill and there is no Jokhang, no monastery in sight. Its jack-of-all-trades flies high, illuminated on this dark night, But I know nothing of politics and my new social conditions. In my infant cognizance, all I register are the explosions. I flinch at each, recalling somewhere deep in my recalibrated cells the fires which laid low my land of previous birth.
By all accounts, I am an early developer and have been out of nappies for months. When we reach home, my mother is confused to find that my knickers are filled with petrified shit.
*
Hamlet lied when he said that dreams must bring us pause. They do not. Burning a high fever at age six, I am surrounded by familiar soldiers. They have returned to take me from one camp (heavenly abode of song and sharp whistle, horizon, and salt lake) to another. Its horrors are too numerous to describe. Lice that eat you alive. Starvation that gnaws you to the bone. Re-education via torture. Rape so regular it grows inane. They surround me, pointing their rifles straight at me. I turn and turn again, looking for that one gap in the metallic circle of hell, but there is none. I yell myself awake, sweat-drenched.
*
Later, I am escaping through windows small enough only for my infantalized frame. I have starvation to thank for that. The window is that of the gulag kitchen and I am permitted to climb through by one Tibetan cook who used to work for my family. He is prepared to die for me by turning a blind eye. He does not look in my direction as he stirs gruel for a thousand in his giant’s cauldron.
I struggle through. I am now in a storeroom with one locked door and no other window. There is a pile of rice sacks in a corner of the store. If I hide behind them, how long before they find me? Will the cook be able to smuggle himself out of the kitchen to unlock the door? And if he does so, what will I find on the other side? A patrol? A high wall, rolled barbed wire on its top? More guns pointing in my direction?
Bathed in sweat, I yell myself awake again.
*
When my mother brings me to India, it is only on reaching Dharamsala that I finally feel at home. McLeodganj is one simple row of Tibetan cafés serving tsampa and salt tea. The night bus stops outside a general store, which has been run by Parsis since before Independence. I breathe a sigh of recognition. Home is in the dark red flash of monks’ robes on the narrow winding path to our mountain guest house, former summer palace of a maharaja. Its chowkidar—an old sage who likes to meditate in the forest before waking up the guests with the breakfast gong—is surrounded by kittens in his pine needle nest. There are stained glass windows in the bathroom.
The prayer wheels at the temple turn with familiar ease. I already know the clack of upright looms upon which tiger rugs appear. Yes, Mummy, I say in my very English accent. Yes, this is a good place. Let’s stay here for a while.
*
Although there are these aide memoires throughout my rebirthed childhood, it is not until the 21st century that I meet my Master again, meet the one who once named me in a remote mountain monastery 70 years ago. At that time, he had only just been ordained. Now he is nearing 90.
I am on my way to see him, though I do not know it yet. I have just got off the train at Charing Cross station, amid a quotidian ocean of grey and black commuters, being rained on by the digital lettering announcing arrivals and departures.
It seems unbelievable that peace will be found, however slow it drips.
I hurry along the Caledonian Road. It is my mother who has suggested I meet this Rinpoche, once famous in Tibet, who says that I must take him an offering. My mother says it should be something that is neither owned nor borrowed, neither bought nor stolen. What can I take? I am already running late.
Only the singing and reedy swell of clarinets under skies so bright, it feels like the world is awash with the milk of stars. Only the rising tide of wild flowers coming to greet me as I rush down the hill abandoning all to joy.
I look down at the grey pavement and there, growing between the cracks, I see a miracle. Tiny red flowers, London’s Pride, are pushing through the gaps of the pavement. I pluck them, gently, explaining that they will be offered to a master in exile, a master who has rebuilt monasteries with his bare hands. Other flowers overhear, stretching forward their long stem necks, presenting themselves: dandelions, rough and breezy, even an escapee wallflower sweet as those tended in my grandmother’s suburban garden.
I wind the tiny bouquet in a blade of grass. Something is stirring in my fingertips. It feels familiar, the feeling of long ago in fields on a faraway plateau.
*
“Ah, Tashi Tsomo,” he greets me and his eyes fill with tears. We are lined up, pilgrims of another age, making our offerings, receiving our blessings. Before I reach him, one of his monks chortles at the sight of me. In my new body, unsure of what clothes to wear to meet him, I have chosen the only dark red thing in my wardrobe: a silk ball gown, all frills and flounces. I bow low. I receive another thwack on the head with a bundle of prayers. I cover my face with my hands and weep, recalling who I once was.
On my way back to the station, only astonished memories of my home before this one, prevail. Only the feel of my mother’s fingers close to my scalp, patiently braiding my hair. Only the singing and reedy swell of clarinets under skies so bright, it feels like the world is awash with the milk of stars. Only the rising tide of wild flowers coming to greet me as I rush down the hill abandoning all to joy.
I enter the swell of evening rush and tumble onto the station concourse. I am seeking the number of my platform when it falls. Falls from heaven at my feet, a fat bunch of ruby roses, long stemmed and glowing as a Rinpoche’s luminous robe.
The Rinpoche speaks to me, in my mind. You see, his calm, rich voice tells me. War, peace, both manifest to bud, bloom and wither according to their karmic imprint. This gift is just another memory for your tale. A reminder to say that as once, I named you, so now I remember your name. To say that flowers still bloom where we least expect them. To let you know that scars fade and deeds are revisited upon their perpetrators. To help you recall that divine retribution and redemption are beyond the laws of any faith and cannot be humanly administered. To remind you that time itself is a memory, a story.
To let you know.
To let you know.
Here, we meet again.
*
I pick up the bouquet. It has weight. It’s no illusion. I stare around, holding out the flowers to passers-by, seeking the one who dropped it, looking for a way to hand the flowers back to their rightful owner. They don’t seem to belong to anyone. Perhaps they don’t even belong to me. But they are something.
Something that is not bought.
Something that is not borrowed.
Something that is not owned.
Something that is not stolen.
***
Tansy Troy is an India-based educationalist, poet, performer, playwright and maker of bird and animal masks. She conceived and edits The Apple Press, a young people’s eco journal which features poetry, stories, articles and artwork. Tansy has published poetry, articles and reviews in The Hindustan Times, The Hindu, The Scroll, Punch Magazine, Art Amour, Muse India, Plato’s Cave and The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English. Join her on the journey @voice_of_the_turtle and @the_adventures_of_tara.
