HIMALAYAN RETREAT

                            

Two weeks elapsed before the old man spoke to me in English for the first time.  ‘Good morning,’ he muttered, so gutteral that I nearly missed the greeting.  Most mornings at six o’clock you might hear his shuffling plod sounding slightly less noisy in his slow descent from the rooftop by way of the creaking metal door, down the flights of steps to the ground floor and out onto the veranda.  For a Tibetan of eighty-two, Mr Lodro was a tallish man, about five foot eight, notwithstanding his gradual stoop, who from all accounts must have been strongly muscled in his twenties.  Nowadays he is always apparelled in a sleeveless black imitation leather jacket, dark blue dungarees and a distinctive white woollen beanie topped with a pom-pom.  Seldom does he speak, but to his family he can suddenly bark utterances, particularly to his four-year old grandson, Jackson, whom he sometimes catches pissing on his potted marigold.

Old Mr Lodro’s first task of a morning is to fill up the watering can and bucket with tap water and carry both unsteadily to the garden at the side of the house, then back along the row of shrubs, small trees and colourful potted plants that run along the path in front of the veranda:  native plants, one or two of which have flourished in southern England and Australia, such as begonia and hydrangea.  Not surprising, given this township had once been a hill station during the British Raj, though unlike Shimla, the state capital, no sign remains. 

Whilst splashing the water on, Mr Lodro keeps a stony eye on that excitable scamp, Jackson, who kneels on one of the veranda camp beds that doubles as settee during daytime and site of evening smokos for the volunteers.  Today Jackson is sporting his number 9 Les Bleus soccer shirt and elastic-sided boots, as he roars rrrmm! rrrmm! forcing his trucks round the dishevelled quilt, then swinging round by one of its furry arms his much maligned big brown, pink-faced monkey with floppy legs.

Then the veteran climbs the stairs, unbolts the metal door with a clatter and once more shuffles out onto the flat roof.  Up here, he stares into the valley, whose densely packed canopy of green-leafed boughs of pine prevents him from laying eyes on the forestry monastery itself, whose deep growl of a monastic chant is relayed by microphone with tinny echo the length of the valley.  As old Lodro shifts his watery gaze around at the ranges, he murmurs prayers or the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum.  Then he unfurls all those snapping prayer flags twisted by the night breeze, or merely touches each flag in succession as a holy relic that would carry some message of hope.  The Tibetan name for ‘prayer flag’, lung-ti, means ‘wind horse’.  When the wind catches the prayers, they ride off as horses on the wind.  The colours of the flags represent the elements:  green for earth, yellow for wind, red for fire, blue for water and white for air.  Some resemble washed-out rags with indiscriminate colours, as lines of prayer flags run round the four corners of the roof, others running diagonally across.  If volunteers wish to use the clotheslines, they duck under the flags to reach them.

The roof is level concrete, save the two blue water towers, two solo energy panels and the eight-rung metal ladder that lands you with an eagle’s eye over the surrounding village, the partially shadowed forested slopes and distant mountain peaks.  Did old Mr Lodro remember that treacherous trail of half a century ago in that flight from Lhasa?  Very steep, very slippery up and down blinding white inclines and blurry false leads to dead ends on a precipice, sudden blizzards that blocked the passes, relentless squalls that stung your raw red eyes, icy rivulets in torrent that you had to traverse somehow, miserably sodden.

Did he in his most disturbing dreams hear the wild laughing yelp of the shaggy-haired yeti?  Or imagine he was hallucinating with a partial sighting of a red panda or a skulking Red Guard?  Did he glimpse the elusive snow leopard in his frozen derangement?  And when he bivouacked on bone hard ground, back hard up against a boulder or shivering in a narrow cairn, did he seek propitiation from the mountain gods with an offering of the simplest food and a heap of stones, sticks and rags?  Surely, the callow twenty-three year old must have desperately prayed for a wandering lama who might magically transform himself into a trusty guide.

My own far more modest journey began two and a half weeks before in Dharamsala, otherwise known as Little Tibet, at the startlingly modest Kangra airport, home of Air India, where I was collected by an almost silent taxi driver with very little English.

But clutching the hillside, those uniform boxes mounting upper Dharamsala were not without appeal, thanks mainly to the heavily green-treed setting and sumptuous views.  Rectangular, with gaily coloured roofs, mostly white facades with stark, oblong eyes staring down at the valley.  Gullies of grey stones and small boulders line the falls of water to their winding beds.  Whereas even higher at McLeodganj, the narrow streets without pavements were crowded with tourists, the odd cow that could shoulder you aside and crawling cars whose wing mirror might clout your arm. 

Here I was joined by another volunteer, Gareth, a nineteen year-old from Southampton.  That evening we dined at an Indian restaurant not recommended by our Tibetan contact that had escorted us round the town to the Dalai Lama’s residence, urging us at stalls or shop windows to buy some keepsakes to help the poor Tibetan community.  During the night I heard him tossing from side to side and groaning.  Then he got up and rushed to the bathroom. ‘Oh god, oh god!  That bloody rice!’  Later he confessed to having suffered an upset stomach since Thailand.  He slept in till late the following afternoon, while I moseyed up and down the busy, narrow streets, hoping to find some woodland walk away from the hurly-burly.  Our hotel was beautifully appointed overlooking a vast forested valley.  Breakfast of toast and coffee on the veranda was made entertaining by the manager firing his slingshot at marauding monkeys, while I observed the black hawks swooping down on the lower life.  Then watched in utter disbelief and growing disgust at bins of rubbish being systematically poured from the rear of the hotel down the steep sides of the lush green valley.

Already Gareth was officer material, but an officer-in-waiting.  Compelled to wait till he was twenty to take up his commission in the British army, he had been encouraged to draw on his life savings, loans from his uncle and a blessing from his father to gain experience of the world by taking up a series of voluntary teaching positions in a push through south-east Asia.  During these travels he had garnered the basics of playing chess, mainly by a close observation of his opponents’ superior strategy of thinking several moves ahead, of somehow imagining the consequences for several pieces tracking alternative routes across the board.

He was chuffed to discover the connection between chess and his own addiction to on-line war games.  Waxing irrepressibly, he opened up a whole new world to me:  how he could take the role of general or rebel leader, issue commands to deploy troops in different theatres of war, recruiting and funding armies, making use of campaign maps to conquer regions never dreamt of in geography lessons at school.  ‘The global reach of these games is unbelievable!  So is the realistic detail of the 3D visuals.  One time I’m Napoleon, next day Attila the Hun.  I’ve learnt so much history.  Besides, you hold in your hands the power to change history – retrospectively, of course.  When I get back to the Old Dart, I intend to hold a rematch between the Allies and the Axis Powers.’

Which explains why I could never outflank him with castles at chess.  As much as I envied Gareth his enthusiasm for strategic planning, I felt slightly uneasy that he had his life’s journey already mapped out:  entry into the British army as an officer responsible for his own platoon; then when he’d outgrown that experience, falling back on his trade skill as an engineer, for which he had recently acquired a college diploma.

Two days later, after being shunted between offices and floors of the Deputy Commissioner for four tedious hours, our contact, Dorjee, gesticulating furiously to us from the other end of the corridor, we were advised to return at a later date to collect our permits that enabled us to reside in a Tibetan district.  How utterly frustrating!  Yet I felt so relieved to be winding down the mountain away from Dharamsala, passing the airport and heading towards Palampur, the taxi driver tooting his horn every few seconds to warn other vehicles he was sitting on their tail ready to sniff a half-chance of an opening and shoot past.  In the fertile Kangra valley we saw rows upon rows of short, thick tea bushes, the massive extent of the ranges that would follow us for two hours, the nonchalant fatalism of canines, cattle and pedestrians crossing blind in front of traffic and witnessed the procession of two convoys of fifteen military trucks – this was border country!  Himachal Pradesh faces China to the east and Kashmir to the north.

As soon as the taxi turned off the highway onto a quiet, tree-lined lane, the ambience changed completely.  Here in the Tibetan project was a veritable domain, a secluded green world, a reminder of old village charm, a huddle of small farms with their intricate network of waterways, slender viaducts and stone or wooden bridges, an odour of manure; a kaleidoscope of colours – streams of prayer flags signalling a cluster of monasteries.  Even the Indian mynas, a bullying pest that had colonised southern Australia, were perched with familiarity on the flagpoles.  Trotting down a narrow path a herd of working donkeys, saddle bags filled to the brim with stones for laying fresh paths, followed by a wizened Indian farmer, his stick striking against a pole to encourage the laggards tempted by clumps of grass.

At the railed-off bust of a bespectacled Mahatma Gandhi with a wreath of freshly cut flowers adorning his neck, the taxi turned left very slowly into an even narrower lane with a handful of shops with small frontages and a two-storey café on the corner.  The driver parked close by a walled garden.

Gareth and I stretched and drew breath to take in the house, our living quarters for the next four weeks.  Heaving my luggage up steep steps, I found myself on the third floor.  My first impulse was to check the view from the two windows at right angles to each other.  Behind my bed soared the highest mountain with its snow-covered peak.  From the side window beyond the neighbouring houses and streams of prayer flags, I could descry four ranges of more distant mountains receding.

In the lounge/dining area on the ground floor a wide-screen Samsung was showing some computer-generated martial arts film, gawked at by mainly youngish volunteers lying sprawled on two of three sofas or sitting in armchairs poring over smart phones and hoeing into packets of crisps, bars of chocolate, nuts, sweet biscuits, shakes and fries . . . mounted above them on the wall was a very large coloured photograph of a modestly smiling Dalai Lama.  Seated over by the staircase, an older lady, seemingly detached, mid-fifties, absorbed in her apple I-Phone, whom I soon came to know as Leanne.

‘Welcome to our house,’ a young man said breezily, stepping in from the kitchen.  ‘I’m Tenzin.’  Slim, black-haired with a fashionable quiff above the forehead, tanned face, open-necked shirt, dress jeans.  ‘You must be Callum.’

‘That’s right,’ I said.  ‘Was it so obvious?’

‘You look like experienced teacher.  So you,’ he said, half-turning, ‘must be Gareth.  I know you tired, but we go for walk now.  Have lunch when you return, okay?’

I’d been looking forward to lunch, a long, cool drink and a refreshing shower after a sticky journey in the mid-day sun – it was nearly three o’clock!  On the other hand, I was impatient to scope the village. Tenzin leading the way over a very rough, pock-marked road scarcely wide enough for two cars, we strolled past the smallest stalls, more the shape of sentry boxes, the vendors appearing to sell nothing but stare at the passers-by.  At the landing place for para-gliders, Tenzin halted so we could witness close-up the novices seated in front of their instructors gliding in quickly to land, brake on, feet down.

‘This is world-famous Billing Fields.  Bir is thirteen hundred metres above sea, so para-gliding very good.  If you want to go gliding,’ he warned, ‘make sure you ask to see instructor’s qualifications.  Many die because they ignore this safety check.  The cost is two thousand, one hundred rupees for about half-hour gliding.  Today it is quiet but weekends it’s very busy.  We get invaded by tourists.’

Four trainees were struggling to tug their harnesses on, leaning forward, then practising short runs downhill to open their chutes, roared on by their instructors.  It didn’t look too easy.

Tenzin treated us to a delicious sweet masala chai, as we chatted in the shade of trees by one of several streams cascading down the mountains - so restorative after the run-around meted out to us by the Indian public service that morning.

On our return I started to unpack, when my room-mate walked in.  Wearing a FREE TIBET t-shirt, Jerome was a baby-faced nineteen-year old American, who had made himself very much at home with clothes heaped over the spare bed and luggage rack and thirteen empty water bottles lying on the floor.   I soon discovered his partiality for chicken mimosa, crisps and Hershey chocolate.  I hoped he wasn’t too anxious about the disparity in our ages, but in any case he would get up late and retire late, which made it easier for me to take an early shower.  He would spend most of his free time downstairs watching computer-generated movies on Airtel, playing riffs on his guitar or surfing the internet for gag sites.

Summoning Gareth and myself to a briefing after dinner, Tenzin explained our placements in different monasteries, times of lessons, geographical locations.  Spoke of his own family.  How his oldest brother was living in America, a married sister living in France, the mother of Jackson.  How he too wished to fledge his wings and emigrate to test himself in the wider world, the free world, another culture, enjoy the pleasures of a western life-style, but he could never leave his father.  His mother, Zenji, had died three years before from liver cancer.  How he greatly respected his father who had always favoured him above the other siblings.  He was the first to be given his own bed, the first to be given a bike.

‘Lodro always did his best for me, even when we had no money.  Sometimes I buy things from old poor people, things I don’t even need, because they remind me of my father’s poverty years ago.  That would make my father happy, if he knew.  I vowed to help others.  If you cannot help others, at least don’t harm them.  You must respect old people, listen to them.  My father used to be a loner, stayed home all the time.  I think he’s becoming happier.  As much as I long for independence, I will do nothing to betray my father.’

My first stint of teaching began on the following morning.  The monastery was situated in the main street five minutes’ walk from the volunteer house.  Around the courtyard, lying neatly over the balcony rail to be aired, extended a long line of maroon robes; and yellow shirts lying over another rail at right-angles.  Dhona, Tenzin’s oldest sister in charge of the running of the household, also did occasional clerical work at the monastery and introduced me in the library to the headmaster, a solemn monk in his mid-forties, wearing the typical maroon robe, yellow shirt and tonsure.  He spoke quite good English but very softly.

‘This is the workbook for class 6.  Marigold.  How long you stay?  Only one month?  Can you stay longer?  You sure?  Now we go to your classroom.’  Which proved to be a small dark room with ceiling fan, a chalk blackboard and ten mats in two rows on the floor.  ‘I tell you now, some of these boys are very naughty.’

At 10.30 the bell was struck for my English class to begin.  Having slipped out of their sandals at the door, the boy monks filed in, gathering up a length of robe they would fling over their shoulder like a Roman senator, said ‘Allo’ with a nervous giggle, sat cross-legged on a mat and studied their umpteenth voluntary teacher of the year with curiosity.  After briefly introducing myself, I asked for their names and ages.  Several were Nepalese, some Tibetan.  The youngest, very short and skinny, was eight, the oldest and least able sixteen.  After mutual introductions and some testing of days of the week, parts of the body, clothes and colours – no one had informed me of the class standard or which page the boys had reached in Marigold – I decided to revise the present participle, with the students demonstrating an action while asking, ‘What am I doing?’  The youngest boy was picked on to begin and after some prevarication and false starts moved into a suite of dainty dancing steps, little hops, turning on one foot with sweeps of his robe down to the floor, which drew forth a critical commentary in Hindi or Tibetan or Nepalese.

‘In English,’ I said, somewhat sharply.  ‘Try to think in English.’  Which was foolishly optimistic at this level.

But the novelty of the exercise, the opportunity to get to their feet and show off – ‘I’m playing football’, ‘I’m washing an elephant,’ ‘I’m Sachin Tendulkar playing cricket’ - was too tempting.  Was that straight-faced performance an imitation of the headmaster eating noodles?  I wondered.  Actions grew more silly and giggly or more daring.  The whole class erupted in laughter when one boy freely announced he was an orphan.  Constant chat amid gales of laughter, a nervous teacher’s worst nightmare.  And a foreign tongue, to boot.

‘Sit down, boys!’  Obviously, I had to settle things down, casting a nervous look in the direction of the library through the open door.  ‘Quietly, thank you.’

But as they did so, a sudden flurry:  two boys trading niggling pinches and insults.

‘Stop that!’ I ordered, trying not to raise my voice, but prised them apart.  ‘Buddhist monks must not be violent.  The Buddha said so.  Now go and stand outside the door, you two.’

One of the boys hawked up a gobbet of phlegm.  It was an ugly noise I would hear frequently in India.

And what of the youngest Tibetans born in India?  For instance, Jackson, hyperactive with attitude … belligerence!  Chestnut eyes, very short black hair combed forward, tanned skin.  At present he is sporting a peacock feather behind his ear.  Now the proud owner of a big new toy:  a plasma car with blazing red body and seat, three wheels and steering wheel all black – another giant stride away from the high plains of Tibet.  Both his model buggy with gold capsule and his racing car are made in China.

One of the Dalai Lama’s most frequent pronouncements is the avowal of non-violence, of doing no harm to any sentient creature.  Jackson is too young to understand or even listen to such pronouncements.  Within his orbit are three guns with which he frequently bails up the volunteers:  a hefty fat Tommy gun in military green; a conventional grey pistol; an over-sized red gun in the form of a fish head, eyes on each side of the barrel – three guns too many for a Buddhist happily shooting at limp, fluffy animals with a growly running commentary, talking to himself in staccato Tibetan or Hindi phrases and plosive sounds.

Son of old Lodro’s youngest daughter now living in France, Jackson is suitably dressed in khaki and green combat shirt and violently clashing gaudy-striped pants, a litter of super-sized plastic toys, trains, trucks spread over the floor.  Perhaps nursing resentment that his parents had deserted him, unaware that they couldn’t obtain his visa.  Loud and ‘in-your-face’ with volunteers grinning at his antics, who had more tolerance than I for his boisterous play.

One person I really liked was Bindu, the long-suffering Indian house servant.  While sitting on the veranda before breakfast, I would hear her heavy breathing as she ran down the lane from the bus stop and coughed her way up the path.  For a young woman, maybe in her thirties, with a child at home, Bindu was very stout and broad across the beam, but she possessed a beaming smile and long raven-black hair clasped in a bun at the nape.  A slow, ponderous mover about the house, she nonetheless possessed very fast hands for beating out balls of pastry into fresh chapatti and was capable of serving up a dozen vegetable omelettes for breakfast in double-quick time.

It struck me as very odd that Bindu gobbled her lunch sitting on the kitchen floor, slumped back against the wall.  Nor did she use a knife and fork – then I realised there were never any knives on our dining table, only forks and spoons.  She poured juice over the rice from the eggplant or chickpeas or dal, kneaded the rice in a closed palm, then tucked a fistful of the vegetable and rice mash into her mouth.

One lunch-time I committed a faux-pas and Bindu’s uncharacteristic reaction shocked me.  ‘No-o, no-o!’ she suddenly cried, quite vehemently – perhaps, as I later reflected, because Dhona was working at the hotplates alongside her.  I had simply bowed before her with my hands raised palm to palm in order to express my thanks for the fruit salad and sweet yoghurt.

‘You not do that!’ protested Dhona.  ‘Only for respect elder men.  We bow you!’

In the afternoons I attended a second monastery, again only a few minutes’ walk away.  I was far more comfortable with these two classes.  The older group, aged fifteen to seventeen, were very keen and conscientious, making it clear that they wanted more grammar.  I was in my element.  Not only did I revise the nine parts of speech, but introduced them to figures of speech.  They were very earnest in their comical attempts to get their tongue around round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran and Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.  Only a couple of these senior students were reasonably communicative in English, but all insisted that we finish the comprehension questions they had had been working on with their previous teacher and were deadly serious about repeating words three or four times in pronunciation practice.

The young group were very quiet, almost sleepy, but for the dominant young man, Choekiy, tall and slim, who always jumped to offer answers but usually got them wrong and subsided with a rueful smile.  This was especially true in mathematics, where I attempted to teach them algebra and the multiplication of minus numbers.  A passive group, they seemed very vulnerable.  They rose at six o’clock in the morning, shared rooms for four or six boys, took lessons in Hindi, Nepalese and Tibetan as well as English and were required to learn by heart pages and pages of sacred chants.

On my first Saturday morning I decided to walk up the mountain behind the monastery, which meant I would pass by their almost bare, bone-dry games area.  Some of these young monks I recognised playing football or king-he, whereby they’d fiercely throw a ball to strike the fleeing body of another.  They waved back at me and I was pleased they were enjoying themselves, having finished their cleaning duties in the monastery as well as in their rooms.  But these hard-working, tightly regulated youngsters might never see their families for years; nor were they allowed out of the monastery grounds by themselves till they were seniors.

Crossing the minor road behind the monastery school and stepping over a broken wooden stile, I envisioned a rural scene that must have endured many years:  women young and old, working in the fields amongst the haycocks, immaculately dressed in saris of magenta, purple or deep green, bending their backs or kneeling at the base of bushes, reaping knives in hand to cut the grass and hang yellowing clumps on bushes or branches to dry.  Later the hay might be stored in stone barns or the upper storey of a dilapidated old house for animal feed.  Slowly picking my way along the narrowest of paths, I came across crickets zinging through the air, a pile of corn cobs lying in the sun, six-inch dark brown slugs plump as dog turds, a pile of cow dung, a small stupa at cross-paths with space for a humble offering.

My favourite walk beyond the village was past the landing-place at Billing Fields and across the bridge to the pine forest.  At first glance it looked as if all those thin trunks had been burnt in a raging fire, their branches trimmed, with fine feathery foliage sprouting only at the top.  On closer inspection, the lighter bark of these trees, almost pink in the sunshine, reminds you of a snake; or the darker black-to-brown of an alligator’s scales.  There are no animals to be sighted in daytime; perhaps after dusk the monkeys will emerge, as they do nearby the forest monastery.  Only occasionally do circumspect motorists, mainly tourist taxis bumping over lumpen rock and dusty gravel, or motorcyclists straightening out of the serpentine bends with increased revs, tamp down the ceaseless sissing of insects unseen.

Late in the afternoon, gradually searching the distant sky, you could glimpse para-gliders as dots sailing over the crest of the mountain ranges, gradually becoming translucent membranes in the bright glare, evolving into miniature kites, then looming in the dome above as fully fledged gliders way up under the fleece of clouds, seeming to hang and drift in the upthrust of thermals, before swooping with lateral sweeps, until with a sharp tack to left, then right, then left again they line up their approach to the landing-place, billowing down and swinging across the terraces of vegetable beds and fields of Billing and low over the tourist road to the lower grassy slopes.

Lodro’s original family hailed from south-eastern Tibet, the region of Kham, where he was brought up with five sisters and four brothers.  A most devout young man, he made a pilgrimage to India before she gained independence at a time when few Tibetans travelled alone.  A patriotic Tibetan, he acknowledged that the heart of Buddhism was based in India.  But when Chairman Mao defeated Chiang Kai-Shek to establish a Communist regime in Beijing, he took a keen interest in his vast but underpopulated neighbour for its strategic importance and unrealised mineral wealth.  Besides, he claimed, he wished to rescue Tibet from feudal serfdom and regarded his army as liberators.  In October, 1950 Chinese troops began their invasion.  The following year Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, falls.  In the countryside native resistance simmers for years.  In 1959 protests against Chinese occupation are staged on the streets of the capital.

Tibet is very mountainous and possessed no suitable road to advance an army.  It took ten years to build one worthy for the Chinese military to proceed far beyond Lhasa.  When the call was made by the Tibetan government to all men, including monks, aged between sixteen and sixty to volunteer for military service, Lodro heeded the call.  Loathing the notion of living under Chinese rule, he made protests against Beijing and joined the volunteer army in eastern Tibet.  Believing his first allegiance was owed to the Dalai Lama, he later transferred to central Tibet to protect His Holiness.

The moment that the Chinese army attacked his summer palace, the twenty-three year old Dalai Lama fled across the mountains to seek asylum from the Indian government.  He refused to countenance resistance himself.  One hundred thousand loyalists fled with His Holiness.  Lodro was forced to make the painful decision of leaving his wife and children to act as escort for his political and religious leader.  At twenty-four, he found himself fighting the Chinese face to face and becoming a killer, which for a Buddhist believing in non-violence was another dreadful dilemma.  For your own self-defence and the defence of your country, reassured the Dalai Lama, you are permitted to fight the aggressor.  During the hasty retreat of the volunteer army, young Lodro killed half a dozen of the enemy.  He vividly remembers setting fire to a supply cart and killing its driver.  Armed only with a big hunting knife and an outmoded gun like a powder musket, he was often engaged in hand-to-hand fighting.

But with no military training under its belt in this hitherto peaceful country, the Tibetan army struggled.  At first the Americans sent guns, but the soldiers didn’t know how to shoot them.  Nor had they ever heard of rockets, so when the Red Army launched these mysterious missiles, the Tibetans stood and watched bemused.  Many died for their ignorance.  Nor did they understand the concept of machine guns.  In their naivety the Tibetans assumed the Red Army would make a frontal attack, so they waited . . . fatally.  Instead, the Chinese had them surrounded.  One of several Chinese soldiers who opposed the Communist regime and fought alongside the Tibetans, put too much dynamite into a piece of ordnance.  Lodro watched in horror as twelve fellow soldiers were blown sky-high.  Worse, these alien invaders were slaughtering innocent men, women and children and summarily destroying six thousand monasteries.  Many Tibetan soldiers committed suicide at the helpless plight of their country.

Educated Tibetans who stayed behind, such as the family of Lodro’s first wife, could not find work because the Chinese government gave preference to its own people.  Consequently, many emigrated to America and Canada, sending money back home so their own people could hold onto their own culture.  Lodro has returned three times to his native country on Indian papers and travel visas, but regrets that the Dalai Lama can never return, therefore never reincarnate in Tibet.  Will he be the last Dalai Lama?  With heavy heart, the old man fears so.  Nor has the second-highest ranked lama, the Panchen Lama, the man responsible for finding the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, been sighted since he was a six year-old taken into custody by Chinese authorities.

In her early forties, Viv had never taught before.  She had brought with her several boxes of coloured pencils as a stand-by.  Although she exuded warmth and confidence, possessed a lively manner and was genuinely inquisitive about people, the very thought of addressing a group of strangers made her anxious.  Children, in particular, for she had no children of her own, in spite of many years of trying with her husband back in Kauai.  But then volunteering in a foreign culture was always going to be a challenge.  In her brief time in India certain experiences had already disturbed her.

During orientation week in Delhi she’d been groped from behind while descending a flight of steps, her buttocks squeezed.  Never had she felt more offended, more angry, more violated.  ‘Fuck off!’ she yelled with all her might and, turning back, lashed out with both fists flailing.  Her reaction warded off the assailant, who acted miffed, as if he didn’t understand such an outburst.  Viv scurried back to the safety of the volunteer house, took a longer shower than usual and tried to calm down with a can of beer from the fridge.

In Dharamsala she had been moved to tears by a giant display of photographs, a tribute to the one hundred and thirty-four monks, mostly teenagers, framed by leaping red flames, who since 2007 had poured petrol over themselves, crying out, ‘Give freedom to Tibet!’ before dropping the fatal match.  ‘Don’t harm other sentient beings,’ the Buddha had advised.  Apparently, you may harm yourself, she thought.

But she couldn’t rid herself of the strain and stench of Old Delhi, the rubbish, the beggars, the parasites of rickshaw drivers dogging her footsteps, the squalor of the streets, the physical decay.  Until Bir.  What a relief to find some escape from crowds and corruption!  Except that even in this manageable village amid so much pristine grandeur, all water courses were polluted with rubbish, usually clogging up beneath stone bridges.  All that refreshingly pure water flowing down from the mountains!  Surely for Buddhists, pure water is placed in vessels on the shrine to represent a reverence for life.  How could the local inhabitants turn a blind eye to the violation of natural beauty?  Such an ugly scar saddened her immensely.  But then what about the volunteers’ litter?   The empty plastic bottles of Bislieri, Acquafina, Kinley and future choice?  Left behind on the rooftop to roll crinkling around in the breeze or under their beds and on the veranda with cigarette butts or empty on the dining room table or partly full with their given names labelled on the cap or on the side in black ink? 

Meandering along a narrow path through the farms behind the monastery, she was taken aback at the sight of a cow tightly tethered over a rubbish pit, barely able to move.

The transition for the Tibetans to a new land must have seemed very strange to Lodro and the others.  They’d journeyed from a very cold region to a land of much milk and meat, plenty of warm clothes, but no money.  The changes of diet meant that the food was often indigestible.  Rice and dal had never been part of the Tibetan diet.  Many died because of the different extremes of food and heat as well as border fracas.                                                         

The Indian government established the Settlement project by building roads in northern India.  Lodro earned one and a half rupees a day, his wife one rupee.  After several years of daily running the family on two and a half rupees, his new young wife, Zenji, was able to start a business selling liquor, while he ran a jeweller’s business.  But to look after nine children, they still had to borrow money.

In 1970 they finally acquired a house in Bir, but an empty house:  no bed, no mattress, only one shawl to cover the children.  They had to collect wood to make a fire to keep warm and boil hot water.  They were obliged to share a bathroom with neighbours and hold down the flat iron roof with rocks in strong winds.  It was essential for Mr Lodro to go out in winter to earn some money.  He found a job selling suits, carrying them on each arm as he walked from village to village.  Instead of using sign language, he began to learn Hindi.  Then he got lucky, winning a small house with kitchen in a raffle run by the Tibetan government-in-exile.  Forty-five years later he had saved enough money to move to a slightly larger house.  Finally, the family purchased their current dwelling, a four-storey building largely given over now to the twelve or twenty English-speaking volunteers each week.

Woken by the cawing of crows massing about the rooftops, Viv was always the first of her room-mates to get out of bed, but delayed taking a shower till lunchtime when the solar-heated water might have warmed up.  After a cup of strong coffee – she’d bought her own instant coffee – she walked along the laneways to the monastery.  Dhona was always gabbling on about puja and had invited Viv in the first week to join her.  By seven o’clock in the morning Dhona was already doing puja lying on the kitchen floor, wearing black trackies threaded with lavishly coloured floral symbols.  The kitchen as usual looked a mess at this time:  dirty cutlery and crockery piled up in the sink and on the draining board, the two hotplates splashed with grease, all from the volunteers’ meal the previous evening, awaiting Bindu’s breathless scurry.

Puja, Dhona had explained, could be practised while exercising, and she was frequently discovered on the second-floor landing or in the lounge doing press-ups or sit-ups, but at dusk she would walk around the stupas, sometimes listening to the same monastic chant on her smartphone.

As a professional artist, Viv found Tibetan art fascinating, even though spontaneity or freedom of expression didn’t play a part.  Not in the monasteries, at least.  One evening she watched a team of monks painting sand mandalas.  Two would consult the scriptures to make scrupulously sure they were using the exact shade of colour as had been used for centuries.  Another would meticulously slide the grains of coloured sand down a six-inch chute onto the space assigned on the mandala.  She admired the way the mandala itself represented the world in terms of intricate designs replete with rich colours.  Yes, the monasteries certainly impressed Viv:  the riotous colours, the lavish ornamentation of the temples, deep red tapestries paired with pillars of gold, statues or paintings of wrathful, black-faced gods, the blissful smile of the massive, high-throned, gilded Buddha . . .

In the monastery garden the eight stupas with golden finials formed the centre of a peripatetic walk where you paid obeisance.  The Buddha sitting cross-legged in the act of meditation was also illustrated behind glass in the seven stages of the Buddha’s life.  The eighth stupa representing his death held no depiction behind a glass case at all.  The bold, bright ornamental motifs painted on a brilliant white stone, such as the lion cheerfully smiling with big white jagged teeth, but a friendly lion nonetheless, holding up with both paws the tiers of the column and the encased Buddha.  Around the base of the stupas lay boulders of varying sizes.  Carved into the stone in minute hieroglyphics were the Buddha’s prayers.  These were also daubed on small, smooth boulders in gold paint against glossed-up red or deep blue ground by devoted elders mostly, their heads covered in a piled-up shawl, who touched up the message with a rag to wipe splashes of red or blue from the gold lettering.  One regular mumbling, bent old lady would stop her lurching shuffle, stoop down and kiss several of the boulders with her forehead.

One morning a thick grey mist hung over the village, rendering the mountains invisible.  Thunder rolled in the distance.  Prayer flags hung limp.  The loss of those silvery peaks to her vision dampened Viv’s spirit.  When she arrived at the stupa that housed three floor-to-ceiling drums or prayer wheels, a stumpy, skinny old man was waiting outside, a miserable expression crabbing his face.  ‘Namaste,’ she said.  The old man couldn’t have understood.  Once inside, she grasped the white sash and tugged with all her might to get the drum spinning, very slowly at first.  Then she moved to the second drum and yanked on the sash.  The old man was suddenly at her side, grinning from ear to ear, baring his gums.  With each revolution of the drum sounded the jingle of a bell.  She set the third drum in motion, the old man muttering his prayers and giving her a nod and toothless grin as she left to the jingling of three bells gradually fading.

Invariably, there were four or five quite large, curled-up dogs lying asleep in the monastery grounds, usually a couple on the steps up to the courtyard.  Unlike the rabid, scruffy, limping curs that she winced at in Delhi, these specimens appeared well fed and in good shape, with well groomed coats and ungummed eyes.  She recollected Siobhan mentioning the Hindu belief that dogs have lost their good karma, therefore have no chance to reincarnate in human form, so are held in contempt.  Whereas Buddhists believe that all sentient creatures must be treated with compassion, as they do have the potential to reclaim human form.  Suddenly, one of the dogs scrambled to his feet and, wagging his tail, approached one of the old women in black swaying slowly around the eight stupas with the aid of a walking stick.  Up close, the dog rolled on his back, expecting to be tickled.  The old girl gave a deep-throated chuckle and tickled the dog behind the ears, as if her relationship with the dog, almost certainly a sleeping partner of the monastery, had made her day.

‘I want to visit your class this afternoon, watch your lesson,’ said Tenzin, lifting the lids of various dishes set out in a semi-circle at the head of the large dining table:  eggplant, lentils, broccoli, paneer . . . ‘You’ve never taught before, right?’  He took a couple of slices of chapatti from beneath a tea towel cover.

‘No,’ said Randy.  ‘I design computer programmes.  I wanted to do something very different.  When it comes to teaching, I’m very green.  I’d appreciate your comments.  Yah know, I threw myself in the deep end.  I checked out the organization.  It checked out just fine.  You’ve got to do that.’

‘You want chickpeas, Tenzin?’ broke in Dhona, bringing in another bowl from the kitchen.

‘But I didn’t do any research on Bir or the exact nature of the work.  I like surprise.  I like challenge.  Sometimes you gotta take a chance.  I sized up the situation in the classroom, the level of the kids, laid out my aims and prepared my science lesson accordingly.  The kids responded really well, understood where I was coming from.  I try to give them something fresh, something practical.  I get fulfilment from that.  But I have needs too.  Personal needs.  You know what?  I get satisfaction from this job.  I have no children, but I have parental needs too.  I take responsibility for these kids.  I care for their learning.  It gives me fulfilment.’

‘But you only stay two weeks?’

‘I gave myself three weeks to find myself, see if I can give to children.  There’s no satisfaction in having lots of money.  How can you help others? I ask myself.  Give them more opportunity to find themselves.’

‘Sounds admirable,’ chipped in Callum, helping himself to a third portion of cold creamy porridge left over from breakfast.

‘You want chapatti?’ Dhona interrupted, bringing in another plate.  ‘Chapatti warm, Bindu just made.’

Missing my sweet biscuits, I had acquired the taste for this unleavened round bread with a dollop of strawberry jam.  The Hindi word ‘jam’ and the commodity itself, both a legacy of empire.

‘See this?’ said Randy, raising five fingers on one hand.  ‘None of them is the same.  Same with people.  As a teacher, I give all my energies to them, their differences.  Trust me.’

Callum felt he could.  Tenzin had seldom witnessed a novice wannabe teacher sound so confident.

Randy scarcely gave a glance to the wide-screen that dominated one wall of the lounge, so intense was he to gather other volunteers’ ideas about teaching.  There was a restlessness about him – perhaps his time-out was too short – but also a seriously reflective side.

‘So you don’t care much for team teaching,’ he said to me.  ‘See, there’s three of us with the same age group all scheduled at the same time.  I’m sounding out the other two to present a fifteen-minute segment each to the whole group, then we go back to our own class.  Gives the kids a chance to learn different perspectives.  Teaching has to be about values as well as building vocab.  How’m I doin’?’

‘You’re going great guns, Randy.  You remind me of our idealism in the sixties.  My tutor used to say, “I don’t want to witness any lesson I’ve seen before.  For goodness sake, do something fresh, something imaginative.”  And even today, forty years later, I still receive occasional thankyou letters and phone calls from past students.’

‘That’s great, man!  Let me tell you something.  I’m in I.T., right?  I’ve never received any word of thanks from companies I’ve designed a programme for.’

‘There were ten of us who went to the monastery café.  Viv was excited that the monk, Kalden, would join us.  Barely could she contain her excitement in posing several questions; in effect, dominating his attention.  So bright and intense were her green eyes, so quick and articulate her tongue, so warm her smile and sensitivity - forgive me but I began to wonder if her charm might possibly break through the monk’s air of goodness and purity.  The young man, who was no more than twenty, said it was ok to challenge the Buddha’s ideas.  It is more important to understand than to accept.  The group’s biggest hurdle to understand was the question of attachment.  All us westerners believed that human beings can’t help but be attached to loved ones.  Kalden insisted that such attachment was a form of ego.  If you have love, you can love everyone and his dog.  I’m ashamed to say that I received a flash from 1968 Haight Ashbury, some decadent rock concert, but quickly shut out that cheap and absurd association with ‘free love’.  And was further embarrassed when the monk turned to me and said, ‘You are an ordinary man (as opposed to a monk), the oldest person among us, so a man of experiences.  What do you think?’

In a dither - for where was my own trove of hard-earned wisdom? – I could only agree with the others, that any serious relationship must have strong mutual attachment.  Clearly, the monk could not understand this concept of physical love or the strength of human passion, so certain was he in his own faith.

‘It’s clearly a matter of semantics,’ broke in Randy, who had stayed uncharacteristically quiet.  To be detached is what matters.  That is, to see the loved ones as they are, not to mould them to your idealised image.’

This bone of contention would be resolved on my final day of teaching when the headmaster monk arrived at the classroom door at the end of my morning lesson.  Every student, even the naughtier ones, swathed me about the shoulders in white ribbons.  The headmaster also draped a white ribbon around my neck and gave me as a parting gift a book on Buddhism.  ‘This is traditional way we give blessing.  Thank you very much for teaching this class.  I invite you to have lunch with me.’

I followed him down the steps and along the side of the courtyard under whose cloisters a communal vegetarian lunch was being served to the queue of monks by six mature-age helpers in mufti, scooping food from large pots into out-stretched trays.

‘I hope you enjoy your time with us.  Can you see why monasteries are important to Tibetan people?  They do good job of giving education to next generations.  Also keep alive spiritual beliefs and Tibetan culture.  Did you know, one hundred and thirteen thousand Tibetans are now living in India, Bhutan, Nepal and Laos?   Only five million live in Tibet today.’

‘I notice the older people remain very attached to their religion.  May I ask you what the word ‘attached’ means to a Buddhist?’

‘We Buddhists think real love is shared with all beings.  It is not conditional.  It does not depend on how it can help us.’

At the end of the afternoon class, the young boys made to leave quickly, then immediately rebounded with more ribbons of white cotton.  I also received six letters of thanks – six out of ten; a bare pass!   But Choekiy wrote on a colourfully decorated card with red hearts and multi-coloured crosses:  We haven’t found such a good teacher before . . . your teaching is really good math . . . we are remembered you.

                                                              Pome

                                           When you go away from me

                                   My life becomes a tree without leaves

Viv, my successor on the following Monday, took out her I-Phone and gathered the boys around me.  Pressing into my sides, they were very warm-hearted and in some cases genuinely sad at the loss.  Choekiy, in particular, was most reluctant to let me go.

As we walked back to the volunteer house, Viv informed me that she had taken copious notes on my teaching style!  And she was delighted that Kalden, who was soon to graduate from the monastery, had invited her to return to India to undertake a spell of voluntary teaching in his own village.

‘Don’t you just love it,’ moaned Jerome, ‘when someone nicks your favourite shirt from the clothesline.’  He’d been rummaging through his variously scattered piles of clothing for some while.

‘Must have been an accident, surely.’

‘Not all the volunteers are so gracious, Callum.  There are a couple of snippy girls who like to put me down.  For no particular reason as far as I can make out.  Steph and Mandy.’

Neither girl I knew very well.  They certainly did a lot of joshing and giggling together.  Steph was a very tall, slim blonde who occasionally sun-baked on the rooftop lying prone on a towel in bra and short shorts.  A Canadian, about twenty-two, who’d never spoken to me.  I remembered her exceptionally long legs when she defeated Gareth in his customary run to the bridge beyond the landing-strip and back.  I was writing up my journal early one morning on the veranda.  An itinerant farmer passed by and asked if I wanted to buy a lemon.  There was Steph in green trackies and headband, her long, blonde tresses trailing down her back at the gate, bent double, panting hard.  When Gareth pattered in several seconds later, he wore a shame-faced expression.  ‘Can you believe it!’ he ranted.  ‘Beaten by a girl!’

For her teaching round, Steph tied her hair in a topknot bun, which exaggerated her height.  Like all the female recruits, she had spidery henna on her wrists and ankles.  Physically, she was very striking.  Whenever she smiled, her eyes almost closed, while her mouth opened wide, revealing two rows of large teeth.  She seemed both aloof yet childish.  We never introduced ourselves, which was very unusual amongst volunteers in the same house. 

One evening towards the end of my third week I went upstairs to my room.  The door was wide open from whence a strange humming sound seemed to reverberate through the whole building, growing louder and softer by turns.  Sitting on his bed, there was Jerome giving a sharp tap with a short wooden baton to the side of a brass bowl which he was holding on an open palm, then running the head of the baton round the rim of the bowl to create a loud twanging sound.

‘Now you have a try,’ he offered.

Tentatively, I struck the side of the bowl, but couldn’t extract such a vibrant hum, merely an unearthly scraping sound.  ‘Fascinating.  What is it?’

‘A Tibetan prayer bowl.  I bought it in McLeodganj.  By the way, I broke the absorbent sponge off the squeegee, so we can’t mop up the water after a shower and Tenzin has invited everyone to his twenty-seventh birthday bash tomorrow night.  He’s hired the community centre.’

‘I thought he looked preoccupied.’

‘Yes, the police came by this morning, inquiring if all the residents had their permits.’

‘O god!  What did he say?’

‘Those of us who were here all flashed their credentials.  Tenzin assured them that all the others possessed them too.’

‘My god!  Did he offer a bribe?’

‘Relax, man!  What’s more, there’s a rumour that one of his girlfriends in America has recently broken off their relationship.  This chick was a volunteer here last year.  Apparently, he proposed to her, then when she said she needed time to consider, he insisted he would do anything to obtain a green card so he could settle in the States like his eldest brother.’

‘What a crazy thing to have confessed!’

One morning I went down to the veranda and was surprised to find Siobhan sitting on the bed doing some crochet work with her bandaged ankle propped up on a stool.

‘Are you feeling better?’ I asked.  She had been incapacitated for over a week and couldn’t take her classes, having sprained an ankle on Tenzin’s hastily organised overnight drive and hike to the hot springs.

‘I’m beginning to walk again,’ she replied.  ‘But I’m so frustrated sitting around all day.  It’s a fucking waste of time.  I can’t help blaming Tenzin for his slap-happy organization.  Fancy expecting the ten of us to walk up a mountain in the dark!’

‘Have you heard how he sells the Festival of Lights?  “If you want to see the madness of India, come to Palampur at Diwali.”’

‘I’ve had enough of his fussing around me these past few days.  He’s supposed to be organising another nine beds for the next influx of volunteers.  He’s even turfed his father, old Loro, out of his own room.’

‘Listen, would you like to amble over to the monastery?  You can hang onto my arm.’

‘No, it’s all right, thanks.’

‘ Come on!’ I encouraged.  ‘I’ll show you the haunt of the Asian Paradise Flycatchers.’

‘Fat chance!’ she said somewhat grumpily.’

As we turned into the main street, our dawdling progress was halted.  Pedestrians were obliged to bunch up on the side of the road, at first by a herd of goats trotting past, then the more panicky flock of bleating sheep.  An impatient motorist bumped a lamb bringing up the rear.  The frightened creature could hardly move on three groggy legs.  The Hindu farmer turned back, glared at the motorist but said nothing.  He swooped to grab the lamb with one hand under its belly, carried it a few paces then dropped it brusquely onto the rough surface.  When the lamb limping with pain couldn’t move, he struck it on the rump with his stick.  Shaken and lame, the lamb all but collapsed.  With a moaning sigh, Siobhan buried her head in my arm.

‘Buck up, the turn-off is very close and we’ll soon glimpse the finials of the eight stupas and the silhouette of the mountains.’  It wasn’t until a pair of those divine long-tailed birds arrowed into the trees above her that she broke out in a smile.  Their black heads and white plumage were distinctive enough, but it was the exceptionally long tail feathers with a red streak running through to their forked tails that beguiled us both.

The traditional firework displays on Diwali proved an anti-climax in our village.  A few loud bangs fitfully disturbed my reading, but the occasional rockets were duds, releasing a meagre scatter of sparks.  From the rooftop, there was no gorgeous spectacle lighting up our darkness, just hundreds of tiny pinpricks of light.  In a small Tibetan colony of Buddhists, the Hindu festival of Diwali spluttered in mere tokenism.

I didn’t particularly want to attend Tenzin’s birthday bash, but Dhona wasn’t intending to prepare any dinner and there was no cold porridge left.  Leanne wasn’t keen to go either but we walked together, shining our torches on the gutted surface of the road.  There was little traffic about but we moved to single file when we heard a scooter puttering up behind us, a red scooter.  It was Tenzin astride his Suzuki Flash 125 – no crash helmet, of course - and there was Steph clinging on gleefully, her long tresses trailing out in the light breeze, her impressive white teeth catching the light from our torches.

I saw the two sides of Tenzin that night.  Over the long row of trestle tables groaning with ample tureens of various dishes, he looked very dashing in his open white cotton shirt and slender-waisted black trousers, more so when he sang some yearningly romantic Tibetan song and stamped the floor Slavic style while sweeping one arm down in some courtship dance, then pressed a reluctant Steph to dance opposite him and imitate the stamping steps and flowing gestures.  I was put in mind of a spectacled hooded cobra swaying from side to side, trying to mesmerise with glassy, unwinking eyes, about to strike.

Dressed in emerald leggings and saffron tunic – all the girls except Leanne had bought saris and/or tunics in Delhi – she looked radiant, in spite of the self-consciousness that her huge smile almost covered.  She frequently exchanged glances with Mandy, who had also glammed up in a purple sari with intricate gold embroidery below the neck, green trousers and a red scarf wound round her neck and over the shoulder.

‘If you don’t wear a scarf round your neck, it’s like you’re wearing pyjamas,’ commented Leanne, somewhat sourly.

‘Steph’s getting the hang of the steps.  Good sense of rhythm,’ I said.  ‘Even Randy’s getting into the spirit in his ornamental topi and that long beige coat, the sherwani.  But Tenzin steals the show on the dance floor, even if he puffs out like a playboy.’

‘Like an unabashed flirt with young Caucasian women,’ she whispered.  Then winked with a smile. ‘Is he redeemed by extraordinary generosity?  Partly.  He does lots of things for this community.  At Duwali he invited all the village women, especially the older ones who’ve done it tough, to enjoy a social he’d organised with food, games, singing and chit-chat.  He does his best to preserve Tibetan customs.  And tonight would’ve cost a packet.’

‘I noticed there was wine available.’

‘Vodka, whisky and beer too.  Welcome to the first generation of Westernised Tibetans.  Most of his friends are drinking whisky.  Tenzin’s wary of spirits and wine but he does like his beer.’

That night Leanne and I sneaked away from the party when the exhibition of male Tibetan dancing by Tenzin and friends gave way to disco-style music, too deafening for us old stagers.  Every evening the various clans of dogs, somnolent and slumming in the lanes through much of the day, would start up barking, finally baying into a long drawn-out howling like a pack of savage wolves.  In my half-sleep I thought I heard Steph’s shrill laugh and Tenzin’s muffled voice as they mounted the stairs to the rooftop.  Occasionally I woke up to her giggles and the tinny roll and clunk of bottles across the roof.

I couldn’t help wondering what old Mr Lodro felt about his favourite son.

                                                                                                     Michael Small

October 4-Decmber19, 2014

                       

                                                                                                               

FIRING UP AGAIN

                                                                                                                           

She cast a thoughtful gaze across the lake, across the lily pads lying on the surface of the water.  It was a restful scene, colourful, yes, but the colours of this huge array of variegated blooms were not at all gorgeous - jonquil yellow and icing pink and, of course, pristine white with a heart of yellow.  The leaves or pads were more intense, a deeper, more assertive green.  But Vanessa knew deep down that even the greenness of the forest, as opposed to the brittle, sometimes dried-out pallid silvery green of the bush, could threaten.  She was dressed as usual in a murky blue blouson with puffed-out waist and loose sleeves and three-quarter length slacks.  Her long sandy hair was pushed up in a bun, some strands of which floated down onto narrow shoulders.  In effect, there was something of a French air about her appearance.  It came as no surprise when passers-by, giving a knowing nod at her canvas, were heard to murmur ‘Monet’s lilies’ or ‘The Japanese bridge at Giverny’.

Her right hand poised to apply a dab of paint, she would lead with her right foot, standing at a forty degree angle from the easel, then move to a central position, squinting slightly.  The palette was resting on a stand a little behind her left side.  Occasionally, a visitor was bold enough or just plain thoughtless to stroll up behind her along the raised grass pathway to the unobtrusive hide that sheltered her easel.  Vanessa was gradually growing used to these little transgressions now, tried not to be distracted or irked by gushing comments or silly questions about her work.

At times she envied the short, buxom woman in navy dungarees, who was working on the next embankment.  Coralie was not only sociable but positively welcoming when two or three visitors stopped to peer at her canvas and hung around much longer than those who approached herself.  These well-intentioned, often senior citizens, must have appreciated Vanessa’s preoccupation with the act of creation or possibly sensed her withdrawal, her refusal to make eye contact, focussing solely on some vague space on the horizon.  Whereas Coralie, distinguished by a mesh hat in January when the flies were particularly annoying, would frequently take time out to go wandering along the Little Yarra trail in search of the resident platypus or crimson rosellas and sulphur-crested cockatoos flitting among the red river gums.

Way up to Vanessa’s left, extending across the horizon, rose the Donna Buang Ranges, whose gently undulating silhouette was usually tinctured in blue haze, impassive, densely layered with mountain ash as straight and tall as a ship’s mast, and as such their long trunks were used by the early British sailors whose vessels had lost their masts off the treacherous seas in the Australian Bight.  Yet if she fixed her eyes long enough during one of her brooding sessions, her nose had acquired the habit of puckering as if at a sniff of smoke, or she heard a faint crackling sound that persisted into an eerie whooshing roar as she conjured the vision of a smoking furnace roaring down the tinder-dry slopes and eating into the valley.

Vanessa had always lived in a bush setting.  Even as a child her first memories were of huntsman spiders ready to drop from the gloomy cobwebby cornices of the outside dunny and sometimes lurking in the corner of her bedroom; the fat old wombat trundling along by the creek on the outskirts of the small township; the spiky echidna making unhurried progress across the greens of the golf course when it wasn’t curled up in a prickly ball; the tinny and scraping sounds of blue tongue lizards scrounging for scraps beneath the outdoor furniture and bric a brac on the veranda.  In those days she used to get very upset at the sight of a bloody carcass of a kangaroo or wallaby or possum on the Grand Ridge Road when the family used to meander round the hills to Moe for Friday night shopping.  Even cuddly koalas were rapidly disappearing in pursuit of the leaves of manna gums that their own colonies had denuded.  As she glanced back on her teens, she was both surprised and saddened that she had become inured to so much road-kill.  Habitats were being scythed down and gouged out as townships clawed at virgin bush.  The shrinkage of her world was gathering apace.

One month before 

For two days Rocco had been surveying the skyline with mounting anxiety.  A great deal of rain had fallen in the spring, which resulted in an abundance of new growth, an abundance of combustible fresh growth.  These were high alert days.  The CFA was busy constructing firebreaks, thanks to volunteers, park rangers and dozer drivers.  Containment lines were laid down in excess of thirty kilometres.  People living in the catchment area of the Maroondah Dam were reminded to upgrade their fire plan, clear dead leaves from gutters, cut back foliage and long grass around their home, listen to regular updates on their local radio station, check on the nearest assembly point or emergency accommodation.  There was a stern warning that anyone caught lighting fires on days of total fire ban could face a prison sentence.  Yesterday, when the sky turned a startling orange fusing with purple, his wife had driven off to her parents’  three-bedroom brick property in Warburton. . 

So on this particular day, February 7, 2009, Rocco was studying the grey-to-black clouds of smoke billowing across the foothills of Donna Buang that ran parallel to Woburn Springs, and with any luck bypassing the small township.  Exhausted from lack of sleep and nerves highly strung, he breathed a heavy sigh of relief.  Several neighbouring families had already thrown together some serviceable clothes, basic provisions, pet cats, dogs and caged cockatoos and decamped to distant family or friends or hunkered down in a city hotel.  Others like himself were keeping regular vigil, but now that danger seemed to be passing by they were drifting back indoors to put their feet up in front of the tele.

Except that Rocco was stewing.  Never before had he sensed that his whole livelihood was at risk.  His whole life’s work.  It only needed a few stray embers to blow over his bush garden and his adjacent studio with its wooden beams, doors and staircase would instantly go up in smoke.  And if that were to happen, his house would instantly crumble into a heap of ashes.

Breaking into his thoughts came the sound of barking from the front yard, unfamiliar at first because so frantic. Chezam, his black and white-ruffed border collie! ‘That’s odd,’ he thought. ‘That’s not like him.  Normally, he’s pretty placid.’  Hurrying over to the entrance, he glimpsed through the side windows the terrifying sight of tongues of flame jumping the crest of foothills.

‘Bloody hell, the wind’s changed direction!’

Dashing through the thick open doors of the studio to the front entrance of the house, his worst fears were confirmed.  The front line of the fire, suddenly a wall, was already scorching a path down the slopes.  Immediately he rushed over the road, yelling out, ‘Fire, for god sake!  Drew! Pete!  Let’s get moving!  Fire!’  Clubbing doors, knocking windows, all the while screaming ‘Fire!’  ‘Let’s go!’  ‘Get out quick!’

As soon as people streamed out, panicky, casting a horrified gawk at the ridge of blazing hills, there was much shouting, toddlers crying, babies howling in the tight clutch of terrified mothers, menfolk calling for calm, urging attention to their own contingency plan, Rocco raced back inside, so relieved that his son was safely studying mineralogy in Ballarat.  Thank god Nick’s well out of it!

With over three hundred paintings and sketches and one hundred sculptures, most of which were stationed in the mazy thickets of the garden, what in heaven’s name should he tackle first?   Making a hurried round of his studio, he snatched at his own personal favourites, such as the Mary Lisa, that bore a close resemblance to the Mona Lisa, save that he had wooden knobs placed at both sides of the frame to twiddle Mary’s eyes up and down, one at a time if you wished.  Then the portrait of his wife, Vanessa, painted a dozen years ago in the pre-Raphaelite style, her reddish mane of hair surmounted with coronet and Celtic headband, her medieval robe of gold and white samite given a luminescent sheen.

His wistful contemplation of Vanessa was jarred by the continual barking of his dog pacing back and forth with a skip on the turn in the street outside. He grabbed at half a dozen paintings and raced them out to his car.  Chezam was already waiting on the passenger seat, his breathing heavy, his tongue lolling out, his eyes searching for some sign from his master.  ‘We’re really up shit creek without a paddle, old boy.’  Unceremoniously, Rocco bundled up another dozen canvasses, but as he glanced up the slope towards the foothills he saw outlying houses already smouldering.  The acrid stench of smoke caught in his throat.

‘Time for one last trip,’ he told himself.  ‘Bugger!’  His own house lay in the direct path of the fire.  No time for messing about.  He snatched up, almost losing hold of, a dozen drawings and paintings, stood with an armful for a split second.  He couldn’t cram much more into the boot and back seat.  Not without more careful arrangement.  Then ‘Eureka!’ he yelled.  ‘The kiln!’

He bustled over to the kiln, clattered the pile of frames onto the floor, wrenched open the oven door and shoved his most treasured possessions into its mouth, stacking them upright as best he could, notwithstanding the vague notion that this final fling of desperation was futile.  Then charging back through the house to his car, wildly revving up, he vroomed off to the designated overnight shelter in Gallipoli Park.  The following day, Sunday, he too would be evacuated to Alexandra.

The Black Saturday fire raged through the township, destroying over four hundred homes.  Properties incinerated included the primary school, the police station, the Westmoreland Hotel.  For three weeks the fire burned and smoked through many a long night.  The smutty faces of the fire-workers, many of whom hailed from distant parts of Victoria, were creased with sweat, fear and fatigue, before the fire was brought under control and the water-bearing helicopters stopped flying, apart from those on reconnaissance.

Rocco was chafing to return to what was no longer his home but the destroyed relics, daring to hope that something, no matter how small or trivial, might be salvaged.   But the township had been declared a crime scene and closed off while Victorian and Federal Police recovered bodies and conducted investigations.  When finally he was permitted to set an unsteady boot in the ruin, March 23, he suddenly found himself trembling into a fit of bitter weeping.  All around this flattened, grey, deserted landscape hung the mere shells and struts of buildings more often than not bent or twisted and the hollowed-out blackened bodies of cars.  He had feared the worst, but the confrontation, the realization, the enormity was unbearable - the structure of his house, the very skin and fabric of his home, reduced to rubble, a ghostly grey rubble reminiscent of a nuclear winter, save a scatter of upright terracotta statues still standing defiant, several burnished with smears, some of his most delicate, most vulnerable but beautiful figures smothered in ash.  Had there been a patch of solid earth in the vicinity, he would have fallen down and given in to blubbering.  All he could do was stare in horror at his beloved creations, till his fixation dissolved in disbelief - the warmth of their frozen smiles was clearly evident; their attitude of defiance in the face of mass immolation.

At least I have been spared a few gems, he thought.  My professional life has not been completely in vain.  I’m bloody lucky to have salvaged a handful of souvenirs to take away.  No, I can’t come back, I can’t start over, build it all up again.  Not now that I’m middle-aged, broke, utterly stuffed.

‘Hey, Rocco mate, some of us blokes ‘ere jes wanna lend youse a hand.’

Rocco turned round to face three familiar neighbours and a couple of guys he didn’t know.  Shrugged his shoulders.  ‘Bloody good of you blokes, but it’s all gone, mate.  Every fucking thing.  I’m gutted.’

‘Yeah, we know how youse must feel.  We’ve all bin completely wiped out.  Had the shit knocked out of us.  We ain’t got nothin’ to save and there’s not much doin’ right now.  Our wives and kids are gone to Alexandra.  But we see you still got some o’ them statues standin’ and we know how much you done for Woburn, all them tourists you brung in.’

Over the next few days the five volunteers swelled to ten or twelve.  Working in the wreck of the sculpture garden, they hacked away the tangle of branches, lugged away in twos and threes the fallen trunks and dead branches, gathered up broken pieces of statue, cleaned detritus from the ponds and the creek that ran at the bottom of Rocco’s garden.

In the studio Rocco was poking about through the ash and awkward knobbly things, occasionally stubbing his boot against a broken piece of sculpture, such as a three fingers of a hand or a strand of bent, sooty wire from one of his hanging mobiles.  Then, as he stumbled through to his studio, heart suddenly racing at the sight of a familiar object – there it was!  The stolid shape of his kiln, albeit caked in some grungy, molten substance.  My god, the handle had melted away and the door was ajar!  Again, his heart sank to his dusty boots. ‘Oh, god, don’t tell me I can’t recover something of genuine merit, something of personal value!’

When he ventured his hand, though, crouching down, he was stunned.  He found himself stroking the smoothness of glass beneath a gritty dusting of ash.  Amazed when he tentatively eased out the foremost frame and found the painting very much intact, the edges of canvas alone singed.

Days later, when explaining this miracle at the office of his insurance company in Yarra Junction, he learned that while the temperature of the inferno was estimated at 1,000 degrees, glass does not succumb to heat until the temperature reaches 1,500.

‘But you can’t exhibit these,’ declared Vanessa on her first visit to this ghastly scene of grey desolation.  ‘Not until you find some means of getting rid of these sooty stains on the glass.  They violate the effect.’

‘Not at all,’ Rocco said.  ‘These scorch marks form an integral part of this new creation, a re-creation.  What’s more, a symbol of our own resurrection.  Besides, they really tell you something about the work itself, its history, its provenance.  Then there’s the contrast between the sense of threat and the random nature of the unknown on the one hand as opposed to the more formal design, good humour, garish colours or just the aesthetic charm of the original.’

‘What a presumptuous rationalisation!’ said Vanessa, indignant that her husband was so accepting of a disaster that took away the lives of thirty-four people whom they both knew, decent people who contributed much good feeling to their tight-knit community.

‘I know how you must feel, darl, but  . . .’

‘Do you?  Do you really?’

‘I witnessed the horror too, the pain, the suffering, the sacrifices people made, but you can’t keep re-living the nightmare.  Otherwise . . .’

‘But that’s just the point, isn’t it?  You want to stay here and try to reclaim the life that we lost.  You can’t merely patch up the eighty pieces of work that have partly survived or been reduced to a smelly rubble of broken parts.’

‘I have to, my pet.  These artworks were born out of my soul.  I feel as never before that they are part of me, part of my character and as I gaze at the lopsided mischievous smile of a woodsman suddenly appearing amongst the bush, separated from his body and multi-coloured folksy dress, I recognise not just a piece of sculpture but a friend whose presence I treasure, so there’s nothing for it but to fit the pieces back together again.’

‘Rocco, this bloody fire may well have set our marriage back many years.  I cannot stay here.  I really cannot.  Just take a good look around at all this ugly devastation.  You can’t possibly live here, let alone work.’

‘Just give me a few weeks to sort through stuff, figure things out.’

She shook her head in dismay.  ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing.  All this dreadful mess, this catastrophe, will take years to fix.  If ever.’ 

 

Rocco sensed that his wife was correct, couldn’t blame her common sense.  As she drove off to seek refuge with her parents, he felt a great pang of regret.  But he could be an obstinate mule, even if it risked his marriage.  Somehow what lay in front of him was unfinished business, might never be finished business, but he would give it his best shot and, who knows, review the situation in a couple of months.

‘Crotchety’ and ‘cranky’ were her mother’s favoured words for describing Vanessa’s mood as she wandered listlessly around her parents’ third of an acre block in Warburton.

‘Aye, she’s a right pain in the arse, lass,’ said her father, unconcerned as he browsed the Herald Sun before the daily constitutional around his allotment.  ‘With a face like a yard of tripe.’

Vanessa was vexed that she had done nothing to resolve the impasse in her marriage.  Her head was throbbing with it.  Nor was there any outlet for her frustrations in her social network.  All her friends had evacuated Woburn Springs.  Obviously, the Saturday ritual of netball, barbecue and tennis was dead and buried.  Nor did she have the slightest desire to paint, but driven to distraction by her mother’s suggestions about how she might usefully employ her time, she scrimmaged easel, palette and paints and decamped to The Lotus Pad.

For several years she had run a modest sideline in watercolours, painting decorative still lifes for small, independent art studios in the Yarra Valley that catered for the weekend tourist trade.  But when she resumed the usual spot at her enclave, her mind wasn’t on the job.  So laboured and mechanical was her technique, so uninvolved, so easily distracted by passing prams and wheelchairs, so distant that the end product was lacking vitality.  The notion that she needed some sense of continuity, given that she had separated from her husband, albeit in a temporary, somehow indecisive way, proved fruitless.  How so?  Didn’t Monet paint time and again the same water lilies in his pond at Giverny?

At first she made painstaking copies of the lilies in front of her, as was her custom before the ravages of Black Saturday, slightly adjusting the angle of her easel to register the subtle changes of light.

‘Very pretty,’ said Coralie in a sardonic tone, sneaking up behind her along the embankment, ‘but you’re capable of doing better than basic exercises.  You might as well use a cheap camera if all you want is straight replicas.  This is what the ships’ artists used to draw on the eighteenth century voyages of discovery, but they were recording botanical specimens for Joseph Banks.  You haven’t been signed up for Mother’s Day cards, I hope.’

‘You seem to go to the opposite extreme,’ retorted Vanessa, stung by the criticism.  ‘Your work is obviously a pastiche.  I certainly can’t see any representation of flowers or exotic trees.  Even your mix of colours seems hopelessly out of place here.’

‘Good-oh,’ chimed Coralie, cheerily.  ‘Have you heard of Moreau?  Gustave Moreau?  Late nineteenth century.  I adore his oeuvre.  You know, arcane symbols, dark planes of purple, bizarre animal figures of some primordial past,’

 ‘I don’t understand your stuff,’ said Vanessa. ‘ It’s creepy and weird.  Why such an unappealing rash of purple?’

‘Pursuit of the rational is so dry and old hat.  I take risks.  I love the dark purples of Moreau, the fantastic perpendicular architecture often backlit through arches trailing fanciful flowers.  So I attempt something similar with the Aussie bush.  You know, tree trunks lying cross-wise to each other, suggesting the holy rood.  The quirkiness of a platypus flying through the branches at twilight with a golden moon, silver stars as an angel’s halo, ruby gems in the burning sunset.  Unreal, eh?’

‘Unreal, exactly.  So what do you suggest?’ she said with a hint of sarcasm.

‘Why not scumble the paint?  Remember how Monet pastes splotches of white paint for his lilies as they catch the light to leave an impression of them dancing on top of the water?’

No, she’d already said goodbye to Monet.  She wandered back along the grass track over the dinky three-arched bridge past the banana palms to a major display - the two thousand year old perky pink Oga Lotus or Ancient Lotus, reputedly the oldest flower in the world, situated in the Japanese garden characterised by its own bold red bridge.  But it was the hothouses that had begun to fascinate her at The Lotus Pad.  In particular, the Victoria Cruziana, a giant water lily from South America.  It resembled a green custard tart with an upturned edge and a leaf span one and a quarter metres in length.  She heard a guide declare that you could place a baby, perhaps three, on its leaf and she or they wouldn’t sink.  Then there was the Giant Crocodile Plant, which you must not touch because the veins of its leaves could rip through your flesh like the snapping jaws of a crocodile.  ‘Red in tooth and claw’, someone had said about Nature.  Another reason why she hadn’t worn red for five years.

Rocco’s first port of call was his insurer.  Fortunately, the house was fully covered, but he had not been able to insure the studio because it housed a kiln.  Secondly, one of the four habitable houses in town offered him a room close to his own domain, so that he could rummage through the wreckage.  Next, as he pushed through the trail in his sculpture garden, he discovered that some of the half-buried, half-broken statues could be restored.  For instance, the head of the beautiful Lady of Shallot seated in the canoe on the further bank of the creek that marked the boundary of his property lay on the creek’s bed, presumably snapped by a falling branch – and there were plenty of these about, some lying cross-wise upon others.  It was a comparatively clean break, but no glue would do the trick.  Never mind, a local craftsman advised resin.  Once that reparation had been made and he’d touched up the bright colours of both head and dress, he removed the mud, water and leaves from the upturned canoe, stabilised its position and set up his beautiful maiden smiling in her rightful place, dignity restored.

Every day Rocco made a point of walking this tortuous, winding, obstructive trail to reassure himself that this crazy quest for rehabilitation was underway:  he had only to cast tired, itchy eyes over his serene maiden of the creek.

In spite of the devastation or because of it, he found his imagination beginning to form new alliances.  Several of the old manna gums had lost heavy branches, some were uprooted completely.  The shallow roots of their short, stout trunks make them particularly susceptible to violent conditions.  From the base of one such rotting trunk lying aslant, he fashioned a huge terracotta hand of outspread fingers.  In the hollow of another trunk he installed a mischievous dwarf in whose tiny mitt he placed a real but old mobile phone.  Grotesque clay faces were moulded onto another trunk.  In effect, the fallen trees offered him back his sense of fun.

He also decided to take photographs of the crippled sculptures before and after restitution and hang them enlarged next to the artwork itself.  Some of these were unrecognisable beforehand, so badly mangled and trapped by falling branches.  Those pieces with broken appendages often required replacement parts freshly fired in his kiln, thus preserving the original design.

After considerable reflection, he had to accept that the studio he had loved and worked in could never have the same blueprint.  There was too little money, he wasn’t earning.  He used thick wooden doors with a vague hint of the medieval bought on the cheap from Bunnings.  By sheer fluke he bought the last available supply of sleepers. from the railway yards.

But how was he going to make any dough if he was merely restoring his old pieces?  Surely it must be possible to open the sculpture garden even if several figures were lying injured or dead and almost buried?  Okay, so he could give talks to groups willing to listen to his personal account of the fires, his attempts to recreate his life’s work, take guided tours of the bush garden.  He would offer discount prices for groups.  He would establish his own web site and report on progress.  

In less than a year Rocco re-opened the sculpture garden, already prim with splashes of pink and yellow amongst the young ferns and a host of cheeky alba.  He built a rotunda at the entrance to the sculpture garden for visitors to enjoy their picnic lunch.  Reviews submitted on his website were most encouraging.  His whimsical sense of humour - he frequently gave talks wearing an inverted handbag on his head, Tommy Cooper-style – appealed to many visitors who marvelled at the man’s’ stoicism.  In spite of this horrible adversity, it gained him many admirers and a viable stream of cash.  Five years after the fire, he was steadily gaining traction.   

One weekday in September Rocco and Vanessa were driving up into the Donna Buang Ranges.  The rainforest road was graced by mountain ash soaring sixty-five metres into the open sky and myrtle beech some three to four hundred years old.  The winter snow traverses were often impassable, but today’s spring weather offered a cheerful disposition and a gusty breeze that cleared the sinuses.  There was no forgetting the Black Saturday fires of five years previously when they fell into a pit of despair:  all those bare, blackened trunks, the dearth of foliage, the vast number of dwarf, spindly black trunks like columns of a medieval Moorish mosque and fallen timber barring access to the forest. 

Just beyond the log dumps, the chain hire signs and the fire lookout, Rocco stopped the car at a lay-by to stretch their legs.  While he was setting up the flask of coffee and chicken and salad rolls, Vanessa strolled over to the outer ring of the car park and peered into the density of the bush.  She squizzed more closely at little splashes of brilliant green.  To her surprise, she noticed down a gully a miniature forest of ferns newly sprouting with sawtooth leaves nestling amongst small boulders embossed with a fresh growth of moss.

Wandering further forward, she detected the tendrils of some tall, green-stemmed fungus, its pinkish flower encircled in its hung head.  Just the kind of setting, she thought, where Rocco’s handcrafted maidens might go riding by.  Or young water sprite lovers entwined in a solitary piece of white stone that even Auguste Rodin might have envied.  Or a beautiful, lissom Asian girl, her back bent in elegant pose, her head resting on her knees.  She recalled the Indian elder in orange dhoti who might be sitting in meditation beneath that snow gum yonder.  Even a smiling sage perched halfway up a blackened tree, safe in his own nest.  She was almost tempted to lie down by the side of a rock, put her hands behind her head and listen to the haunting melodies of Rocco’s burnished flute player.

Michael Small

March 22-April 8, 2014