The Waiting Land (4 page)

There are many things one ‘should see’ in this valley, but I secretly resent being bossed by guidebooks and am therefore a slipshod tourist. To me the little statue that one unexpectedly discovers down an alleyway, and impulsively responds to, means much more than the temple one had been instructed to admire for erudite and probably incomprehensible reasons; so I just go wandering vaguely around on Leo, finding enough incidental entertainment in the three ancient capitals of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhatgaon.

These ‘cities’ (by our standards market-towns) were for many
centuries the seats of the rival Newari dynasties who ruled and fought over this valley before it was conquered by the Gurkhas in 1769. As a race the Newari had an exceptionally developed aesthetic sense and the ordinary people of the valley seem to have attained an almost freakishly high level of craftmanship, most notably displayed in the bronze or stone temple sculptures and in those intricate
weatherworn
wood-carvings which adorn so many of the older buildings. If any European city had produced in the past such a concentration of artistic achievement it would long since have been demolished, bombed or self-consciously preserved – and whatever its fate the spirit of its craftsmen would have been well and truly exorcised. But here all this beauty is taken for granted, and its survival has been entirely a matter of chance. Some corners of the cities, where nothing has visibly intruded from another age or civilisation, seem quite powerfully haunted by the force and fervour of those nameless men whose work still lives on every side; and in such corners Time can occasionally slip into reverse, so that one is no longer deliberately reaching back into the past with one’s imagination but actually
experiencing
it for a few brief, bewildering moments.

By now these Newari arts and crafts have all declined and the majority of the valley’s original inhabitants are petty traders or minor clerks. Some people argue that this is a consequence of Gurkha domination, yet it seems probable that Newari inspiration was already flagging by the eighteenth century and that apathy must in any case have succeeded those rich centuries of enthusiasm.

In many parts of the valley elegance and crudity clash violently – especially where the graceful Newari houses emphasise the ostentatiousness of the Rana palaces. These ugly edifices proliferated during the last century, when the avaricious ruling family were breeding like rabbits and building like beavers, and against any other background they would remain for ever intolerable; yet so strangely does Kathmandu affect one that a certain bizarre charm can be found even in such monstrous mistakes.

Another aspect of Kathmandu’s crudity is referred to in A
Winter in Nepal
, where John Morris quotes Dr David Wright, who spent some
years here as surgeon to the British Residency and wrote, in 1877, ‘From a sanitary point of view Kathmandu may be said to be built on a dunghill in the middle of latrines.’ Mr Morris himself found this description still accurate in 1960, and I feel that he was being charitable when he stated that ‘this is
one
of the filthiest cities in the world’. (My italics.) In some quarters reeking water lies stagnant in square stone public baths, and I doubted the evidence of my eyes when I first saw people drinking this brew. After the scum has been pushed aside and the liquid – one can hardly describe it as water – has been collected in earthenware or brass pitchers it looks like strong tea; what immunity (or what dysentery) these people must have! Yet despite all this squalor most of the children seem reasonably healthy, though many of their elders have been prematurely aged by a lifetime of carrying unbelievably heavy loads.

There are surprisingly few beggars about, and today I was approached only once – by a small, Murillo-faced boy with whom I became on very good terms
after
I had made it clear that no baksheesh would be forthcoming. Indeed everywhere I went I was greeted with laughter and gestures of friendship, and for me the effervescent happiness of the Kathmandu Valley more than counterbalances its filth.

Today I went to the ramshackle GPO to register some letters, since unregistered mail from Kathmandu rarely reaches its destination. At present a new post office is being built, as part of Indian Aid to Nepal, but I’m glad to have had the singular experience of patronising the old one. The Nepalese have no conception of queuing so one is at once caught up in a loose maul of sturdy little bodies, each with an arm thrust out towards the clerk, in whose face envelopes, money and forms are waved vigorously while requirements are shouted as though by the rules of the game the loudest demands must win. I felt a bully when using my superior height to achieve the necessary victory; but clearly there was no future here in being ladylike.

When the clerk had scrutinised my envelopes he politely asked if London was in Germany. I equally politely said ‘No, as a matter of fact it’s in England,’ and – still thirsting for geographical information – he
next enquired if Ireland were one of the United States of America. Having sorted that one out with some difficulty, since neither islands nor oceans meant anything in his young life, I asked him how long he had been a post office employee. (By now the scrum had subsided, as everyone was absorbed in our unintelligible conversation.) He grinned at this question, admitted to having started work only this morning and explained – superfluously – that he had not yet invented a formula for controlling his customers.

Before leaving the building I went into the courtyard to watch the mail being sorted. Here some dozen men were squatting on the ground surrounded by hillocks of envelopes, the majority to or from foreign countries. Between the hillocks the ‘plain’ was littered with stray envelopes, across which coolies and chickens and dogs and a
buffalo-calf
wandered casually; I deduced that these were the ill-fated epistles – addressed to obscure places like London – for which no suitable hillock could readily be found. And all the time I was looking wistfully for a few Irish envelopes with green and orange around the edges – but none appeared. Maybe the buffalo-calf had eaten them.

The weather here is much more pleasant than I had expected, with an average midday temperature of only about seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit and a cool breeze blowing almost constantly from the near though invisible snows. Every day since I arrived the sky has suddenly clouded over during the afternoon and an hour or so later we get a magnificent thunderstorm, with bigger hailstones and heavier rain than I’ve ever seen before: even in India during the monsoon we had nothing quite like it. This is a very satisfactory arrangement, as the rain lays the dust – if only briefly – and slightly lessens the stink by washing away some of the excrement and rotting garbage that accumulates on the streets. Half an hour ago I stopped writing to revel in a truly classic thunderstorm. The first crash made my ashtray leap off the table and literally deafened me, so I blew out the candles and sat at the open window to enjoy the display. Overhead it was as though some mischievous god were switching on and off a brilliant blue electric light which revealed every detail of the garden and neighbouring house. Then the sheet lightning stopped and instead
the sky seemed alive with writhing dragons of flame flashing from horizon to horizon, while the thunder roared continuously from mountain to mountain like a million lions – and then the rain came and gradually the storm subsided. I must be getting more and more animistic: this is the sort of thing that now awakens my religious fervour.

At this season a permanent heat-haze veils the Himalayas, and for me one of the most unexpected things about the Kathmandu Valley is its lack of a ‘mountain atmosphere’. Nor, I feel, is this merely a temporary effect of climatic conditions for Kathmandu has long been a place apart, isolated from, ignorant of and indifferent to both the outside world and the rest of Nepal. Now the outside world has enthusiastically invaded it, either for pleasure or profit, and it has been forced reluctantly to consider itself in relation to other countries – but it still ignores the mountains.

It is remarkable how the fact of coming to a country to work rather than to explore completely alters one’s approach. The always exciting discovery of an unknown land takes on an entirely new texture when one is planning to settle, for however brief a period, and since it is essential to learn to live with local idiosyncrasies the tendency to criticise is blunted. Also, instead of eagerly pursuing knowledge and understanding from the moment of arrival, one waits for them to come, how and when they will. Yet I have to admit that something is missing too – the incomparable thrill of wandering for wandering’s sake.

It has been calculated that Nepal has approximately a hundred and twenty national holidays per annum (apart from the fifty-two Saturdays, which are the weekly day of rest) and all these – including the King’s birthday, as he is popularly believed to be a reincarnation of Vishnu – are religious festivals. So far I have failed to comprehend even dimly the religion of Nepal, where Hinduism and both schools of Buddhism mingle and subtly interact on each other; but I am consoled by the knowledge that even distinguished scholars go astray in this
theological maze and have to end their expositions with a flurry of generalities. However, it
is
clear that the Nepalese are devout adherents to something and their many and much-feared gods are immeasurably more important to them than their politicians – and very likely more useful too. Almost everyone believes implicitly in charms, and astrology determines each important decision, including affairs of state. I often wonder what happens when events belie the astrologers: but no doubt there are well-established formulae to cover up for the stars’ mistakes. To us, all this is ignorant superstition in its most extreme form, and the payment of fees to miserly Brahmin priests does keep many families in perpetual debt; yet to the Nepalese these payments are a sensible insurance against disaster.

During the past week the important Machendranath Rath Jatra Festival has been in progress at Patan – about ten minutes’ walk from Jawalkhel – and this morning Donbahadur informed us that the astrologers had pronounced six o’clock this evening to be the most auspicious time for drawing the god’s two chariots through the streets of the town; so, having arranged to meet Sigrid beside the wooden floats at 5.30 p.m., I went early to Patan to get the feel of the occasion.

On the way I passed through the ‘Street of the Pigs’, a low-caste quarter where an inconceivable number of tiny black sows lie all over the place suckling an equally inconceivable number of piglets whose size, colour and shape make them indistinguishable from rats. Here, also, dozens of naked children, manure-smeared buffalo-calves, congenitally mangy puppies and grubby chicks are to be seen tumbling around together in filth-blocked gutters, half-filled with inky, glutinous liquid. Most of the higher-caste Nepalese avoid this street – not through any fastidiousness, for their own home area could well be equally unsavoury, but simply because the proximity of pigs would make them ritually unclean. Yet the inhabitants do not seem to be in the least cowed by their inferior social status; they are now used to seeing me passing by, and today quite a few of them leaned from their first-floor windows and shouted greetings, which gave me a warm ‘accepted’ feeling.

In the small square where the god’s chariots were parked a
considerable crowd had already gathered – including many hill-people, some of whom had walked for more than a week to attend the festival. During my first few days at Jawalkhel I had often stopped to watch these chariots being assembled and decorated; each float is surmounted by an unwieldy fifty-foot tower of wood, bamboo and bast, festooned with greenery and long strips of coloured cloth. At the summits fly scarlet flags, and in a shrine at the base of the leading chariot’s tower sits Machendranath, one of the ‘Grand Magicians’ of Buddhist tantrism, who normally lives in the Bungmati Temple, south of Kathmandu. On the night of the full moon preceding this festival he is washed in milk to prepare him for his slow, week-long journey through the city streets – a journey during which he is believed to bestow greater fertility on humans, animals and crops. If either of the towers collapses – as one did in 1953 – this is interpreted as a prediction of bad luck for the coming year, and to lessen the chances of any such collapse all overhead cable wires are cut along the god’s route – which perhaps explains why the electric current has been so very erratic during the past week. Within the shrine a Brahmin priest sits in constant attendance on Machendranath, and as the crowd drifts to and fro people pause to bow to the god, and pray for a moment with joined hands, before throwing a fistful of rice or a small coin into the shrine. Each of the floats has two unsteady-looking, giant wooden wheels, on which three big eyes have been awkwardly painted, and a twelve-foot shaft made from a curved tree-trunk. To the outward ends of these shafts, where they curve upward, are tied huge, carved, painted masks – grotesque and gaudy – that grin at the populace with ambiguous expressions in which threats and promises seem intermingled.

When I arrived beside the chariots scores of small boys were doing acrobatic tricks on the shafts, sitting astride the masks, climbing the towers and generally behaving as though this were a funfair rather than a solemn occasion. To the Nepalese Machendranath Rath Jatra is one of their most important religious festivals and this deity is very sacred, very powerful and very easily angered; yet here that subdued sense of reverence which we cultivate towards things sacred is quite
unknown, and fear, worship and gaiety flow together as inseparable parts of daily life. Only for a brief, solemn moment, while they show homage, pray and make offerings, do people withdraw from the joyous tumult around them – and when they rejoin it they appear even happier after ‘making
puja
’.

Sometimes a strolling musician would pause beside the chariots and play to Machendranath, and when two adolescents spontaneously started a dance near the chariots I hurried to join the circle that was forming around them. These were village lads from the hills, clad in homespun grey tunics, yet they gave an extraordinarily good performance of one of those stately temple-dances that long ago were imported into Nepal from South India. To an initiate every turn of the boys’ wrists and flicker of their eyelashes would have been eloquently symbolic; but even uninitiated spectators can enjoy the grace of these slow, formal movements, and I found myself being also very much moved by that strange beauty which so transformed the faces of two quite ordinary boys, as they became more and more absorbed in their chosen way of worshipping the god.