(This is the eighth chapter of the series ‘Parikrama and Other Trips: In Tibet’. The first one is ‘Border town: Kodari’.)

‘Of excessive height and great circumference, always enveloped in cloud, covered with snow and ice, most horrible, barren and bitterly cold,’ was how Ippolito Desideri, the first Westerner to see Mount Kailas, described it. Words of wonder tinged with ardent inconvenience; true, considering that the Jesuit missionary nearly lost his sight to an inflammation caused by excessive snowfall. Before any descriptions of awe or daunt were attributed, the holy mountain had already etched out a place in the ancient holy books as the mystical Mount Meru.
Believed to be the highest island over the long-ago Tethys Sea, the 6714-metre Mount Kailas is pyramidal in shape with each side a cardinal direction. For a long time it was believed that a mythical river flowed from the mountain to the Manasarovar Lake from where four mythical rivers flowed in the four compass directions. However, the truth is that four real rivers do flow from the holy mountain in more or less the four cardinal directions and not from the holy lake. They are the Brahmaputra (east), Sutlej (west), Indus (north) and Karnali (south). Early explorers tracing the origin of these great rivers were wonderstruck to find that they all rose from a cardinal point on the mountain – adding to its growing mysticism. The mountain is considered the holiest in Asia and scriptures regard it as the source of the universe. Ardent devotees believed that the continents radiated from the centre and the sun and all the planets orbited around it. It found reverential references in the early Hindu holy books as the mystical Mount Meru – the axis of all creation, created from the mind of the creator himself, Brahma. Eventually, Mount Meru merged with the earthly Kailas and legends flew. Astral or of the earth, the mountain is held in awe for its spectacular beauty and a divine intent ascribed for it being located away from its other snow-clad companions in the Himalayas. As you near Darchen, the base camp of the Mount Kailas, thoughts of the holy mountain transfix you and you are overwhelmed by its reputation. So much so that all you want to do here will be to wait for the morning and head off for the parikrama. An otherwise drab town, Darchen is livened up by troops and snooker.
“Camera inside bag,” Mortu said as we neared the military checkpoint on Darchen outskirts. Sahil, filming the landscape through the sunroof, didn’t hear what Mortu said. We turned a corner and a crude barricade with the familiar red and gold flag fidgeting above it was suddenly directly ahead of us. A mortified Mortu slammed on the brakes and swerved sharply away from the road and repeated again, this time a bit hysterically.
“No camera, no camera, put inside bag.” Sahil wedged his frame out of the sunroof and sat down as if nothing had happened and began to wipe the lens nonchalantly with the leather duster. I looked away trying to keep a straight face.
“Army see us, take camera.” Mortu frowned out, breathing hard.
“Yes, we are used to that,” I didn’t say it.
He continued to mutter angrily, incomprehensively under his breath as we continued to the checkpoint.
“Mortu is praying,” Henri offered from behind dark glasses, “that your camera be confiscated and both of you be reborn as Han Chinese.”
“That would still bring us back here, wouldn’t it?” I asked and we both laughed. The Hans was the largest ethnic group from China who were migrating to and settling down in Tibet, much to the dismay and disquiet of the natives.
There was no one at the checkpoint; uniforms with dangling golden-thread epaulettes hung over a camouflage bivouac, apparently the office, some distance away over the outcrop of a barren mesa. Mortu went inside carrying the file containing our line passes with all the trepidation of a first-time jobseeker. Further ahead, scribbling the other gravelly sides, we espied more tents – all camouflage. We were close to the Indian border and tensions, we were told later, prevailed in the region. It also explained the presence of armoured vehicles that rumbled by raising dust and splotching water from drainages that opened out to the streets. Groups of militia swarmed the town in green formations as if looking for something to scourge. While some directed at us looks of undiluted animosity, most of them just looked past us, through us. Darchen was a town of strategic importance and we were advised against filming by some tour group operators who has been passing by for many years.

After a few minutes Mortu came out of the tent followed by a vested Chinese soldier, both of them had cigarettes clamped in their mouths and Mortu lighted up – first for the vest and then for himself. He then pointed at us, waiting in an amusing array of slant variations (Henri had his head over the bonnet listening to the ‘tick, tick, tick’ from the engine) as if we were herd for a vet inspection. We are let go without any pother after the session where we tried to discern the palpable differences between Chinese and Tibetan smoking styles. The only difference was what the free hand was doing: while Mortu’s dispelled prayer beads twined around his wrists, the guard’s free hand swatted flies and scratched the crotch.
A blue signage with a picture of the Mount Kailas saying ‘Tibet India Novelty Shop’ and a red one with ‘Jixiangruyiboutique’ stood side by side. An open air snooker parlour was manned by a busy-looking plump woman who went around plucking money from the reluctant clutches of players peering over peeling cues. Being the pilgrim season, several wild-haired Tibetan youngsters had come down from the mountains with their wilder-haired mares to ferry pilgrims over the peaks and the passes – the Drolma La, the highest at 5,630 metres – being a particularly feared one. Trekkers and pilgrims have reportedly collapsed here and died due to lack of oxygen with exhaustion not even allowing time to reach inside your rucksack for the emergency oxygen cylinder. (‘Drolma’ in Tibetan means ‘she who liberates’ – yet another enigma of Tibetan nomenclature.) The players were all hunched, frowned in focus, gazing over table edges. Right from Nyalam by the Nepal-Tibet border, I had seen that snooker was a favourite.
“Why is the game so popular here?” I asked the guy who was holding a large wad of Yuan in his hands – he was the assistant croupier to the woman who went inside when we began filming.
“It is popular because there is nothing else here,” he replied matter-of-factly. Maybe true as I was told that didn’t even play parra here.

But the proprietor of the curio shop I walked into had a different reason for the popularity of snooker. Having done his schooling in India, he was well-versed in English and was a staunch supporter of the Tibetan cause. He had an opinion on most things:
“I studied in Shimla, was in a boarding school. I didn’t want to come back but my father asked me to and take care of this shop.”
“When in India I used to go to the Dharamshala often to see the Dalai Lama and to hear his lectures and seek his blessings.”
“I had several Indian girlfriends – from Punjab, Kolkatta, Kashmir and one even from your Kerala.”
“Your girls want to have fun but you guys are too busy watching cricket.”
“Here they play snooker as it is popular all over the world; they hope that some tourist will join them and they can easily sell their services.”
“Prostitution is very widespread here – right from tourists to trekkers, drivers to guides, use their services. Pilgrims do it on their way back from the parikrama.”
“We had a huge statue of Padmasambhava right next to this place which was destroyed by the Chinese.”
“But that happened before I came back or I don’t know what would have happened.”
“I will give my life for my country. But who will take care of my little daughter?”
The little one, a bundle of gurgle, had been sitting by the window looking at us intently through shiny bulbous eyes. I took her up and she reached out and grabbed my nose. The shop owner was surprised as the baby apparently never went with any other guy except the father. Any stranger came near her and she would start bawling.
“Do you have children?” He asked me, still staring at his baby daughter now poking her tubby fingers in my eyes.
“I have a step daughter.” I told him.
“How old is she?”
“Fourteen.”
“No baby of your own?”
“No.”

I felt like I was lying, but I wasn’t. The truth was that I had been on my way to fatherhood three times. ‘New papa’ blogs, ‘pregnancy guide for dummies’, making a serious study of pramming couples at supermarkets, not getting exasperated at wailing babies in the cinemas…I did the whole gig. Then, where did I go wrong? Why didn’t I have it any other way? I had a say, but where was my voice? Are we lessening the blow by calling ‘abortion’ ‘medical termination’? Aren’t both one and the same thing? Don’t they both disallow a new dawn from breaking? Letting the dark continue? Whose idea was it anyway to ‘medically terminate’? Was I really shattered? Or did I make myself believe I was? Both times there were valid reasons – reasons I made myself believe valid – a pending marriage and a pending divorce. But these were only pretexts. I made myself believe them as valid reasons. We made ourselves believe them as valid reasons. The truth is, there are no valid reasons to medically terminate a life. To abort. We just don’t have the frigging right. It is because things will never be better. It will never be the way you hope them to be. Never. I stood there, holding up the little one, seeing in her those I have lost. Too many demons I had battled and I was being vanquished, slowly. I didn’t want it anymore, I wanted forgiveness. I wanted to bury the haunting memories. The parikrama was to help me move on. With peace which is an outcome of forgiveness. To be forgiven, there should be repentance. And cleansing the soul, through ritual purifications, is readying yourself for repentance. A dark wetness spread from the baby’s clothes to my tee. The baby gurgled happier than ever.
“Oh, I am sorry,” the shop owner said taking her from me. “But she really likes you, strange, I should say.”
“Strange,” I concurred.
We came out of the curio shop to a crowd that had gathered outside despite a drizzle that was gathering strength. I looked up at the brooding water-laden clouds trundling ominously into town from over the Mount Kailas. ‘Oh, it’s really bad up there’, ‘you guys are in for some serious shit’, I remembered the words of Sanket whom I met in Saga. I looked around at the people who had gathered around Sahil. Sahil was lining up the kids – giving them each a chance to look through the eyepiece. Going by the eager look of anticipation on their little faces, you could see that they were expecting to see movies when they peered. But they weren’t disappointed at what they saw. What they saw made them happier – one of their own. They believed that they were in a movie. That they were the movie. They prodded each other into a Terpsichorean gaggle.

As if on cue, it started to rain. The torpid pratter on the tin roofs became a rapturous applause. The ground in the front of the building was the day market and was ploughed up by a million yak hooves. Each indentation was filling up like a miniature pool. The cattle dung and other overflowing waste from the drainage daubed them all murky green. The dismal look of subjugation that classified the town now began to ebb away with the flowing water – into a big, bottomless pit, invisible to human eyes. There were no more languor in my limbs. I looked again at the antsy crowd – children with ear-flapped mufflers and wispy-whiskered old men sipping an early supper out of their tureens. It was like a gallery of happiness being put on display for me. All I had to do was choose. There weren’t many options: there was only happiness.
I took off my boots and stepped into the swelling water. One little muffin hopped in right after me. Holding him I did an impromptu rigadoon and the whole tyke-brigade jumped in. The old ones watched with gummy grins while the parents hollered out dire consequences to their respective wards. The wind became biting, sheepskin coats trailed on the ground weighed down with water, crochets rearranged themselves on the tattered overalls, oversized hide hats slipped over the eyes temporarily blinding the raucous company. The sodality I felt with the children gave me immeasurable joy. I felt like a happy revenant.
Here, under the bone-cold rain, in the fetid flowing water, slipping and falling, laughing and dancing, I was cleansed, ready for the parikrama.