So Close to Heaven (20 page)

As we neared Gangtok, my initial enthusiasm at finding that Sikkim still had a singular character within the Indian union began to wane. The town was cacophony itself by late afternoon. Traffic crawled around the switchback roads and steep side lanes, much as it would in any Indian hill station. There was no serenity here, no unmistakable Sikkimese character or atmosphere left in the town or its dozens of shops and offices. When the first British political delegation came to Gangtok in the 1880s, they camped on open land in the area that is now the vehicle-choked bazaar, terminally polluted by fumes, sewage, and soiled old plastic bags. In the 1970s—according to photographs I found in an old book at the General Stores, near the crossroads that passes for downtown—the bazaar was still a somnolent, relatively open space with shade trees. People were using footpaths, not taxis.

The bazaar is no longer one stretch of road, but rather a winding affair that snakes up the face of a steep hillside in several stages, a pattern common in the Himalayan foothills, where towns rarely have flat surfaces to work with. Along both sides of the original main strip (some called it the Purana, or Old Bazaar), merchants pushed Indian textiles and processed foods and soaps—Amul and Nivea and all their kith and kin—as well as garish plastic housewares and Indian-made Bata shoes. At one end of the old bazaar, a bust of Mahatma Gandhi mounted on a tasteless concrete plinth was protected by a nasty metal fence about five feet high, its gate secured with a padlock, and a further cement-and-chain-link barrier. I asked why the Father of the Nation had to be so heavily fortified, and was told vaguely that there might be miscreants about.

There was very little that was identifiably Sikkimese about the bazaar; what lowland Indians weren’t selling, Kashmiris or Tibetans were. Hope Cooke tells a good story about how an American television crew filming
her little palace wanted to shoot a few Sikkimese treasures; she had to forage for something that wasn’t Tibetan, Indian, or otherwise foreign. The experience helped fuel her interest in promoting the crafts of Sikkim. Behind the bazaar, however, in the alleys and on the steep hillsides, Buddhist prayer flags fluttered. Passing under a huge banner proclaiming an “International Year of Tibet,” I escaped in a taxi to look for the official Sikkimese state handicraft center, away from the bazaar at the dead end of an alley near the Indian governor’s residence. All was gloomy there, owing initially to the lack of electricity. The Sikkimese sales staff, gossiping merrily when I surprised them at the open door, fell utterly silent and unsalespersonlike.

There were no other customers, so I tried hard to find something to buy, watched as I was by at least four pairs of hopeful Sikkimese eyes. All manner of goods were brought out from glass cases for my perusal, but only at my request. Blankets and rugs were too unwieldy to cart away; so were the colorful little carved and painted
choektse
tables that are the coffee tables and often dinner tables in Himalayan homes from Ladakh to Bhutan. I settled on a rough, handwoven woolen jacket handsomely embroidered down the front in a kind of braid. The jacket was a nice browny tweed; unfortunately, someone had lined it in glaring sky blue. Lining notwithstanding, the garment proved later to have the qualities of a hair shirt, as shards of wool designed for alpine temperatures burrowed through a synthetic interior to inflict torture. Over a sweater, though, it’s good for shoveling snow.

My first day in Sikkim—half of it spent tangling with Indian Airlines and another five hours of it on the road in a small taxi from West Bengal—was saved by the Nor-khill Hotel. The Nor-khill, which once belonged to the royal family, is a rattling old two-story lodge that was almost empty, even though Gangtok’s annual orchid festival was in progress and it was still tourist season. The old building, bright white with a red metal roof and a red-painted cement veranda to match, was in good shape, but its spirit was certainly sagging. There was much more verve in the Hotel Tashi Delek nearby, and the lavishly decorated Hotel Tibet, near the bazaar. But the Nor-khill had a good location and a nice garden (straggly potted plants and wobbly metal chairs aside) for reading and writing. It also had provocative historical associations: it overlooked the Paljor Stadium, the site of antimonarchy demonstrations in 1948 and again in the 1970s.

Inside, the hotel was a mix of faded European style with bright splashes of Himalayan art. A corner of the long lobby-lounge had half a dozen or more small tables painted with the symbols of Himalayan Buddhism scattered among regal chairs covered in locally woven fabric. Warm rugs covered the floor, and on the wall a three-panel, almost-Chinese-style painting showed a scene of rural life in the hills. The effort to give the lobby a Himalayan personality didn’t extend to the spartan dining room or the guest rooms upstairs, however. I was pretty much resigned to another spell of mild discomfort in the mountains, the hallmark of rugged hill station sojourns. Then, arranging things in my room, I opened the faded curtains hanging unevenly over a chest-high window above a rickety table and there, of course, were the Himalayas. There was Kanchenjunga itself, the holy Sikkimese mountain. I poured myself a drink from my Bag of Necessities for Traveling in India, and stood in its presence until darkness fell, as if before an altar.

The death of a nation is a terrible thing anywhere. And the demise of the kingdom of Sikkim was all the more tragic because it meant another important piece torn from the map of the historical Tibetan Buddhist world. It was the end of Sikkimese independence that left Bhutan the lone defender of that distinctive culture. In Sikkim, Himalayan Buddhism and a monarchy of Tibetan lineage had coexisted for many years with a Hindu population of Nepali origins and the communities of Lepchas, people thought to be related to today’s Burmese or Assamese, who settled in the hills and practiced a localized animist faith long before the arrival of the Tibetans who would be kings. The Lepchas claim to have given Sikkim its first name, Denzong. Insignificant pockets of Lepchas, a name they say was given to them by outsiders, also live in Bhutan, Nepal, and the Himalayan foothills of India. But only in Sikkim, with a land area under 7,300 square miles, much of it difficult mountain terrain, were they a relatively substantial presence for centuries. The Nepalis came later, encouraged by British colonial administrators looking for people to make more intensive and productive use of the land. But the Nepalis multiplied quickly as new families arrived. The Lepchas and the Tibetan-Bhutias could not override the demographic tide.

Sikkim’s ill-fated monarchy ruled longer and had deeper roots than the Wangchuck dynasty now on the throne of Bhutan. Although, as always in this part of the world where mythology and history slide effortlessly into each other’s territory, there are some critical questions about
the Sikkimese version of events, it is pretty much accepted that the royal Namgyal family could trace its ancestry to the Minyak dynasty established in eastern Tibet in the ninth century. Some say an even earlier ancestor of the Sikkimese Namgyals once reigned in what is now Himachal, an Indian state next door to Ladakh, later ruled by another branch of the Namgyal clan. The Minyak dynasty and its heirs were based in the Chumbi Valley of Tibet, at least part of which was Sikkimese territory until barely a century ago. Many generations after the founding of the Minyak kingdom, one member of the royal family, Mipon Rab, drifted down to the vicinity of Gangtok. Three or four more generations on, Phuntsog Namgyal, a prince of the Minyak line, became Sikkim’s first acknowledged king, or chogyal, to use the Tibetan title. Palden Thondup Namgyal, the last ruler of independent Sikkim, was twelfth in that royal line. Bhutan’s hereditary monarchy began only in 1907, and there have been only four kings, who do not call themselves chogyals, at least not to English-speakers.

Because of the long years of rule by a family of Tibetan origins and the influence of the Himalayan Buddhist sects that inevitably entrenched themselves in Sikkim, with the Nyingmapa school becoming the state religion, the town of Gangtok and outlying monastic settlements in the hills and mountains are full of historical associations with the Namgyals and their faith. The ghosts of a kingdom hover around the Tsuklakhang, the old royal gompa on a hill above Gangtok, which is mostly closed to outsiders. Royal ceremonies once took place at Tsuklakhang, where the chogyal’s astrologer-advisers lived. Once a year, around September, monks still gather there to perform dances in honor of Kanchenjunga, the god-mountain guardian deity, which rises to a height of more than 28,000 feet along the border with Nepal. This dance to Kanchenjunga, called the
pang lhabsol
, also commemorates the pledge of a bond between Bhutias and Lepchas, who called themselves Rong-folk, or “valley people.” (That name is a little confusing, because the Lepchas are Buddhists, and, especially in Nepal, the term “rong-folk” or
rong-pa
would be applied to lowlanders, who are more likely to be Hindus and Nepali-speakers.)

As in Bhutan now, Himalayan Tantric Buddhism was the state religion and the private faith of the Tibetan-Bhutia people and their kings. Most of the Lepchas who preceded them here were in the course of time converted from pure spirit worship and joined the Buddhist community,
while also accepting a Buddhist king. Some Nepali-Sikkimese, members of tribes or clans outside the otherwise dominant Hindu world, are also Buddhist, among them the Rai, Gurung, Limbu, and Tamang people. But as in Nepal, Hindus and Buddhists in Sikkim often did and still do take part in each other’s festivals and join in celebrations that are thought of more as Sikkimese than belonging to any individual community.

Because visits to Tsuklakhang, the palace (still in the Namgyal family’s possession), and most other sites closely associated with Sikkimese royalty are barred to foreigners by skittish Indian officials, I went instead to Dodrul Chorten and the monastery at Enchey for a glimpse of Sikkimese Buddhism. Dodrul, on the airy crown of a wooded hill near the Institute of Tibetology at Deorali, can be identified miles away by its soaring white central chorten capped in gold with the omnipresent symbols of Buddhism—thirteen parasols representing the Thirteen Stages Toward Enlightenment, fire, a sun cradled in a crescent moon for air and sky, and a small flame or orb signifying ether, an element believed to be found in the upper reaches of space. The ground around the base of the chorten is all but enclosed by walls of prayer wheels. A temple nearby is the base of Sikkim’s highest lama, the Dodrup Chen Rinpoche. When I reached the chorten, at the top of a steep path lined with prayer flags, the scene was alive with dozens of novices clowning around on a cool spring day. Two were launching paper airplanes with gleeful shrieks. A dozen or more raced each other up and down a driveway. Others climbed balustrades and threw stones into the trees, I imagined at birds.

At Dodrul, the Guru Rinpoche reappeared in all his glory. There are two famous statues of him here. The Sikkimese, to claim a piece of the action surrounding this legendarily hyperactive guru who brought Tantric Buddhism to the Himalayas, believe that the saint buried some of his famous holy treasure for posterity in Sikkim centuries before this was a Buddhist kingdom. The sacred books were then duly discovered hundreds of years later by monks from Tibet who settled in Sikkim and founded its monasteries.

Because of Sikkim’s small size, geographically and in population, and because there seemed to be no urge to build fortifications, despite invasions from Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan over the centuries, the Sikkimese centers of religion and government are more modest and accessible compared with their counterparts housed in the great dzongs of Bhutan. Rumtek, fourteen miles from Gangtok, is the exception, because it has
been the international center of the Kagyupa Karmapa school of Buddhism since 1959, when the Chinese took military control of Tibet. Many thousands of Himalayan Buddhists and well-wishers overseas support Rumtek’s temples. Supporters are also helping to rebuild the former seat of the Karmapas at Tsurphu, near the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, which was sacked in the 1960s by the zealots of China’s Cultural Revolution. The Indian government takes justified pride in helping to upgrade and maintain Sikkimese temples and monasteries. There are several hundred of them, some of which officials in New Delhi say were in advanced disrepair in 1975.

Enchey monastery, which seems to have been restored recently, is on yet another isolated hilltop a few miles from town. The monks were at prayer, so I sat apart at the temple doorway, among heaps of worn little shoes belonging to the novices who were perched cross-legged and attentive in two rows leading away from the chief monk at his prayer table. Enchey is one of about half a dozen leading monasteries of Sikkim. Its site was chosen by a lama with the power of flight who descended from the sky to build himself a hermitage. The spot is now marked by a three-story, yellow-roofed temple that is something of a cross between a classic winged pagoda and a solid Himalayan gompa. Though its roofs soar, its base is planted solidly and heavily in the earth with that inward slant of its thick walls that Bhutanese architects tell me makes structures resistant to most earthquakes. The temple was built early in the twentieth century, of stone blocks now plastered white. Wide bands of bright red define the tops of the outer walls, a hallmark also of holy buildings in other Himalayan Buddhist lands. The elaborate windows on the ground floor are, to the unrefined eye, stunning works of art. Each window frame, easily six or eight feet tall and perhaps five or six feet wide and extravagantly ornamented in floral and other natural symbols drawn from the Buddhists’ artistic canon, is surrounded by a section of dark stone left unplastered and unpainted in roughly the form of a huge garment with short sleeves above an A-line robe, rather like a kimono hung splayed on a wall. The effect created is that of a traditional, irregularly shaped window, wider at the bottom, even though the three modern glass panels within are perfect rectangles. On the upper floors, windows are trimmed in bright yellow, giving the temple top a glittering golden look.