The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Power of Meow (11 page)

Serena was following him intently. “Very few people understand this is what they're caught up in,” she said.

He nodded. “And we should never take these teachings for granted. Just hearing the Dharma is rare and requires extraordinary karma. To have an inclination toward it, and the wish to practice sincerely, is even more amazing! Fortunately, both you and your little sister are devoted to the dharma.”

As Serena reached out to stroke me, I acknowledged her by lifting my head. It wasn't the first time that Yogi Tarchin had called me this. He'd used exactly the same words the first time I'd accompanied Serena to see him.

“You're saying I was a cat in a previous lifetime?” she smiled.

Yogi Tarchin laughed. “Serena, my dear, you've been everything. We all have. Every kind of sentient being not just on planet Earth, but in the whole universe.”

“Well,” she said after a pause. “That puts my concerns about Sid into perspective.”

I felt Yogi Tarchin shift in his seat. “I can understand why you're anxious,” he said. “But allow things to play out naturally.”

“Thank you, Rinpoche.” Serena's voice was filled with relief. “In the meantime, I just have to practice patience?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “And mindfulness. Being here and now. Enjoying a warm afternoon under a tree with your meditation friend and little sister. Try to let go of inner chatter and simply
be
. Be mindful of all six senses.”

It was a midafternoon some days later when a stocky Indian man in a dark suit appeared in the entrance of the Himalaya Book Café. He wore heavy horn-rims and carried a clipboard. When Serena went over to greet him, he announced he was from the Hygiene Inspection Unit of the local council. Unannounced inspections from the HIU were rare but not unheard-of. Given their well-drilled procedures for food preparation, they were of no concern to Serena.

“Come this way,” she said, gesturing. “I'll show you through the kitchens and storage areas.”

“Actually, madam, I'm here to inspect the dining room.”

Serena paused, eyes wide with surprise. She glanced across the pristine white tablecloths of the café area to the gleaming windows on the other side. The floors had just that morning, as on all mornings, been thoroughly vacuumed and mopped. The atmosphere was as much that of a temple as a restaurant. The ambience of rarefied civility, of East meets West, was one of the main reasons why the café had been so popular, especially with tourists, since the day it opened.

“Surely there's no problem here?” she asked in astonishment as Kusali materialized beside the two of them.

“We received a complaint,” the inspector told them.

Serena and Kusali exchanged glances. Kusali, of course, had told both Serena and Franc about the “altercation” a few days earlier. His unprecedented action in asking the customer to leave. Her dark-eyed threat that the café hadn't heard the last from her.

“Hygiene problems. Contamination risk. Vermin infestation. Danger to people suffering from asthma. And”—the inspector cleared his throat—“a . . .
cat
in the restaurant?”

As he surveyed the tables, the inspector failed to see me. But then he stepped farther into the restaurant and looked over to the left, glancing at the steps leading up to the bookstore. My magazine rack was of course just beside these. Inevitably, his gaze rose and settled on the top shelf. Paws tucked neatly beneath me, I sat watching events unfold with all the inscrutability of a sphinx.

A gleam appeared in his eye. The inspector wheeled around to face Serena and Kusali. “Bylaw 1635b of the Hospitality and Liquor Act states that it is an offense for livestock and domesticated animals to be housed in a restaurant.”

“I wouldn't say she is
housed
here,” Serena said as color rose in her cheeks. “She is a visitor.”

“Nevertheless, I came to inspect the premises. I found a cat present where it was reported to have been before,” the inspector explained with pedantic detail. “Bylaw 1635b—”

“It all seems ridiculously technical!” Serena protested.

It seemed the worst thing she could have said.

“Madam.” The inspector lowered his face and regarded her over the tops of his horn-rims with the utmost severity. “The
technical reality
,” he pronounced the words significantly, “is all-important.”

“Who complained?” Serena demanded.

“I'm not permitted to disclose that information.”

“Well, you may want to check up on her credibility. Just look at this dining room.” She gestured with the same Italian brio as her mother would have. “It's one of the most beautiful, if not
the
most beautiful in the whole of Dharamsala. As for hygiene—”

“You may well be correct on the first score,” the inspector conceded. “However, as to the matter of the cat . . .”

At this point Kusali, who had been following everything in silence, asked with almost exaggerated politeness, “May I ask, sir, if the Council has floor plans of these premises?”

“Of course.” The inspector gestured with his clipboard. “I have them here.”

“You may want to check them before this conversation goes further.”

The inspector glanced at him sharply.

“I believe, sir, you could save the Council great embarrassment if you do.”

The inspector placed his clipboard down, removed a folded document from under its shiny clip, and was soon spreading it out on top of a table.

“You'll see that according to the Council's own plans the restaurant ends here.” Kusali ran a finger down a line. “While the bookstore begins here.” He paused while the inspector looked over the architectural drawings. “The
technical reality
is that those shelves are not in the restaurant. They are in the bookshop.”

The inspector stared at the plans for a very long time before looking back toward me.

“You have a point,” he admitted, crestfallen.

Serena's eyes blazed triumphantly at Kusali's victory. “What's more, you are not looking at a domesticated animal,” she said.

“No?”

At that very moment—oh how rare it is, dear reader, for events to fall into place so powerfully or poignantly—a group of five Japanese tourists came into the café and headed directly toward the magazine rack. Like many visitors who came to McLeod Ganj for a glimpse of the Dalai Lama, only to be disappointed, they had opted for the next best thing, which was an audience with HHC. So strong was their devotion that, as soon as they approached the magazine stand, they began dumping their bags, cameras, and umbrellas, and performing prostrations to me.

The HIU inspector, becoming less and less sure of himself by the second, watched this all with astonishment. “Who is . . . this?” he asked, finally, gesturing toward me.

“She is the Snow Lion of Dharamsala,” one of the Japanese tourists offered.

“Rinpoche,” chimed several of the others.

“She is the reincarnation of a very holy being,” said another.

It was the first time I'd heard that particular explanation!

Then Serena said, “She lives with His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet.”

Watching the inspector take all this in, Kusali suggested smoothly, “You might say that she is a Sacred Being.”

The inspector took a few steps toward me. “A Sacred Being . . . ,” he repeated.

“Who abides in the bookshop,” Kusali affirmed.

“Indeed.”

This was how, dear reader, I came to find myself with another name. One soon to be noted in Council records, to be preserved in some dusty archival room till the end of time.

But at that particular moment, my attention was distracted by something else entirely. While the inspector had been regarding me, Serena had pulled back the plans spread across the table to look at the clipboard underneath them. What she saw drained all the color from her cheeks.

She was still in a state of shock after the inspector left the premises. It took her only moments to draw Kusali to one side and tell them what she had seen: on the front page of the register, the complainant was named as Mrs. Prapti Wazir.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

The day started badly when I awoke to a cold bed: the Dalai Lama was away on a teaching trip to Korea, and without his compassionate presence my world just didn't feel right. Getting up much later than usual, I made my way to the kitchen. Seafood medley
again
! Fifth day in a row! His Holiness would never dream of serving me the same thing for breakfast twice, let alone five times—I was a cat who liked variety. Whoever was on HHC meal service that week just wasn't getting it. The Dalai Lama was returning later today, and not a moment too soon!

After a couple of mouthfuls of the briny sludge, I made do with some dry food. That would tide me over till lunchtime down at the café, where I would be served a few gourmet morsels of that day's
spécialité du jour
.

Just before lunch service was due to begin at the café, however, Kusali was called away on a family emergency. Without the head waiter, the remaining staff came under pressure to fill his role. A casual visitor may not have noticed any difference, but as a longtime observer I saw it in the way that empty water glasses remained unfilled for minutes longer than usual. The way that patrons had to wait fractionally longer for their orders to be taken. Of much more personal importance, the way that no gourmet morsel was produced for me from the first batch of mains. And that day's
spécialité
was sole meunière—a particular favorite.

With Kusali gone and Franc buried in his office, I seemed to have been forgotten. Every time the kitchen doors swung open, there would come another mouthwatering gust from the stove tops. Surely someone would soon notice? I kept telling myself. It's not as though Kusali was the only one who ever served me lunch. One of the other waiters would often be dispatched. What's more, the kitchen staff was well aware of the routine.

I had no choice but to keep waiting, my displeasure mounting. With every appearance of a waiter from behind the kitchen doors but no sign of my saucer, my disgruntlement grew.

What a dreadful day it was turning out to be! From the moment I got up, it seemed, everything that could possibly go wrong had gone wrong. I should have stayed in bed. Instead of eating even those few mouthfuls of the dire seafood medley, I should have sunk my teeth into the ankles of the nearest monk in the kitchen. That would have shown them! As for the waitstaff at the Himalaya Book Café, couldn't they cope with one man down? The moment Kusali left, it seemed, they began running around like headless chickens.

More time went by, and things moved into the late stages of the lunch service. A lot of the diners were already on to dessert. The aroma of sole meunière was gradually replaced by bursts of citrus and lime. The grind of roasted Zimbabwean coffee beans wafted over from the espresso machine. I was exasperated. Starving. My stomach growled loudly.

The last straw was when a waiter came to take the orders of a family of Germans sitting in the banquette nearest my shelf. The teenage daughter asked for the sole meunière. The waiter replied, “I'm very sorry, miss. The sole was very popular today and we have run out.”

Run out? Of sole meunière? What sort of establishment was this?!

Stepping down from the magazine rack, I stalked out of the café in high dudgeon, my mood unimproved by the fact that no one paid me a blind bit of notice. There was no frisson of excitement at catching a glimpse of His Holiness's Cat. No attempts to coax the Sacred Being to a table with an unfinished portion of fish—or even a few licks of cream. Despairing that all that remained between now and dinner was a bowl of dried cat food, I wondered how things could possibly have sunk so low.

I passed through the gates of Namgyal and saw the bench on which I had so recently sat with Yogi Tarchin and Serena. I remembered what the meditation master had said about becoming aware of one's own thoughts. How His Holiness had said much the same thing to the TV interviewer. I recollected the Buddhist view that, when we focus the spotlight of attention on our thoughts, instead of dwelling on them and becoming their victims, we have the choice to let go.