The lama broke out into song as he took our entrance fee, and handed out change. He had asked us where we were from, my husband and I, and we’d told him. His rendering of ‘Bambai se aaya mera dost’ was cut off mid-verse as someone else came along and paid for entry.
We’d come to Lamayuru late the previous evening on the Leh-Srinagar bus, which had slowly become full despite the curfew in Srinagar. At Nurla, we stopped as the driver and conductor loaded up on crisp-looking turnips from women selling them under a willow. By Khalsi, there was standing room only.
Like the rest of Ladakh, the route to Lamayuru is stunning: stark mountains, now bronze, now light jade and purple. The Indus river had cut into the earth, the banks a rich red and brown, with occasional clumps of poplars and willows. Intermittently, chortens.
The signboard outside the assembly hall ‘By courtesy of Deptt. Of Tourism Leh’, oil-painted and shining, was an endearing blend of faith, myth, history and annual festival announcement. It said the valley had been under water and votive water offerings to serpent spirits caused the water to drain. It said a swastika grew, after which the monastery was built. It spoke of the place being declared a sanctuary in the 16th century, it went on to talk about a well-preserved statue of Vairocana and concludes with English explorer William Moorcroft’s discovery of letters from Aurangzeb’s court, exempting the monastery from taxes, and its inhabitants from forced labour.
Like many legends, the story of origin here has its basis in history. Or, in this case, geography. Geologists’ reports talk of the Lamayuru lake sediment; a lake that had formed and was drained due to neo-tectonic shifts; of roots, algae, sea shrimp and snails, all now sediment and turned fossil. Historians talk about traces of pre-Buddhist culture that still survive.
Young monks on their way to school.
The great hall was empty when we entered, but there was the sound of a drum beating and a bell ringing. And behind a glass was the cave Naropa is said to have meditated in. It looked impossibly small and lamps and fruits and currency notes piling up before it.
The monastery buildings were at various levels around me when we came out of the hall and sat on the steps. A monk came out of his quarters and made his way towards the school building. Every once in a while, boys in maroon robes would come, some running and others more sedate, some with satchels and books.
The day stretched blue and bright, the quality of light and air pure, and a raptor hovered lazily in the air currents far above. There was nothing to show how it had been sacked in 1834 in a raid by Zorawar Singh. The monks had fled, and only a few survived and returned to find their home in ruins and their friends murdered.
We went down the steps. There was an iron grille near our feet and smoke coming from it.
Konchok Sherab at work.
Beams of sunlight cut through the kitchen from the grille above. Some masalas were arranged in steel jars with white paper labels stuck neatly on them. There was a haphazard assortment of pots and pans and a plastic casserole tipped to one side. In a blur of activity, he put in cumin, chillies, turmeric, garam masala, meat masala, tomato paste — no garlic, he said, raising his voice slightly over the whirr of the mixie. Then he hefted the container with chopped vegetables, tipping them in.
He waved towards a large stove, a wood-fired one used for bulk cooking. The pile of wood stacked outside for the stove looked like it could warm a small family for the winter. Right now though, he was cooking for 35 people, including children, who had an exam that day. The tea he had placed on a tiny cylinder-fed, single-burner stove had come to a boil when the electric stove gave out.
Konchok lifted the kadhai , looked resignedly at the stove, then went out to poke at a mess of wires outside, and hooked one delicately to the other. “Sometimes,” he said, “this works.” He came back, looked hopefully at the electric coils. Calmly, he transferred the vessel on to the gas-fed stove and started stirring again.
He asked us to sit, have tea as he lifted a container of rice on the stove. We sat at the bright end of the room, looking at the dust motes in the sunlight. I asked him what the cylindrical thing in the corner was, shaped like the chase of a miniature cannon, only, wooden; it had a stout-looking stick in it. “We call it dongmo . For making butter tea.”
He showed us the decoction. It was a rich colour, almost red, like liquid mulberries; he made a batch once every couple of days. He’d add about a litre of water to one or one and a half measures of a thumbu — a copper ladle that wouldn’t look out of place in ritual worship, but was used here for ladling tea and water. He’d bring it to a slow boil and keep adding water as needed.
“And you have to keep boiling it. Low flame.”
“For how long?”
“Two, three hours.”
“Two or three hours? To boil tea?”
“We’re all very fond of it, here.”
“And you make it every day?”
“Once in every two or three days.”
He walked us through the ritual — and it was a ritual — involving water, salt, some tea decoction, boiling and simmering. Of chopping up a 500-gram block of butter, putting it in the dongmo , pouring the tea into it carefully and moving the stick, vigorously, “a hundred times”, to mix the tea and butter.
Then, heat the tea, pour it back in the dongmo , beat it again, 50, 60 times, heat again — no boiling, he said. Pour it into thermos flasks, and it was done.
He asked us if we’d like to stay for lunch. We had a bus to catch, we said with real regret.
We went back to wait for a bus to Khalsi, my head full of a garnet-bright tea I would never make, and thought about the way Konchok had carried out his work, calmly, quickly and without fuss, with the patience of a Zen master.
Suhasini Kamble is a Mumbai-based freelance writer.
