It is morning in Camp 1, a Tibetan farming community in south India’s sunny Mysore district. The board at the village entrance says ‘Lugsam Settlement’, though I’ve read in an academic paper that its full name is Lugszungbsamgrubgling, which to fantasy fans may sound like something out of Tolkien. But since most of us can’t pronounce that, let’s just call it Camp 1, which is how it’s locally known, given that it was the first settlement established here — way back in the early 1960s.
The winter air is a tad nippy. The rickshaw from Kushalnagar, the nearest town about ten kilometres away, just drove through Bylakuppe, a typical Indian village where a Hindu ceremony was in progress outside a home. Then, as soon as I pass the signboard, I am in Tibet. I get down in a nice little bazaar lined with shops, travel agency, cybercafé, restaurants, vegetable vendors, memorial stupas and monumental prayer wheels. The gilded roofs of a monastery are visible in the distance.
Only a few eateries are open this early. In the first I try, Tibetan ladies sit in a circle, stuffing the momos for lunch. They suggest the nameless ‘hotel’ next-door. The proprietor offers fresh Tibetan bread with — hold your breath — sambar, that cornerstone of south Indian meals.
‘ Sambar swalpa spicy hai ,’ the uncle cautions in a mixture of Kanglish-Hinglish.
Tibetan sambar sounds like epic fusion cuisine, so the foodie in me is titillated. Especially since two monks in maroon robes at the next table seem happy with this Indo-Tibetan breakfast combo and order extra helpings. It is indeed a perfect sambar, the result of 50 years of cultural assimilation.
Afterward mopping up the last drop with the soft Tibetan bread, I find a thangka studio where an artist, although about to start work on a half-done painting, invites me in. There’s the painstakingly executed lavish background and the meditating Buddha at the centre, but he has to add the minuscule details and shade the lotus petals to create the full 3D effect. The paint is mixed with gold and quite expensive.
He came from Tibet ten years ago, when he was 20. I ask if it was a hard walk, but it turns out he was granted a Chinese passport (though his parents were not), so he could cross legally, but alone, into Nepal. Typically, when the Chinese authorities allow Tibetans to travel out for study or go to India to visit the sacred sites of Buddhism, they withhold passports from some members of each family to ensure that the travellers will come back.
After five years of study at a thangka institute in Himachal Pradesh, the budding artist was appointed an apprentice to the master here to hone his technique. He makes Rs. 500 a day, so he can’t afford to start a family — and besides he might return home to Tibet, since his parents are still there. They chat online.
‘But do you like it here?’
‘About me, I feel it is peaceful.’
I ask if he goes to Kushalnagar to eat tandoori chicken.
‘Yes, but about me, Indian food has too much masala and it is also... oily.’
I appreciate his idiom, which I’m guessing could be a direct translation from the Tibetan. The ‘about me’ suggests a certain humility. When speaking about himself, it is as if he wants to emphasise that he isn’t making universal pronouncements.
He is painting this thangka for a monastery in Tibet. So far it has taken him eight weeks and he expects to finish it over the coming month, which means that he can make four thangkas in a year. With Sundays off, I calculate that he’ll be paid ₹30,000 for this one.
‘So you earn a little over Rs. 10,000 per month as an artist?’
‘About me, sometimes one falls sick, other times I like to go travelling with friends. So it is less.’
‘Have you travelled to Bengaluru?’
‘About me, I have, but it is big and noisy. I like Manali where I studied painting.’
There are a couple of studios in Camp 1, each employing some half a dozen artists, many of them alumni from the arts institute in Manali. So clearly thangkas are in demand. When I ask one of the managers if I may buy myself a thangka, he declares that they have orders for the next four months so he can’t sell any.
‘Can I have a Buddha instead?’ I point at a thumb-sized statuette.
‘It’ll be too expensive for you,’ he says dismissively. ‘Go to the souvenir shop, buy something cheap.’
I indicate another lavish Tantric image that catches my fancy, which is actually a computer print on cloth, duplicated from a scanned original, and so should be affordable. But he says, ‘Do you even know what it means?’
I admit that I merely think it is a powerful picture and would like to have it.
He shakes his head. ‘Not for you.’
At his insistent unwillingness to sell me anything whatsoever, I get slightly adamant and browse through the entire shop. It is well-stocked with merchandise. He grudgingly lets me buy a cloth print of a Dalai Lama photograph. As he wraps it up in a page from The Hindu , he points out, ‘We could sew a silk border around it. But it’ll be too expensive for you. You better get it framed in India.’
I am somewhat taken aback at his attitude, but realise part of his antipathy probably stems from the basic truth that home decorators come here looking for ethnic knickknacks. I also suspect that religious artefacts — like thangkas — are not to be sold to non-Buddhists. They’re not wall hangings, but objects of worship. One artist even mentions to me that he must paint with pure mind and only put good thoughts into the labour. So if he has a bad day — has received sad news, say — then he can’t work.
***
Monks having a philosophical debate at Sera Mey monastery.
This unusual settlement abutting the village of Bylakuppe was founded in the winter of 1960-61, when 30,000 Tibetans followed the Dalai Lama into exile from China. It owes its existence to the benevolence and grace of Jawaharlal Nehru’s government, which sympathised with the refugees. They also had the support of both the maharaja and the chief minister of what was then known as Mysore State, which is why the settlement is located in Karnataka.
The Tibetans got twelve square kilometres of undeveloped, state-controlled land on a 99-year lease. The creation of a number of fixed camps made it easier to keep track of the community who continued to move here over the succeeding years. The first to reach Camp 1 in December 1960, some 660 ragged refugees, were faced with a wild jungle in which to make their homes, at an altitude almost four kilometres lower than the Tibetan plateau.
Over the decades, they turned the elephant and snake infested forest into agricultural plots and created a repository of culture with several monasteries and lavish temples representing the main Tibetan traditions of Buddhism. These temples are imposing sights and look mildly out of place in this rural idyll, like film sets for a movie about Tibet. The grandest constructions have come up in the last fifteen years or so and the newest of all, the Tashi Lunpo, a replica of the formal seat of the Panchen Lama who is second only to Dalai Lama, was inaugurated earlier this year.
However, when Tibet was recreated on this southern patch, it also resulted in friction. The Tibetans I meet sometimes refer to India as everything that is outside the settlement and try, as far as possible, to retain their Tibetaness. Despite the fact that they eat sambar, the cultural differences are glaring.
Furthermore, the population continues to increase — an estimated 2,000 Tibetans enter India as refugees every year, though not all of them would head this way, but some might do it. As for this settlement, fairly accurate looking data suggest that Camp 1 has a population of 11,048, with a further 4,526 in Camp 2. Considering that there are four more camps, comprising over 20 villages, plus many big monasteries surrounded by residential quarters for monks and nuns, we’re talking about a sizeable community in the region of about 30,000 people. This of course includes the student monks who are just passing through — all those I spoke to happened to be Indian nationals from Ladakh and Sikkim, or Nepalese and Bhutanese attracted by the educational facilities.
However, since the Tibetan enterprises — farming, shop-keeping, noodle-making, thangka-painting and carpet-weaving — cannot expand beyond the land granted, the money generated has to support every person living here. It’s a fairly small piece of the earth: about 4,000 metres from end to end, half used for cultivation, half for habitation. Compare that with Tibet’s 1.2 million square kilometres — there the density of people per square kilometre is 1.6, while here each square kilometre would have to support upwards of 2,000 people. It is crowded.
One Tibetan lady I meet, who was born in India and has never been elsewhere, says there used to be a market for locally made handicrafts, but now Tibetan shops have started selling sweaters produced in Ludhiana factories and souvenirs imported from China. She criticises foreigners who pretend to support the Tibetan cause, such as Heinrich Harrer, the celebrated author of Seven Years in Tibet who was essayed by Brad Pitt in a Hollywood blockbuster movie based on the book. She even shows me a photo of Harrer on his last visit here — he doesn’t look anything like Pitt. Pointing to my skin she says, ‘The colour is different, but we are both humans.’
About Harrer, she says, ‘Aggressive and greedy man.’
The bitter words are accompanied by a smile. She indicates that she, now and then, gets cheated by her Indian neighbours, who believe Tibetans to be flush with foreign cash received from people like Harrer who, according to her, was so tight-fisted that he wouldn’t even give 25 paise to a Tibetan. Then she adds that it would be better if I didn’t tell anybody who said this. I therefore decide not to ask any person I meet for his or her name, so that those I chat with won’t face unnecessary trouble.
On the other side, the Tibetan presence has meant a significant increase in tourism and a boost for Kushalnagar’s shops, restaurants, and hotels in particular, since foreign tourists cannot stay in Tibetan lodges or monasteries (unless they get special permits which take 2-6 months to process). There’s been rural infrastructural development in the area as well, such as canal-digging, road-laying and bridge-building. And then there are the Tibetan herbal medical clinics that the locals can benefit from.
The larger issue relates to the fact that land is becoming more precious as Kushalnagar is gaining prominence as an economic hub for Coorg. There is a mounting sense of permanence to the settlement, given the monasteries that have cost crores to erect. Even if all the land reverts to the Indian government when the lease ends, forty years from now is a long time.
***
Peaceful roads with not much traffic connect the camps and monasteries.
There is a fairly unhappening shopping complex at Camp 1, and today I am the only tourist in sight. Half of the shops are shut. I chat with shopkeepers, all very friendly except that no bargaining is allowed. Due to a certain code of business honesty, the asking price for any product equals the final price.
So rather than wasting time haggling, we have conversations. The parents of the lady selling delightful, locally-made yak print handbags came in the 1960s. She herself was born here and doesn’t really think she shall know any other place.
‘But what about Tibet?’
She just smiles sadly. ‘We are refugees.’
It is a strange thought that she who is barely middle-aged, perhaps in her late thirties, and has lived here all her life, still considers herself a refugee unable to go home.
The souvenir vendor to which the thangka shop manager sent me has a large selection of handheld prayer wheels and cool t-shirts with Tibetan lettering. The lady looks like she could be one of the original settlers. It turns out she was two years old when her parents escaped from Tibet, ‘I have never seen Tibet.’
She has no memories from there and although she says she’d love to visit her birthplace, she quietly observes, ‘It can be dangerous to go there.’
The monuments near her shop commemorate the many Tibetans who lost their lives protesting against the Chinese occupation. Besides, she’s well settled — hers is the oldest shop, started in 1985 at a time when the Camp 1 bazaar didn’t exist.
‘Was it like a jungle with elephants?’
‘No, no, there were houses. But no other shops.’
The second camp, set up in 1969, is known as Dicky Larsoe (Bdeskyidslargso in proper Tibetan) and is within walking distance, so I go visit the carpet unit there. The showroom has piles of unsold rugs, no other customers, and only three women weaving in the factory at the back. Camp 2 also has momo and tea shops, and a fine little supermarket where I buy local pickles and noodles. Beyond it is another, newer camp — number 5. Old Camp 3 is near the Sera Road turning and Camp 4 is close to the popular tourist attraction, the Golden Temple, while near the new Tashi Lunpo monastery is yet another camp.
All the camps and monasteries are spread out in a charming agricultural landscape cut through with proper metalled roads. The individual villages aren’t very big, averaging about 30 families each, and even the original Camp 1 is quite tiny — if one comes in a rickshaw, one passes it in the blink of an eye. Better to walk. On the way, I see a farmer toiling on his plot where trees have been planted in strict rows. He invites me to sit on the porch of his hut. His English is far from perfect, but it turns out he’s fluent in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and Hindi. He was 18 in 1959 when the Dalai Lama went into exile. But he stayed back to fight the Chinese. The battle was lost and he too had to flee. Once he reached safety, he worked hard and raised four children whom he put through school: his two sons are in the U.S. and Canada respectively, while his daughters found jobs in India.
‘India acchha hai,’ he says cheerfully.
‘What do you like best – biriyani or pulao?’
‘I like it that there are so many temples here.’
At 77, he gets up at five every morning, takes his bath and goes to the temple at six. Electricity comes for a few hours around noon, so that is when he has to be at the farm — running the pump and sprinklers — but at 4.30 pm he is back at the temple. He appears to be happy, despite not having seen his own country for more than 50 years. Taking a cue from him, I too spend time meditating at the main temple which has a giant gilded Buddha, filled with sacred relics.
At the Rigzod Bookstore by the gate, I pick up an information booklet. The temple is a powerful place for purification of the mind, ‘one may feel remorseful and confess any negative actions one has done in the past, from killing insects up to neglecting the happiness and freedom of others. It is also good to promise never to do such things in the future…’ I decide to drink less beer, cut down on non-veg and, well, be principled like a Tibetan.
The Namdroling Monastery was established in 1963 as a 9 x 9 feet bamboo structure, at which time there were ten resident monks. It has expanded hugely since and its great temple was inaugurated in 1999 by the Dalai Lama. The monks adhere to the nyingma ritual (the old translation school), the ancient tradition of Padmasambhava. My interest is therefore grabbed by the statue to the left of the 60-foot Buddha — that of the two feet shorter Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rimpoche. In 747 he went from Nalanda University in present-day Bihar to Tibet to teach and founded the first monastery there, based on an architectural design from India. This temple here, nicknamed the Golden Temple by tour companies, is actually the Padmasambhava Vihara.
Padmasambhava is one among the many gurus India, through the ages, has provided to the Tibetans. They in fact consider India as the ‘Birthplace of the Noble Ones’ and this long-time affinity is also evident from the fact that the Tibetan script is based on Brahmi (from the Gupta era), rather than Chinese alphabets.
It is also interesting how these new monastic institutions have created a Buddhist revival of sorts in the land of Buddha. At the canteen in the shopping complex across the road from the monastery, I spot a monk. Which in itself is not a strange sight, but he’s sitting behind the cash counter. I do a double take.
‘You’re a monk,’ I exclaim as I pay for a bottle of soda.
‘Yes,’ he confirms.
‘And you work?’
He explains that the studies he just completed at the monastery took nine years and were all free of cost, including food and clothing. At the end, as a contribution, students are expected to serve for one year — and since the monastery owns the canteen, he works here. Afterwards, he’ll go home to Sikkim, become a philosophy teacher and get married. ‘One can take the vow, but I chose not to. I want to start a family.’
‘What’s it like to study here? Do you have to wake up early?’
‘It’s like any university. There are hostels, we do puja in the morning, then there are classes, and at the end there is an exam period.’
By sunset, as I head to the twin Sera monasteries — Sera Mey and Sera Jey — that are prettily laid out on a low hill to the southeast, I get a surreal vibe. I’m walking through maize fields and palm groves, and there’s not a yak in sight. On the horizon, instead of the snow-capped Himalayan peaks are the gently undulating hills of Coorg. But the prayer-flags sway restlessly in the evening breeze.
It feels even stranger when I reach the monasteries. Founded in Tibet in 1419, they were destroyed in 1959. Eleven years later 200 monks journeyed here to rebuild them 2,500 kilometres south of Lhasa. Today the Sera area is like a small Tibetan town. The narrow lanes are tidy, plastic bottles have been collected in recycling bins. A couple of young monks pass me outside the Sera Mey, playing with a dog. I ask them if they speak English.
They shake their heads. ‘Kannada? Hindi?’
Again they shake their heads.
‘What do you speak then — Tibetan?’
‘Yes,’ one of them says.
‘There,’ I say, ‘you did speak English!’
They giggle and the talkative one explains, in what little English he knows, that they were born in Nepal so they actually speak Nepali, but for the last five years they have studied here. He is 12. They run off laughing.
I climb uphill towards the Sera Jey as I notice that hundreds of monks are going in that direction. They carry tea mugs and seating cushions and take position in neat rows in the courtyard, in some six or seven large groups, to watch fellow monks debate. It feels as ancient as Greece, but isn’t that far from a modern university despite the stylised, choreographed movements their hands make, and the theatrical delivery. I notice that the more dramatic statements are punctuated by hand claps and from the occasional chuckles I gather the speakers are witty.
I realise that I’m witnessing verbal examinations. A little later, as night falls, I grab dinner at a fast food shop in Camp 1 and watch the street. At the front of the momo stall, the proprietor, her mother and daughter, chatter away. I have an ocean of Tibetan voices echoing in my head. In the last couple of days I have spoken with artists, farmers, monks, shopkeepers, students beginning their lives, and retired folks making their peace with the fact that they will never return to Tibet.
So I don’t ask the women anything, except how much to pay, especially since they know little English. But I can’t help speculating and my guess is that the old woman could be from Tibet and one of the first settlers of Camp 1. Her daughter may have been born in India, perhaps in the 1970s, but yet retains a very Tibetan air about her as she prepares my food. Her daughter in turn, hangs out with the oldies for some minutes and then whizzes off on her scooter — in search, perhaps, of a different future.
Zac O’Yeah’s latest comic detective novel set in Bengaluru is the bestselling Hari, a Hero for Hire.
