To a Mountain in Tibet(18)
At first I imagine that the crimson coating on the bas-relief of Kali is moving drapery. Then I see the carving is awash with blood. In this inner courtyard, where the worshippers cram shoulder to shoulder, the casual priests, their robes hitched to the thigh, receive their platters of hibiscus and marigold, while two butchers collar the living beasts. Beneath the bloodied goddess, the goats collapse at the slash of a knife, and the cockerels’ heads are flipped off like bottle tops. The sculptured face shows only slit eyes and the mouth of a spoilt girl. A severed buffalo head sits like a gory anvil at her feet, its carcass foundered to the ground a yard away. A guardian yells at me to remove my shoes. The marble floors are a sea of blood and offal. The lissom women walk here barefoot, like priestesses. Bells crash and tinkle as they circle the shrine. Grey mongrels sleep underfoot, oblivious on the crimsoned tiles.
Kali’s statue is one of those primitive images the more potent for their inhuman muteness. Classically she is portrayed hideous, a trampler of demons and a drunkard on blood. At Dakshinkali she accepts for sacrifice only uncastrated males. Shiva alone can control her. In yogic practice he represents pure, inert consciousness, she the energy by which he creates. In other guises she becomes a figure of cosmic triumph, the bringer of change who at last devours time itself and lapses back into primal dark. Sometimes she is even described as beautiful.
I climb back up the valley, where families are feasting on their sacrifices under the trees. Everyone is in high spirits except me, hypocritically repelled by what Western abattoirs conceal. Along the path the stalls are selling trinkets and fluffy toys: little teddy bear pendants and animal heads with Disney smiles.
That evening, in my monastery guest house in Kathmandu, I peeled off my blood-soaked socks and sat in the garden where the marigolds and hibiscus bloomed unpicked. Tashi, a monk who had befriended me, sat opposite and listened to Kali’s slaughter with disgust. He came from a poor village in Bhutan. The Buddhist ban on taking life had long ago sickened him of bloodshed, and the wrathful deities in his own Buddhist pantheon had calmed into saviours.
‘There’s a Hindu goddess has her festival here in September,’ he said. ‘Kali or Durga, I don’t know. The streets stream with blood for three days. In past years the king started the festival by slaughtering something. And we monks hate this. People sacrifice in the hope of better business deals or male children. How can they promote themselves through the suffering of poor animals? We always close ourselves away for those days, and light lamps for the souls of the animals and pray.’
In Tashi’s monastery, a month before, I had watched a monk reaching out to the folding gate of a storeroom. Gently from its interstices, which would crush together when the door closed, he extracted a small marbled butterfly, and carried it away to a flower.
Tashi had a soft, peasant face and crescent mouth. He was only thirty but would soon begin the three-year period of solitary meditation that he craved. ‘This animal slaughter will stop in the end,’ he said. ‘Young people will change it. They are turning against the practices of their elders. Everything is changing…’
I forgot that he himself was young. Under his loose magenta robes his arms showed smooth, hairless, but his face was blotched and scarred by his rural childhood, and seemed settled now into a sturdy peace. ‘How they will replace those practices I don’t know. We live in an age of decline. I think before the Chinese invaded Tibet, and our Buddhist people were dispersed, that our faith was much purer. Now we’re exposed to Western ways, and of course to women. In our faith a senior monk–one who’s achieved a certain level of realisation–may sometimes marry. So she becomes an inspiration to him, and he a guru to her. But this is rare, and late. And now I hear of young monks going after girls, and some Western women complain that monks grab at them. The monks see women on television, of course…’
I asked with vague surprise: ‘They watch much television?’
‘Oh yes, a lot. The monks get very excited.’ He was starting to laugh. ‘Only last night all the monks got furious.’
‘Why was that?’ But I knew their calm could be deceptive. In Tibet they remained the spearhead of political protest, and centuries ago the monasteries had run amok in internecine war.
‘It was Manchester United. All the monks love football. They got very angry last night about the European Cup. Manchester United were beaten by Barcelona, and all the monks love Manchester United. You should see them from behind, watching television, how they argue. They thought the referee was biased…they were enraged how he gave out penalty tickets. They started shouting things.’
I shook my head. ‘I thought the monks prayed in the evening.’
‘Well, perhaps it’s a kind of meditation. They concentrate on the ball and the rest of the world goes away…’
In the valley below Muchu, the Karnali river bends suddenly north through impassable gorges, and will rejoin our track only on the Tibetan frontier. Meanwhile Iswor points us to where the tributary of Kumuchhiya falls steeply from the west. On the ridge beyond Muchu we pass a mani wall and a chorten–one of those stupa-like cenotaphs that Tibetan peoples cherish–and reach a half-derelict police post. The site had been abandoned to Maoist guerrillas long ago, but for two years now a twelve-man police squad from Kathmandu had reluctantly returned: slight, dark men, isolated and perhaps a little afraid. A wary sergeant scans our permits and sends us on.