The escape of the Dalai Lama

March 1959

The cold winds rattled the wooden latticed windows of the Potala palace in Lhasa  .
it was dark and late in the night

The potala  was massive and foreboding in the darkness ,rain was drizzling and the howling wind  making its eerie music added to the somber  note.

The man tiptoed into the bedroom of his holiness softly treading even at this time with the reverence deserved by his spiritual master

The Dalai Lama was the spiritual head of millions of Buddhists around the world his lineage hailing from Ancient Buddha and the Sakyamuni themselves.

The deeply asleep  teenager with a shaven head his round spectacles lying behind the heavy tome he had been reading  hardly betrayed the greatness bestowed upon  him .

Yes it was troubled times, the Chinese were already inside Tibet and all the diplomatic negations attempted by his holiness were in vain,
the Chinese were bent on taking over Tibet and did not care a bit for the Dalai Lama or Buddhism,

Today they had fired two shells into his holiness palace and this was the final act of defiance before the decision was made to take the Dalai Lama away from Tibet .
 

The frowning silhouette of the Dalai  Lama slowly came awake as he was gently shaken by the assistant

Your holiness please

Wake up its time

Time to go

He had been told that these would be the words for which he would have to flee his beloved country

The sacred Potala where the spirits of his ancients roamed the dark corridors ,where the millions of butter lamps glowed with brilliance removing the darkness of human minds where the devoted came prostrating with utmost reverence to their living God a lanky shaven teenager with thick glasses and sad eyes  rose from his slumber to his destiny .

He was filled with remorse at the act of fleeing his beloved people leaving them to the vagaries of the invaders of his blessed land ,
Everything told him to stay back in this land of his but he also knew it was needed for him to exit to guard the faint flicker of hope he had for a free Tibet and it was his duty to do so .

Men of Gods never have it easy they face hardships as none of their human brethren’s can even decipher,
their minds are in turmoil and everything they do is with selfless love for humanity .
 

And so the Dalai Lama rose from his slumber and  quickly gathered his meagre belongings tied in a bundle and went behind the man into the dark corridors of the Potala ,
he went through small corridors flickering dimly in the glow of dying butter lamps he crossed vast halls where during the day sat monks soberly intoning mantras deep from their souls to huge Buddha’s gazing benignly at them but in the dark of the night it was all empty and hollow

He ducked below stair cases and stepped gingerly on narrow footholds to descend down the steep crevices of the Potala looming in the heights of Lhasa

Some said it  was all organised by the CIA .
 

The whole adventure was highly secretive and was known only to a selective few .
 

The Dalai lamas mother too was brought out, a small door in the back led to a narrow tunnel, they bent low while stepping into its wet interiors and walked long to reach an indiscriminate part of the town after walking long distances .

A pack of ponies stood snorting white fog into the cold night sky .
 

The Dalai Lama ,his  mother and brothers were quickly huddled covered from head to foot to look like poor travellers and were put atop sturdy ponies

Without much ado the huge ear ringed turbaned Tibetan men who were warriors in disguise and body guards who would not hesitate to kill if needed to protect their holiness whatever their religion professed ,walked briskly

Spies were all around and the Chinese had already suspected that something was going on

 They would never want the Dalai Lama to leave Tibet as they would be morally in deep trouble in international circles.

Slowly the caravan moved to the outskirts of the town without incidence the way was quietly being cleared by indiscriminate men who knew the path and were looking for curious eyes

the night was cold and dark as they slipped away from Lhasa .

Days of climbing treacherous paths mostly in the dark with the neighs and grunts of the ponies as the only sound followed
the howling winds and splutter of distant avalanches were their company

Breathless and tired and dirty they climbed steep hills barren valleys where wild yaks roamed around occasionally catching a glimpse of the red eyes of a snow leopard as it crouched for possible prey
the guards would light a fire to scare it away .they would bite into hard bread and sip salted butter tea dehydrated they would drink from sheepskins

shepherds catching a glimpse of his holiness would fall flat in supplication and would not rise till the caravan passed into the distant dust

Days of climbing would bring them to the tall passes more than 17000 feet above sea level with snow covering the earth and the sky the cold and the meagre oxygen would make them struggle for breath and even the hardy bodyguards had to plod tiredly

while the Dalai lama gazed with sadness at his men and his ponies struggling for his safety his mind would go out to his people and he would pray fervently for them .
 

Crossing the high passes the Khenzimane pass wading through the rushing waters of lakes and streams crossing the mighty Brahmaputra in shaky boats the tired entourage would reach closer to India as it shuffled towards the Indian border

After more than two weeks of hardy travel it would reach Tawang in today’s Arunachal Pradesh

( I was lucky to visit this beautiful place once )

 it was precisely here that the Chinese would overrun India in the 1962 war taking their revenge but that would be a decade later .

the Dalai lama would stay four days in Tawang recouping from a ravaging diarrhoea

 later he would move down to Bomdila and still later to Tezpur in Assam .he would then stay in Mussorie while his home was made ready in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh 250 km away from Chandigarh and more than 7000 feet in height .

Called Mcleod Ganj or upper Dharamshala this would become the Government in exile for Tibet with the Dalai lama and more than 80000 of his followers who would settle down here

Iam writing this because I visited Dharamsala and Mcleod ganj recently and went back in my imagination to write how I felt his holiness would have escaped the Chinese

looking fees

Looking coolies
Nokku in malayalam is to look
now this can be used in several situations like for example an yesteryear wife may never call her husband by name but mostly as Nokkoo
when it comes to teenage boys brimming with hormones eda nokkada means look at that beauty !
There was a movie by name Nokkathadoorathe kannum nattu where veteran actress Padmini acted with debut Nadia Moidu and a young Mohanlal,it also had memorable songs by Jerry Amaldev the talented music Director
But to the malayalee Nokku is something else
in fact he prefers not to look at that
the only place in the world where one has to pay a charge to a laborer for his looking at a job ! should be this Stalins own country !
you can call it by any name
 labour terrorism is reasonably apt
no court indictments or law has till today  been able to touch this ignominy of the state
Nokku coolie means the coolie or fee paid for looking
most streets in cities of Kerala have these small shacks where colorfully head geared blue or red shirts worn according to their affiliations lay waiting for their prey .
Any laden lorry or small truck is waylaid and demanded to know what trier purpose Any packing or unpacking of goods in that region is dutifully supervised by them These days they allow the work to be done by others at economic rates as long as they get their demanded cut as nokku coolie
they then relax and lean on a tree light up a beedi and watch the work or rather look at the work
At times some expert suggestions are given as to how people should go about their jobs of unloading and loading probably getting nostalgic of their hardier days when they had to work
After a couple of teas and gazing inanimatedly they get up to recieve thier nokku coolie and are on thier way to catch the next victim
recently a foriegn terracota sculptor who needed to pack his creations after a show  in Cochin found this so absurd and he refused to partake his money for the rubbish and instead destroyed his creations breaking them like the Bamiyan statues but the nokku coolie veterans watched all this benignly and so did the law  !
the nooku koolans  had seen all this and more and they go about doing their job of looking and getting paid for it !
how nice

OK KANMANI ...FILM REVIEW

Romance and Love is an emotion that can touch one at any age
When young its as fresh as a just budded flower while as one ages its mellowed like fine wine .
Creativitiy has always expressed love as the finest among its creations and films too are no exception
Movies like Maro Charitra.Bobby.and several others have tingled the fine nerves of love
Maniratnam the ace Director always comes up with a winner after a couple of flops
This time his new film Ok Kanmani is an all time winner .
Be it in the melding of the lead pair Dulqar Salman and Nitya menon whose love had the freshness and sweet naivety
Prakash Raj and ms Samson were the older pair of love birds and the slow Alzeimers  that ate into his wifes brain
The young couple who had a live in relationship goes through a crisis involving thier older counterparts and so realise thier folly in thier short vision of love
The film had a feel of Titanic where the audience love the chirpy lovebirds
Worth seeing

Driver Swami

Dusk was slowly settling down as we returned from the middle of the River where the three rivers the Ganga ,the Yamuna and the mythical Sarasvati was supposed to have melded ,

To be able to go to this point in the middle of a maha kumbh mela was a feat by itself as the once in 12 years Maha kumbh which lasted for more than a month was the biggest congregation of humanity in one place .

Something which could be seen even from space!

On certain special days during the month long Kumbh millions would descend on its banks, though the day we went was not one of the big days .

The crowds still swelled on the banks of the flowing river gaily festooned with glimmering lights ,

we were lucky to get into one of the last boats and surreptiously glided out as the police were preventing any more people from going to the river centre as it was getting dark ,

After our ritual bath we felt clean and privileged to have had a rare opportunity

When we had told our friends before we left that we were off to the Kumbh mela they were aghast

The kumnbh mela, are you people crazy ?

The crowd is just abominable; one could get killed in those frequent stampedes

It was one of India’s enduring nightmares for anyone living in a an ensconced world

How could one  take such a risk ?

The very idea of even reaching the Mela grounds was unthinkable for many but we took the impulsive decision because one of our friends Pramodh Swamji of the Amritha group had invited us and till day we have felt it was one of our greatest blessing to have done so !

read this on my earlier post  

http://hariwrite.blogspot.com/2013/02/maha-kumbh-mela.html

The Kumbh mela was India in a microcosm and happened every four years at four different places in turns and the Maha kumbh was the 12 yearly once  mega bonanza ,

this year it was at Allahabad

 It had all the colour clamour and confusion which was India but it also had its serenity spirituality and surrealistic feel  .

In its teeming millions was the very soul of India .

In its air was the aura of history  .

The rich tapestries of spirituality of Bharath was melded into its sands .

In the wrinkles of its sanyasins lay the heart of India .

The dusts of the past gathered in its fogs.

The din of its footsteps was the music of India.

It is to savour all this that millions gathered here

It is to awaken their indianess from deep inside their souls that they came here in hordes.

We were one amongst the millions caught in the anonymity of its irrelevance.

We   floated as the jetsam in the lashing waves of time itself.

It was this unique experience which would be very difficult to explain here that we encountered this experience .

The exhilaration of dipping into the pure Ganga with its cold fingers embracing us and igniting our souls to bliss

This was something which was beyond all our past experiences

This was uniquely mystic and awe inspiring

For a long time after our boat reached the crowded banks and our feet touched the sandy shores and as we threaded our way through the milling crowds the trance of this awakening was on us

We were out of this world in a different dimension

Swamiji was more used to this and was more practical and realistic he was keeping an eye on us as we jostled through the crowd he knew there were many whose intentions were hardly spiritual and picking pockets were more common than saving souls in Indian Melas

So he shepherded us to safer environs and made us go into a spiritual supermarket of tents of several Akharas

These are pavilions of different orders of spiritual groups from all over India .

 Some were huge almost like tiny towns with massive cut outs of their main Swami

 In some sermons were being made

There were some where ash strewn Aghoras sat still some in grotesque postures while some deeply inhaled bhang and hemp and the smoke mingled with the fog of the early night

White tourists gaped and gawked and clicked their cameras furiously

Finally Swamiji took us inside a tent complex and introduced us to a surprisingly erudite young swamiji who spoke Cambridge English with a distinctly yankee accent

He asked us to sit down and graciously enquired swamiji  and us about our  welfare

Old friends they were swamiji quickly got to the point

The matter was we had to leave that night as we needed to be at luck now by mid-morning  the morrow to catch our flight back and getting our from the kumbh mela was another feat ,

swamiji had a car but no one to to drop us and return back and he could not leave the place too

It was very difficult to get a private car or taxi as they were all booked

The swamiji whispered something to his aide and shortly a very young almost boyish chubby  swami came and joined his palms in greeting to us

He will drive you to Lucknow tonight declared the swamiji and nodded at the boy

We were little apprehensive at the school boy selected by the swami

So it was agreed that we would go fast wasting no more time .

 we quickly got into car and went to collect our belongings

By then we found the car suddenly filled up as three more swamis had  joined for the trip to be dropped at luck now

So it was by now a bit crowded but the winter night was pretty cold hence it provided much needed warmth .

Our driver lad gaily drove us as we waved farewells to our swami Pramodh

It took more than an hour to leave the Mela ( fair ) grounds as it was around 10 pm when we reached the outskirts

The crowds were less but still one had to weave ones way out

The lad was full of smiles and jokes at the idiots who blocked his way and we were all thinking it was all good fun

We then reached the high way

 Uttar Pradesh may be the largest state of India and its rulers were all big politicians including many prime ministers who hailed from this state but it was pretty primitive in infrastructure .

Most of the highway were two laned and had no median barriers .

Most of  the roads were dark and the huge trucks that lumbered along blinded one with their headlights

Our boy was suspiciously straying to the middle of the road a little too much

a couple of times we almost brushed aside the opposite vehicles and we were a bit worried though our boy driver was nonchalant

But the moment he started becoming silent and nodding a bit and  probably dozing off we got real worried and made him stop

Enough was enough

We did not want the Kumbh mela to be our bodily exit from this world the spirit was another matter !

I asked the driver swami to get in the rear seat and the started driving

 He never protested and quiety made himself comfortable and promptly slept off snoring away to glory

I was stressed a bit at the unknown roads but slowly got the hang of things.

around late midnight we reached Rai Bareli the constituency of Ms Indira Gandhi herself who was our legendary prime minister who had passed away

Rae Bareli was just another dusty hick town and showed no signs of it being a pm constituency

 The plan was to get into some hotel and rest for some time and start at dawn but there were no such places

 A few we saw all had their gates locked and the government rest house had two retainers sleeping like the dead

We decided to just continue driving and we did that or rather I did that while the others slept

At around 5 Am we reached lucknow

Our swami boy had a resurrection as he woke up fresh and beamed at us

I gave him the wheel and got out into the luck now airport and luckily we could get a guest room for some hours of much needed sleep

And thus ended our kumbh mela  

But am still alive to tell this tale !

LABUAN

Labuan is an island off Brunei in East Malaysia in the State of Sabah ,its located in the south china sea and has one big island and six small islands as part of it.
Labohan in Malay meant  anchorage
It is known as the Pearl of Borneo
The main town was  called Victoria in the colonial era and now is called Bandar Labuan .
Labuan was historically part of Majapahit empire in the 14th century and then part of Brunei Sultanate but taken over by the British ( source Wikipedia ) in 1846 and later became its colony ,during second world war the Japanese conquered it and changed its name to Maida island it was liberated by the Allied forces in 1945 and when Malaysia attained independence it became part of East Malaysia .

Its an international offshore financial center since 1990 and has steel mills offshore banking,floor mills ,methanol plant and offshore supplies
close to Brunei Labuan today is a tourist spot for holidaying Bruneians as its a tax free haven and also a pleasant beach resort .
Ferries and speedboats connect the two and it takes approximately 1.5 hours of travel to reach Labuan .
We had planned to leave by MV Hope the ferry which could carry vehicles too though we had parked our car in the paid parking area near Maura Ferry station ( 10 Bruneian dollars for one day )
Indians need a Malaysian Visa for going to Labuan and a multiple entry Brunei visa to return back .
We reached Maura ferry point by 8.30 am and parked our car .
We stood in line to buy the ticket which was 13 Bruneian dollars each approximately 700 INR
After buying tickets we had to go to immigration and customs before we alighted the ferry .
MV Hope had space to accommodate lot of cars motorcycles and some big containers too .
Passengers could either sit on the deck but would have to face the sun or relax in the AC hall .
the huge ship glided away from Maura and into the open sea ,the sea was smooth as the ferry sallied forth .
the safety instructions were shown as a video film  and later a movie started playing ,I moved into the deck for the photo ops
within an hour and half we could see land again as we reached Labuan island ,we could see the famous Financial center looming ahead of us a lot of ships were berthed there and we too moved into the jetty ,completing immigration we sauntered into the jetty building
the first impression was of a small town full of colorful shops overflowing with chocolates and liquor bottles
Rightly called the Chocolate island the duty free haven was famous for these two items .
there are small malls like the one stop shopping center laden with liqour ,tobacco and ,chocolates
there were several restaurants and a sprinkling of KFC and other eateries.
We went through customs formalities quickly and bought our return ticket for the next day ferry and in time as we found out the tickets would have been exhausted shortly !
Our hotel the Labauan Beach resort was 17 km away from the ferry point and had shuttle facility from the ferry point ,we put our luggage in the small aircon van and as the driver was waiting for some more customers quickly did some chocholate purchases and i clicked away furiously anything in sight ,it was quite warm and the sun was pretty strong .
soon we were moving along the main road crossing the island and passed a church a mosque saw a board for the famous second world war cemetery with more than 3900 graves which was a tourist destination though we did not visit it .
on Remembrance day many family members from different countries would visit the grave
the Allied landing point when they reconquered the island was also well known
the surrender point was where the Japanese surrendered in 1945 and the famous chimney which existed from the coal mining era but no one knew its purpose .
Soon we were at the resort itself which was picturesque and stately with a colonial touch ,the high ceiling-ed hall was cool of course Ac was on but the place was less hot as there were lit of trees
the swimming pool was shimmering in the back and was an infinite pool bordering the sea and private beach

We hit the bed in the room and had a relaxing nap till evening when we woke up groggily to catch the shuttle to the town where we shopped a bit and had some dinner and by 9 pm was back ,the next day we woke up late had a swim in the pool but the chlorine in the water made my eyes smart a lot and i got out quicker than my usual swimming pool sojourns ,the breakfast spread was satisfying and by afternoon we had gone to the ferry point by 4 pm we were in MV Hope back to Brunei and hoping to return to Labaun another day