The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Art of Purring (7 page)

After class, as the students were putting away their blankets and blocks and bolsters, a few paused to speak to me. While some returned to the hallway to put on their shoes and leave, most congregated on the balcony beyond the sliding doors. An assortment of chairs with brightly colored cushions and a few beanbag chairs were ranged along a faded Indian carpet that ran the length of the balcony. At a table stacked with mugs and glasses, someone was pouring water and green tea as the students settled into what was evidently a comfortable postclass routine.

We cats are not fond of too much noise or movement, so I waited until they were all seated before slipping silently from the stool and making my way out to the balcony next to Serena. The final rays of the setting sun had turned the mountains a gleaming coral red.

“Trying to breathe through discomfort when we’re doing yoga is one thing,” a gravel-voiced woman called Merrilee was saying. She had joined the class almost at the end, as though she had really come only for the social part of the evening. And was it my imagination, or had she surreptitiously slipped something from a hip flask into her glass? “But what about when we’re not doing yoga and we have to deal with problems?” she asked.

“All is yoga,’” Ludo told her. “Usually we react to challenges in a habitual way, with anger or avoidance. By breathing through a challenge, we can arrive at a more useful response.”

“Isn’t anger or avoidance sometimes a useful reaction?” asked Ewing, an older American who was a longtime resident of McLeod Ganj. Occasionally he visited the Himalaya Book Café, where it was said that he had fled to India after some sort of tragedy back home. For many years he had played piano in the lobby of New Delhi’s Grand Hotel.

“A
reaction
is automatic, habitual,” Ludo said. “A
response
is considered. That’s the difference. What’s important is to create space, to open ourselves up to possibilities beyond the habitual, which rarely serve us well. Anger is never an enlightened response. We may be wrathful—speaking in mock-angry tones to stop a child who is about to step near a fire, for example—but that’s very different from real anger.”

“The problem,” observed a tall Indian man sitting next to Serena, “is that we get stuck in our comfort zone, even when it isn’t very comfortable.”

“Clinging to the familiar,” Serena agreed. “To things that used to give us such happiness but don’t anymore.”

I looked up at her, startled, when she said this. I was thinking of the beige fleece blanket in the bedroom and how memories of the many happy times I had spent on it with my little Snow Cub were now laced with sadness.

“Shantideva, the Indian Buddhist sage, talks about licking honey off the edge of a blade,” said Ludo. “No matter how sweet, the price we pay is much higher.”

“So how do we know,” asked Serena, “when something that has been positive in the past has outlived its usefulness?”

Ludo looked over at her with eyes so clear they seemed almost silver. “When it causes us to suffer,” he replied simply.
“Suffer
comes from a Latin word meaning
to carry.
And while pain is sometimes unavoidable, suffering is not. For instance, we may have a very happy relationship with someone, and then we lose the person. We feel pain, of course: that’s natural. But when we continue to carry that pain, feeling constantly bereft, that’s suffering.”

There was a pause while everyone absorbed this. In the deepening twilight, the mountains loomed in the distance, brooding shadows skimmed with vivid pink like the frosting on Mrs. Trinci’s cupcakes.

“I sometimes think the past is a dangerous place to go looking for happiness,” said the Indian man sitting next to Serena.

“You’re right, Sid,” agreed Ludo. “The only time we can experience happiness is in this moment, here and now.”

Later, the students began to drift away. Serena left with several others, and I followed her into the hall.

“I see little Swami is with you,” observed one of the women, slipping on her shoes.

“Yes. We know each other well. She spends a lot of time at the café. I’m giving her a lift back there now,” Serena said, picking me up.

“What’s her real name?” another woman asked.

“Oh, she’s a cat of many names. Everywhere she goes she seems to acquire another one.”

“Then today is no exception,” said Sid. Taking a yellow daisy from a vase in the hallway, he fashioned it into a flower garland and placed it around my neck. “I prostrate to you, little Swami,” he said, bringing his smooth, manicured hands together at his heart. As I looked into his eyes, I saw great tenderness.

Then he was opening the door for Serena, and we were making our way back down the hill.

“We are so lucky to have such a wonderful teacher,” said Serena.

“Yes,” agreed Sid. “Ludvig—Ludo—is exceptional.”

“My mother says he’s been in McLeod Ganj as long as I’ve been alive.”

Sid nodded. “Since the early ’60s. He came at the request of Heinrich Harrer.”

“Of
Seven Years in Tibet
fame?” asked Serena. “The Dalai Lama’s tutor?”

“That’s right. Heinrich arranged an introduction to the Dalai Lama very soon after Ludo came to McLeod Ganj. It is said that he and His Holiness are good friends. In fact, it was His Holiness who encouraged Ludo to set up the yoga studio.”

“I didn’t know that,” Serena said. Glancing at Sid, she was suddenly aware of how much he knew of local affairs. After a few moments, she decided to test this further. “There’s a guy walking behind us in a dark jacket, felt cap,” she said under her breath. “Someone said he’s the Maharajah of Himachal Pradesh. Is that true?”

They continued down the hill for a while before Sid discreetly glanced over his shoulder. “I’ve heard the same thing,” he said.

“I’ve seen him around here quite often,” Serena said.

“So have I,” observed Sid. “Perhaps he usually takes a walk at this time of day?”

“Could be,” mused Serena.

The very next day I was padding along the corridor of the executive wing when Lobsang called out to me. “HHC! Come here, my little one! There’s something you’ll want to see.”

I ignored him, of course. We cats are not given to kowtowing to every plea, entreaty, or even humble petition made by humans. What good would it do? You are so much more grateful when we do eventually throw you a bone—if you’ll excuse the whiff of dog about that particular metaphor.

Lobsang was not to be deterred, however, and moments later I was being picked up, taken to his office, and placed on his desk.

“I’m Skyping Bhutan,” he told me. “And I spotted someone I thought you’d like to see.”

His computer screen revealed a sumptuously furnished room and to one side of it, a window seat on which a Himalayan cat was lying on her back, sunning her tummy. She had her head tilted back, her eyes closed, and her legs and bushy tail splayed in what Ludo might have termed “the pose of the starfish.” For cats, this is the most defenseless, trusting, and contented of all poses.

It took me a few moments before I realized … Could it really be? Yes, it was! But how she had grown!

“Her official title is HRHC,” Lobsang told me. “Her Royal Highness’s Cat. So one more letter than HHC. And they tell me she is as adored at the palace there as you are here at Namgyal.”

I watched the rise and fall of Snow Cub’s tummy as she dozed in the sun, remembering how miserable I’d been just days earlier when Chogyal had removed the beige blanket from the bedroom and with it had deprived me of the tender memories of my little girl.

Or so I’d felt at the time.

Since then I had come to learn that my unhappiness had been inflicted not by Chogyal but, unintentionally, by myself. By wallowing in my own nostalgic memories, spending so much time thinking about a relationship that had moved on, I had been needlessly carrying pain. Suffering.

Meanwhile, Snow Cub had grown into a new life as the beloved palace cat of the queen of Bhutan. Could any mother wish for more?

Turning, I stepped closer to where Lobsang was sitting at his desk and bent down to massage his fingers with my face.

“HHC!” he exclaimed. “You’ve never done that before!”

As he responded by scratching my neck, I closed my eyes and began to purr. Ludo was right: happiness was not to be found in the past. Not in trying to relive memories, however beguiling.

It could only be experienced in this moment, here and now.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

What would happen, dear reader, if you were to achieve your most longed-for dream? What if you were to succeed in your chosen ambition, beyond your wildest hopes?

There’s no harm in contemplating this happy prospect, is there? Imagine, for example, opening the front door of a beautiful home and discovering your family inside, a picture-book image of familial bliss and pleasing demeanors, with delightful aromas wafting from the kitchen and no squabbling over the TV remote.

Or, in my own case, venturing into the cold storage room of the kitchen downstairs to discover 10,000 portions of Mrs. Trinci’s diced chicken liver, stowed in pristine condition and awaiting my personal delectation.

What an enchanting prospect! How alluring the image!

Little did we know down at the Himalaya Book Café that someone who had achieved something equally amazing was about to enter our midst.

We barely noticed him at first. As it happened, his initial arrival coincided with one of my own late-morning appearances. It was shortly after 11 when I made my way down the road from Jokhang at the exact moment he happened to be striding toward the café. He was a rugged-looking, middle-aged man with auburn hair graying at the temples, a craggy face, beetle brows, and inquisitive eyes. There was a marked contrast between his face, lined and lived-in, and his expensive outfit—cream linen jacket, cream pants, gleaming gold watch. He was walking faster than the meandering stroll of most tourists and carrying several guidebooks on the travel highlights of northwest India.

I made my way through the café, pausing to touch noses with Marcel and Kyi Kyi in their basket under the counter. With Franc’s departure and the arrival of Serena and Sam, it was as though an invisible thread had drawn us nonhuman denizens of the café closer. Having been through all the changes together gave us a shared experience, a common bond. Not that it went any further than a touch on the nose and polite inquiry. You wouldn’t expect me to climb into their basket with them, would you? I’m not that kind of cat, and, dear reader, this is certainly not that kind of book!

Taking up my usual position on the magazine rack, I observed our nattily dressed visitor as he made himself comfortable on one of the nearby banquettes. Summoning a waiter with an imperious hand, when he spoke it was with a Scottish burr: “Has lunch service started?”

Sanjay, a fresh-faced young waiter in a crisp, white uniform, nodded.

“I’ll have a glass of your Sémillon Sauvignon Blanc,” the visitor told him. Spreading his travel books across the table in front of him and taking a cell phone from his pocket, he soon appeared to be busy researching travel plans, cross-checking details from one book to another, and keying them into his phone.

When the glass of Sémillon Sauvignon Blanc arrived, he took a tentative first sip, swirling the liquid around in his mouth with a searching expression. Thereafter he didn’t so much drink the wine as inhale it. Four sips and, only a few minutes later, his glass was empty.

This fact didn’t escape the attention of Headwaiter Kusali, whose omniscience was legendary. He dispatched Sanjay with the bottle of SSB to freshen the visitor’s glass. A third glass, then a fourth soon followed before the visitor asked for his bill, cleared away his books, and left.

It was half an hour later when developments took an unusual turn. Looking up from my own lunchtime treat—a delicious serving of smoked salmon cut into dainty, bite-size strips—who should I see at the café entrance but the same man, this time accompanied by his wife.

A matronly woman with a kind face and sensible shoes, she glanced around the café with an expression of appreciation. It was one we were quite used to. By the time many Westerners had made their way up to McLeod Ganj from Delhi, they were overwhelmed by India, with its chaos, crowds, poverty, traffic, and shocking vibrancy. The moment they stepped through the doors of the Himalaya Book Café, however, they found themselves in altogether different aesthetics. To the right of an ornate reception counter, the café had a soft-lit, classic quality, with its white tablecloths, cane chairs, and a large, brass espresso machine. Richly embroidered Tibetan Buddhist wall hangings, or
thangkas
, bedecked the walls. To the left-hand side of the counter and up a few steps was the bookstore section, its well-stocked shelves interspersed with a treasure trove of lavish cards, Himalayan artifacts, and other gifts. It was an exotic fusion of casual European chic and Buddhist mysticism.