The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck, page 12
“There’s no chance for peace?” I ask.
“We are Gurkhas! We are born fighters!”
The next morning I learn that Ghising likes me even though he doesn’t agree with me on most issues. Appointments are no longer necessary; I can come and go as I please. He even offers me the limited use of a car and a driver.
“Let’s go to a tea estate,” I suggest to the driver, R. R. Pradhan, a former British commando wearing two kukris. He rounds up a couple of GVC soldiers to accompany us. An hour later we’re waist deep in a sea of tea bushes. As far as the eye can see, there are neat rows of identical bushes, all between three and four feet high. In the distance tea pickers hunch over the crop, pinching leaves and dropping them into wicker baskets. The oblong leaves are tough and leathery, their appearance giving no hint of the tender flavor within.
Tea is the lifeblood of the GNLF and Darjeeling. It’s by far the area’s largest industry, employing 50,000 full-time workers and many more part time. For the past four decades the harvest has consistently yielded twelve to fourteen million kilos. In 1985 total revenues were $40 million, but few of the estates are profitable; most of them are referred to as “sick gardens,” one step ahead of bank foreclosure.
“The tea industry is a mess. Big trouble,” R. R. Pradhan tells me before slipping into a cockney accent, peppering his language with army slang. “Gawd awful… The state took over a lot of the gardens when the Brits left and started buggering the people. Calcutta, those berks…”
Most of the gardens, I learn, are more than a hundred years old and are still planted with original stock. Bushes grown from seed will produce high yields for only sixty or seventy years, while clonal bushes are productive for half that time. Replanting and experiments in hybridization, though not totally abandoned, were cut from estate budgets after 1947. As a result, many nurseries have become jungles of weeds, and few new strains have been introduced.
I’m inspecting the contorted lower branches and root system of a bush when I hear my name being called. Someone is sprinting toward me, running down the narrow chute between two rows of bushes. B.B., my self-appointed host, invites me to join him for a cup of tea. We walk to a small house he shares with seven other workers. Half the roof is thatch, the rest is corrugated tin and plywood. Lengths of bamboo have been lashed together and fashioned into a gutter.
B.B. picks up the hingeless door and moves it to the side so we can enter the house. Posters of American pop stars cover the cracked mud walls. A paneless window looks to the northwest, framing a postcard view of the Sikkimese mountains. Several chickens follow us inside to scratch the dirt floor. In the main room a plywood sheet on some tea crates serves as a table. A cook stove has been built from loose stones, and next to it is the kitchen sink, a red plastic bucket. While B.B. stokes the fire, I look into the bedroom, where eight slabs of foam stretch across more tea crates. Family photos and images ripped from magazines are tacked above each pillow. B.B. shows me his area. It’s the one with the pictures of palm trees and south sea islands.
“I wanted to join the navy, but I am a Gurkha so they made me enlist in the army,” he complains as the tea kettle begins hissing.
He lifts up his mattress and pulls out a crate. Inside there’s a radio, a silver bracelet, some money, and a few odds and ends he won’t let me see. Next to his kukri, these are his most valuable possessions. He shows me a picture of his parents holding him as a baby. I concur that his mother was beautiful and that his father looked very strong.
“He gave me this,” B.B. says proudly, brandishing the largest kukri I’ve ever seen. It looks more like a scimitar than a knife. While I examine the polished, razor-sharp blade, he announces he will die before being separated from it.
We return to the main room, and B.B. serves the tea, which is better than that served at party headquarters. He perks up when I tell him this and discloses his secret for a perfect blend. Most of his instructions are lost on me, as they require an intimate knowledge of the estate. Slope and exposure are important: the more southern the exposure and the steeper the hill, the better the tea. Leaves grown on the north side of a hill yield an acidic, tangy taste, and B.B. adds a small amount of them for zing.
He tells me that like every other tea garden in the Darjeeling district, this is a GNLF bastion: everyone belongs to the party. Two teams of GVC soldiers, armed for battle, patrol the grounds at all times. B.B. shows me his set of fatigues. When he dons them, he’s no longer a tea garden worker, but a man with great purpose, a freedom fighter. “I feel strong when I am on patrol. I can kill hundreds of the CRPF.”
Voices outside the door announce the arrival of a large group of men. Another pot of tea is prepared and cups are brought in from the other houses. We squat, our backs pressed against the walls. My notebook is open on my knees. The leader of the GVC brigade watches me write as the others talk. After a minute or so he rushes toward me, demanding to see the book. I refuse.
“What did he tell you?” he snaps, pointing at B.B.
I assure him that B.B. spoke in glowing terms about the GNLF and Subash Ghising.
“Ha! I am the most loyal follower of Mister Ghising,” he dictates. “Write that down.”
Another man, shorter than the rest, proclaims that he’s the most dedicated. Soon the house is filled with shouting men fiercely professing their allegiance to the GNLF. The leader stands. As he speaks, his body stiffens, muscles flexing, but his voice is soft.
“Pledge yourselves to Mister Ghising, our divine leader.”
The men gather around him, grabbing their kukris, and slide the blades across their forefingers. The chickens rush to peck at the dark splotches on the dirt floor as the men scrawl in blood across one wall “Gurkhaland or death.”
It’s late afternoon when we head back to Darjeeling. The sun is fading, but with distance, the events of the day are becoming even more vivid in my mind. I now better understand how Ghising sees himself as a fighting messiah, a leader inspired by heaven and endowed by its divine powers. “I am everything in all ways,” he once said to me. “No one can tell me what to do or how to do it.” The Gurkhas, taught since birth to revere the Hindu pantheon of warrior-gods, have accorded him this role, and they seem to applaud his every move.
The next day I enlist R. R. Pradhan and his car in my search for the pink-headed duck. My walks have been disappointing from a bird watcher’s point of view, and I want to investigate some marshes outside of town. My companion listens politely to my tales about the duck, but from the way he fidgets and glances about, it’s obvious that he isn’t interested.
“Birds,” he tells me later, “are good in a stew, but I really like them roasted over a fire.”
The only duck I’ve seen around Darjeeling is the teal I spotted through the telescope at the Mountaineering Institute. Again today, not a duck in sight. In the first wetlands we visit we find a couple of black partridges and a flock of little stints. At another marsh, closer to the Rangeet River, I spot an Indian skimmer, a bird that flies an inch or two above the surface while dragging the tip of its lower mandible through the water. I would be happy to sit and study it for hours, but R.R. gets restless after a few minutes and starts hacking a path through the bamboo to the water’s edge.
“Reminds me of Borneo,” he says between strokes of his machete. “It was hotter there, but the bamboo was like this. I remember a time…” and he launches into a war story from his days as a British Gurkha.
The skimmer is gone by the time we reach the water. We have to wait thirty minutes before another bird appears, a pied cuckoo, which lands for a drink. R.R. fires a stone at it, sending it racing for cover inside the montane jungle.
“Habit,” he says defensively. “I can’t help it.”
We hike back to the car and drive to town. Along the way we pass teams of men unloading trucks filled with coils of barbed wire, sheets of plywood with broken bottles glued on one side, logs, and steel I-beams. R.R. waves to each work party, promising to return once he drops me off.
“We have learned a thing or two from our other blockades,” R.R. says. “This time we will seal off every road and do it right.”
Today, November 17, less than a week from the start of the blockade and general strike, the market is busier than ever as Gurkhas begin warehousing supplies. The lines for rice, flour, potatoes, and radishes are long. There is no more sugar, and merchants are taking orders for a shipment due soon. The average Gurkha can barely feed his family as things are now, but people are lively, most of them smiling. What will they eat if the strike lasts beyond a week?
“We will manage,” one person tells me. Another says, “Ram will protect us,” sentiments echoed by everyone I ask.
Ghising points out that life in the hills has never been easy, but that Gurkhas view hardship and suffering as separate conditions. Hardship is part of everyday life, and it merely intensifies during a strike. Going to bed with a half-filled stomach is life as it is. Suffering, on the other hand, is something provoked by external forces: Calcutta and its oppression cause suffering.
The mood at party headquarters grows more militant as the strike nears. Sentries no longer pitch coins or shuffle about. Everyone is on alert. Ghising’s language changes as well. He begins using verbs like “attack,” “strangle,” “retaliate,” and “bomb.” He speaks with the confidence of a general in charge of a well-equipped army, but he tells me that the GNLF has neither automatic weapons nor grenade launchers. Although state investigators have found no evidence of Chinese or Nepalese arms shipments to the GNLF, rumors persist, alleging that the Gurkhas have a very sophisticated arsenal.
“At last count,” Ghising reveals, “we had twenty thousand rifles. We have many more bombs. Everything is handmade… Gurkhas are smart, not rich.”
He invites me to inspect various GNLF armories, and the next day I depart on a tour with R.R. and two GVC officers. We drive eastward toward Lankapara Hat. My visa isn’t valid for travel in this area, but the GVC troops refuse to conceal me. To take such a precaution would be demeaning. On the first two days of our trip we visit three rather sleepy tea estates, none of which is well equipped. During the morning of the third day, before we head away from the Bhutanese border, I decide to go for a walk while the others have tea. With the frontier less than a mile from the safe house where we’ve been sleeping, I’m determined to put at least one foot inside Bhutan. Across the border I let out my pink-headed duck call. It has been a while since I last tried it, and I’m a bit rusty. I try again. As I’m about to issue another call, I hear a crackle … something running from me?… No, it’s moving toward me. The sounds are getting louder. A moment later my companions are yelling at me, making me promise not to leave their sight again.
Just before noon we stop to inspect what I’m told is a very militant tea garden. We conceal the jeep in a stand of bamboo and ascend a path leading to a grassy field used as a commons by the 168 Gurkhas living on the estate. The leader agrees to muster his troops, sending two aides into the fields and excusing himself to retrieve his own weapon. His rifle is beautiful, a work of art, embellished with intricate silver scrollwork and a circular pattern of kukris.
“I made it myself,” he says, stroking the barrel.
We follow him to the back of his house, where a Belgian shotgun is lying across two sawhorses. It was left by the former owner of the estate and is now used as a model by teenagers making their first guns. I’m shown other works in progress and discover new uses for old automobile parts. The roof supports from early Land Rovers make excellent gun barrels, better than the lengths of water pipe that are also used. Pieces of carburetors can be filed into firing pins and trigger mechanisms; parts from the choke system can be transformed into gun sights; bits from the starter motor find new life as shell extractors.
A public address system shatters the calm, blaring a call to arms as a World War II air raid siren wails. The workers in the field drop their baskets and run for weapons hidden in tunnels dug throughout the estate. I watch one woman raise a trap door concealed by brambles and dirt. She vanishes down the hole and comes up clutching a rifle. Within minutes everyone is in formation, awaiting orders. During all this, the leader has had his eyes on his watch.
“Not good enough,” he scolds his troops, parading in front of them.
One by one, the army of men and women, young and old, present their arms; those who don’t have rifles show me their kukris. Many of the guns appear more likely to damage the shooter than the target. A demonstration is held to prove reliability and accuracy. The test is impressive: no one misses the target on the barn, nearly one hundred yards away. But the guns are heavy and awkward, no match for those of the state police.
“Now we will show you our secret weapons,” the leader says, tipping his head toward four men, who dash off. They return carrying a crossbow and what appears to be several large balls of twine. Under each ball of jute, however, is a piece of lead pipe filled with black powder and an assortment of nails, ball bearings, shards of glass, and metal scrap. The crossbow is nicknamed “the Silencer.” According to the marksman holding it, the ancient weapon is still the most effective way to take out a sentry. As I reach for one of the arrows, he cautions me: the tips have been dipped in poison. A short prayer to Kali, imploring the goddess of destruction to guide the arrow, is painted along the hardwood shaft.
The leader takes one of the bombs and tosses it like a softball to a man twenty yards away. The Gurkha waves us behind him. He kisses the stubby two-inch fuse and lights it, holding the bomb for several agonizing seconds before heaving it behind the barn. The explosion is followed by an eerie shriek as shrapnel whizzes through the air. The crowd cheers and starts chanting, “Gurkhaland, Gurkhaland…”
After three days near the frontier, I return to Darjeeling to find the GNLF headquarters jammed with people. It’s November 21, the eve of the demonstration. I assume the final details are being worked out, but a friend tells me I’m wrong: the rally has been postponed and the strike canceled. Ghising is leaving today to resume negotiations in New Delhi.
Having accepted an invitation from the federal government, Ghising is a changed man. Gone is the fiery talk; his mood and tone are conciliatory, but he refuses to explain his decision, saying only, “I alone know what is right and what is wrong, and my decision is right.” With that he shoos me out the door. I walk back to my hotel mulling over today’s unexpected but welcome news, hoping the fighting is over.
During Ghising’s absence, headquarters is quiet. Since he refuses to delegate authority, and because his approval is needed for most party activities, everything is stalled. The longer he’s away, the more willing people are to confide in me their secret desire for a political solution. “Anyone saying this in public would be cursed, maybe stoned, but I promise you many of us are thinking about compromise,” one highly placed GNLF official tells me. He intimates that the most recent fighting has been waged not so much for Gurkhaland, but for a better deal at the negotiating table. He feels that the state and federal governments will never allow Gurkhaland. Formal recognition would set an unwanted precedent, undermining forty years of federal work to convince the country’s citizens that they are first and foremost Indians, not Bengalis, Tamils, or Gurkhas. There are scores of separatist movements in multiethnic India, and allowing a new state like Gurkhaland would only increase tensions elsewhere. To this official and others who speak to me in whispers, the proposed Hill Council is acceptable.
Like many in Darjeeling, I awake every morning and hasten to the town bulletin board, but no word comes from Ghising. As November wanes, it becomes clear to me that it’s time to leave. In more than a month, I’ve seen only one duck and no rare birds. Maybe these fliers can sense the tension in the hills of Darjeeling and refuse to land near these mountains of trouble. As I’m saying my good-byes, a GVC officer invites me on a three-day excursion.
“Come with us and then leave for New Delhi. We are just going on a training exercise,” he says. “Three days… There are lakes, rivers. You can walk and look for birds while we train.”
I decide to join the eight men crammed into a Land Rover already full of gear and burlap bags. After a series of bone-rattling jolts, I open the bag I’ve been using as a pillow. Something hard has been knocking against my head. My hand freezes. The bag is filled with homemade bombs.
“Are you feeling all right?” someone asks. “Sick, eh?” The driver slams on the brakes. Everything flies about, and I find myself cradling the bag, trying to keep the bombs from hitting one another. It takes me several seconds to speak.
“No big deal. Right-o, give them here,” the commander says blithely. “We will put them up front.” He takes the bag, mistakenly grabbing the bottom and accidentally dumping three bombs. “Bombs away!” he says, laughing. I stand behind the troops, ready to dive for cover as the three deadly balls of jute bounce down the road.
It’s pitch black by the time the Rover stops. We make camp several kilometers from the road, and I climb under my blankets soon after dinner. The others sit around the campfire boasting about their sexual prowess. In the early morning, as the GVC practices maneuvers, I wander about with my binoculars. There are plenty of buntings, thrushes, and sparrows, all common birds I could see in Darjeeling, but no ducks. Maybe I’ll have better luck when I visit a nearby lake in the afternoon. We regroup to share breakfast, but the meal is interrupted by a messenger from headquarters. The commander looks grim as he reads the dispatch. He calls me over, explaining that they will be staying here the rest of the week. I will return to Darjeeling with the messenger when he finishes his rounds.
“Condition red… Positions, NOW!” he orders, turning to his men. As I put my binoculars away and take out my cameras, he yells, “Don’t be an idiot with those things. Do you understand me, mister?” He repeats himself inches from my face.
