The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck, page 4
“No.”
“Get down!… What are you trying to do? If you fall, I lose my license… Get down! You can sit next to me.”
He thrusts his chin forward as we pull out of the depot, pedal to the floor. Seeing the look on my face, he tells me not to worry. “I am Ram, the best driver in all of Sikkim.”
“I hope so,” I reply, watching the scenery zoom by.
“I am going to win the road race next week!” (The Himalayan Rally, that is, one of the most treacherous motoring events in the world.)
Gunning the packed bus along the one-and-a-half lane road, he preens himself in the mirror as I fumble for the nonexistent seat belt. The speedometer is not broken, I’m told, it’s just missing the needle. “It’s around here someplace…”
The view whirling by is of gray, exhausted land, flat to the horizon. Occasionally we pass a cluster of mud buildings with groups of people squatting in front of them, their faces mirroring the barrenness of the landscape. We loop northward, and miles away we see the jagged profile of the Himalayas. Beyond the foothills, close to the top of the world, are Darjeeling and Sikkim.
About sixty-five million years ago most of the world’s land masses had assumed the shapes we know today. One exception was India, which was slow to separate from Antarctica. After twenty million years as an island, India rammed into Tibet. The collision folded huge land masses upward and created the Himalayas, which continue to grow approximately two inches every year.
Several miles south of Kalimpong, once the terminus of an ancient trade route between India and China, the bus enters an evergreen forest, and in a grumbling low gear, we start to climb. The steep road, with its many switchbacks and potholes, gives Ram an opportunity to display his driving skills.
We wind through an undergrowth of ferns and moss thriving in the shade of giant sal, teak, and pine trees. Ram tells me that moss is his favorite plant. “I love it. It reminds me of green pubic hair on a woman’s mound.” The thought inspires him, and he begins telling me about all the women in his life, real and imaginary. As he prattles on, my attention drifts back to the landscape.
For the next fifty kilometers, the road follows the Tista River. Before emptying into the Brahmaputra below Kurigram in Bangladesh, the Tista plummets over 19,000 feet. As the river descends from the stars to the plains, it thunders. According to legend, the sound is the River Spirit singing to Mount Kanchenjunga, the supreme deity of Sikkim. No one has ever paddled the length of the Tista, and as I stare at its foaming rapids, I understand why. Somehow I must find a way to reach one of its tributaries in the north.
At the border separating West Bengal from Sikkim, the bus stops for inspection, and Ram whispers, “Hope your papers are in order. It will be five hours before I return this way.”
One of the border guards shouts, “Foreigner! Foreigner!” rousing his colleagues from their cots. Mahout, the hotelier, had advised me to observe the border guards carefully. “If you break the law, they will be the ones after you, not the army. Watch them. Note how they dress, the shine on their shoes… Are they well disciplined?”
The bus empties, and everyone else heads to the wall with “Toilet” stenciled on it. I hand my passport to a guard and walk around the compound, looking at the jeeps and trucks.
“If the tires are as bald as you,” Mahout advised, “it is a good sign. It means the commandant sold the originals to a local dealer. You can make a deal with a man like that.” Unfortunately, the tires at this checkpoint have plenty of tread.
Hearing my name called, I walk over to a wooden shack. The two officers inside offer me tea and treat me cordially. The rest of the passengers are already returning to the bus, and Ram is motioning for me to hurry. He starts the bus, revving the engine loudly.
“Is there any problem with my pass?” I ask, declining the tea.
“No, nothing is wrong. One question and then you can leave: Why are you visiting Sikkim?”
“Tourism,” I reply.
“Are you an agent?”
“Excuse me?”
“An agent … you know, someone buying gems to sell someplace else.”
“Oh,” I sigh in relief. “Absolutely not.”
“Enjoy yourself… Remember, it is illegal to buy rubies without state approval.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
Ram tries to make up for the lost time, shifting gears like a race-car driver. His fastest time from Siliguri to Gangtok was four and a half hours, his slowest was nine days.
“I have never seen the ocean, but on that trip I saw enough rain to fill it.”
During the wet season, June to mid-September, the monsoon rains can wash away entire sections of the highway, closing Sikkim to the outside world. The higher we go, the slower we travel, encountering more and more washouts. Frequently Ram must bring the bus to a crawl to navigate rock debris. Even in October the roadway is little more than a dirt path running between giant boulders. Iron plates cap holes big enough to swallow the bus. Ram pays special attention to each plate. “You have to watch them. Sometimes they vibrate and move away from the edge. One scared me yesterday.”
Because the road is the main supply route for the frontier army, thousands of workers are employed year-round to maintain it. Most of them come from Calcutta, expecting good pay and housing; unfortunately, it appears that they receive little of either. Every few miles we pass a small shantytown of cardboard hovels erected by a road crew. Their fires are fueled by bamboo and chunks of macadam, spewing thick smoke that covers everything with a black film. Anyone over the age of seven is put to work, and I often find myself watching three generations of one family laboring side by side. Ram declares that the army is the culprit, that it is ruining the roads and the forests.
“Before the army came, there were fewer problems, fewer landslides. But they had to improve the roads. The fools! Instead of pruning, they took out chainsaws. We told them what would happen, but did they listen to us? No!”
Ram tells me he loves nature and hikes all the time. I suggest that the two of us go on a trek. Starting right above the tree line at 16,000 feet, we could descend through all five climate zones on our way to the jungle at the bottom of a deep ravine. Ram pauses and then agrees, with one stipulation: “OK, but only if a car is waiting to drive us back up to a bar.”
We pass a road marker with the numeral 4 on it, meaning either kilometers or miles. “I’m never sure,” Ram tells me. “We are still a little confused by all this metric stuff.”
Whatever the case, in a couple of minutes the outline of Gangtok emerges, its white buildings and cobalt-blue rooftops shimmering in the light.
Gangtok, the capital and only city in Sikkim, is built on the northwest flank of a mountain ridge. It has a spectacular view of Mount Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. To the original settlers of Gangtok, animist tribesmen, all of nature was inhabited by various spiritual entities. They chose this spot because every hut could have an unobstructed view of Kanchenjunga, the most powerful of all gods. At dawn the villagers could share the glory of the mountain and watch as the deity crowned itself in golden light.
As the bus slows on the outskirts of the city, the other passengers become lively, talking loudly, squeezing up and down the aisle. I ask Ram for his advice on hotels, and he recommends the Green Hotel: “Good food. I eat there twice a week.”
Traffic comes to a halt as a convoy of army trucks passes through. My romantic notion of Gangtok as a sleepy mountain outpost is dispelled with one look out the window. Less than a block away, a giant banner spans the road: “Welcome. Sikkim Fall Festival,” it proclaims in English. On a corner a group of teens sways around a boom box, snapping their fingers. Most of them wear black leather jackets and tight jeans. They spot me and turn up the volume; Mick Jagger belts out “Brown Sugar.”
The Sikkimese are not the least bit suspicious of Americans; indeed, of all places in India, Sikkim may have the closest ties to the United States. This bond dates from March 20, 1963, when the Chogyal (meaning priest-king) married Hope Cook, a young woman from New York he had met at a reception in Darjeeling. It was the perfect Cinderella story, except that it ended in a bitter divorce years later. In her own way, Hope Cook became an American ambassador and cultural attache. She hosted parties and barbecues; she sponsored the education of local youths at American universities; she imported American clothing, furniture, and Hollywood movies; and no doubt she carried the first Bloomingdale’s bag into Sikkim.
The owners of the Green Hotel are one of only a dozen Muslim households in Sikkim. Pictures of the family patriarch, Sabila, line the wall near the front desk. His widow explains each portrait, telling me the rags-to-riches story of her husband, who was exiled from Lhasa by the Chinese and moved to Gangtok in the late 1950s.
“Honest, hard work will make you more like him,” she says, “but you must have a full stomach to follow his footsteps… I will get you something to eat.” Her eldest son, the manager of the hotel, is a jovial, pudgy man, quick to laugh. When his mother disappears behind the kitchen door, he confides that he “hates work and loves sports.” He’s a devoted soccer fan and the host of this year’s Governor’s Cup Tournament, the main event of the Fall Festival. Staying on my floor is the team from Goa, the old Portuguese port on India’s west coast.
The hotel opens onto Gandhi Avenue, the main thoroughfare of downtown Gangtok, all five blocks of it. Most of the storefronts advertise bars, haberdashers, or “video theaters,” small rooms accommodating no more than two dozen people who pay to watch a video of an old movie. At the end of Gandhi Avenue is Lall Market, which seems tiny after the markets of Delhi and Calcutta, but is adequate to serve the needs of this city of 55,000. I locate the game–fowl section, and by my count there are nineteen bird vendors, six with stalls, the rest operating from the street. Oblong bamboo cages are stacked in front of each seller. Because ducks fetch a high price, they are usually brought to market rather than eaten by their captors. Also, because the market is the center for town gossip, people here will know if an unusual bird has been sighted in the wild.
“Ducks? Do you have ducks?” I ask one vendor.
“Tell me what you want and I will get it.”
I take out the picture of the pink-headed duck. A crowd gathers as I describe my quest. Mallards, pochards, widgeons, and other common ducks are well known, but not the pink duck.
“I would know,” says an elderly man everyone treats with respect. “I am Chamla Lepcha… I came to the market in the year of the horse and have seen three more years of the horse.” (Four twelve-year cycles.)
“Do you know this duck, grandfather?”
“No… It is such a pretty bird.”
He promises to pray for me and my mission. No one thinks my search odd or, if they do, they’re too polite to mention it. One man, a seller of carrots and cabbages, swears that if he ever finds the duck, he will keep it until I return. A spice trader, an elderly woman leaning on a cane, moves close to me. She studies the illustration for quite some time. “This duck is god’s work,” she concludes.
Four days later I change hotels to escape the soccer teams and their all-night carousing. I move down the street to the Hotel Tibet, a moderately priced establishment owned by the Dalai Lama. That morning, as I drink my tea and gaze out the window at Mount Kanchenjunga, a man approaches my table. He’s wearing traditional Bhotia robes of fine quality, and he introduces himself as R. P. Lama, a retired farmer and orchid breeder. He has seen me walking around town and offers to take me on a personal tour of the area. He is about to set off on his daily stroll and would enjoy some company.
As we start climbing the terraced city, he points out ten new buildings for every one he remembers from his childhood. Hillsides that once were pastures are now crowded with multistoried, concrete-slab tenements. He takes me to what used to be his favorite spot, now a lot filled with slag, garbage, and heavy machinery.
“This was a glade. I used to come here to meditate,” he says loudly, speaking over the din of a nearby cement mixer. “There were many butterflies, and flowers were everywhere. I felt close to all things when I sat here. Now my heart cries. Look at these ugly buildings. Unneeded … unwanted.”
We spend most of the morning together and agree to meet every other day to walk about. He promises to teach me about the flora of Sikkim, especially its orchids. R. P. Lama is a representative of the old order, the life of Sikkim before it became part of India in 1975. He was an aristocrat, born into a family with close ties to the Chogyal. When he was a boy, and Sikkim a theocratic, feudal state, he was one of the very few who were able to enjoy its fruits.
After one of our strolls I venture into a video rental store, curious to see what’s on the shelves. Most of the cassettes, like the western goods in the market, are smuggled through Nepal. Several hundred titles are available, many of them current American releases. Judging from the posters and advertisements taped to every available surface, including much of the ceiling, John Travolta and Michael Jackson are the most popular stars in Sikkim. A man in the shop watches me browse before introducing himself as Vijendra. We talk for several minutes, and he invites me to dinner. “After we eat, we can watch this,” he says proudly, holding up a tape of Saturday Night Fever.
Vijendra, the son of a peasant, is a member of Gangtok’s emerging middle class. Both he and his wife have college degrees, which are hung in ornate frames in their three-bedroom apartment. They’re enthusiastic about the changes in Sikkim, applauding what R. P. Lama condemns.
“I was one of five children who grew up on a dirt floor no bigger than this living room,” Vijendra tells me. He goes to the kitchen and turns on the faucets. “Water, running water… When I was a boy, I had to carry buckets from the stream.”
He knows his apartment building is a plain, uninspired structure, but that matters little to him. “I don’t really care as long as it stays up.”
“But what about the beauty and views that are being destroyed?” I ask.
“What is one view in Sikkim, a land of a million views? What is one man’s memories compared to families without homes?… My father never had anything. He was a slave to a king.”
The modern history of Sikkim began in the seventeenth century, when three priests of the Gelupka, or “Red Hat” sect of Buddhism fled Tibet during the great schism. Fearing for their lives, and sharing a common vision of a new Buddhist state, they made their way over the mountains into Sikkim, then known as Denzong, or Land of Rice. They eventually formed an alliance with Phunstug Namgyal, leader of the indigenous Lepcha community. He was invested with the title of Chogyal, and with the help of the priests he consolidated his power and began converting the Lepchas to Lamaism. Bhotia tribesmen, loyal to the Red Hats, steadily migrated from Tibet and were accepted by the tolerant, passive Lepchas. In time a feudal state evolved, headed by the Chogyal and administered by the Bhotia lords.
The country flourished for the next two hundred years, but the Sikkimese army, being better dressed than trained, was unable to keep out hostile troops from Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet, all of which started annexing large tracts of their land. In the mid-nineteenth century the Chogyal asked the British for help; they too, eventually stole hundreds of square miles around Darjeeling and Kalimpong. After repelling the Tibetan invasion of 1888, the British dominated Sikkimese politics, controlling all of its foreign affairs. When Britain relinquished power in India in 1947, the distant bureaucracy in New Delhi assumed the British role.
For the most part, daily life continued into the 1960s much as it had for the previous three centuries. However, one major change occurred in the fabric of the country: Gurkhas, hillsmen of Nepal, were brought in by the English as laborers for construction projects and tea estates. By World War II the Gurkhas had become the largest ethnic group, displacing the alliance of Bhotias and Lepchas. Unlike the Lepchas, the Gurkhas are descendants of a warrior culture.
I try to visit the Chogyal’s palace, but the gates are closed to anyone but invited guests, who, I’m told, are few and far between. The present Chogyal, stepson to Hope Cook, has been stripped of power and leads a reclusive life, spending most of his time meditating. I stretch my arm and throw the stone I’m holding over the palace wall. It lands with a click. Thirteen years ago, in 1974–75, rocks were being thrown at the palace by angry Gurkha mobs demanding an end to feudalism. The Chogyal Palden Namgyal, alarmed, and reportedly distracted by his divorce proceedings, naively asked India for troops to protect his rule.
It is generally believed that India bankrolled and advised the opposition to the Chogyal. Because of Sikkim’s strategic location as a buffer separating India from Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan, New Delhi had long coveted it. After the troops arrived, India forced electoral reforms on Sikkim, which culminated in a referendum calling for the merger of Sikkim into the Indian Union. On April 26, 1975, the Constitutional Amendment Act made Sikkim the twenty-second Indian state. Federal money began pouring into Sikkim, and as roads, housing, schools, and hospitals were built, opportunities for graft and corruption blossomed.
Jigme Kazi, the editor of a weekly Gangtok newspaper, tells me things are improving: “We are finding a balance, but you must try to imagine what it was like. We were like children outside a candy store, able to look, but not allowed inside. Finally, when we could go in, we stuffed ourselves.”
Sikkim is a major producer of cardamom and also exports large quantities of ginger, tree fruit, and herbs, but its most famous product is liquor.
“That’s the reason,” one friend jokes, “we call Gangtok the Happy Valley.”
The British, impressed by the purity of the water in Sikkim, established several distilleries in the nineteenth century, and the formulas they perfected then are still in use. The cherry brandy made in Rangpo is reputedly the best in Asia. Among the many brands of scotch, brandy, and beer, my favorite is a lager named Hit, which, as the label says, “is a knockout beer, no less than 8.9% alcohol.”
While Siliguri has gas stations, Gangtok has bars. It may be the only city in India where saloons outnumber teahouses. Day and night these bars are crowded with government workers, politicians, day laborers, farmers, barbers, shopkeepers, young and old, male and female. After visiting most of the establishments in town, I’ve become a regular at a bar down the block from the Green Hotel, where I still eat many meals.
