• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 531 0

village of Kanglung, which seems no bigger than Pema Gatshel, but much more prosperous. Past a row of large shops with verandahs, at a deep bend in the road marked by a dozen white prayer flags, I sit and look out over the land below. Pema Gatshel, two thousand feet lower, was wild boisterous green, overgrown, un-contained. Here, the forests are less dense, growing in small groves, and the fields are larger and flatter. Wide footpaths wind around rice paddies, past chortens and clusters of prayer flags, to solid farmhouses. I watch the sun sink into a bed of cloud, staining it pink, and wonder what class II C is doing right now.

Back at home, I rummage through my luggage in search of my shoes in between myriad visitors. The man from upstairs, Mr. Chatterji, economics lecturer, comes to say hello and welcome. Next is Miss Dorling, who teaches history, an exceedingly thin lady of indeterminate age and nationality, in a long pink skirt and jacket, leading two white yapping Apsoo dogs on a leash, welcome, welcome, she says, if there’s anything I need.... Mr. and Mrs. Matthew from southern India are next. Mrs. Matthew has warm, smiling eyes, but Mr. Matthew reminds me of a loud, disagreeable uncle. He gives me a short history of the college’s past principals, all Jesuits. “Now that Father Larue is gone, there is no one to say mass,” he tells me grimly. “You are Catholic, yes?”

“No,” I say firmly. I have learned my lesson from Mrs. Joy. “I’m not Christian at all.” Two students arrive, bearing a stack of books for my courses: Macbeth, Pygmalion, collections of poems and essays, a syllabus. Two more lecturers come to fill me in on the advantages and disadvantages of college life: the store, which stocks dry goods, vegetables and sometimes meat, the electrician who runs the generator and changes lightbulbs if he’s not drunk, the dhobi who washes clothes for the staff, the infirmary. And did I know that the college has its own VCR? And a grand piano? And a bakery? Yes, bread is available from the bakery on Wednesdays and Saturdays but I should be knowing this, since the bread slicer was just purchased with funding from WUSC. Bread slicer! Wait till the others hear this, I think. Lorna doesn’t have a classroom to teach in, and I can get sliced bread.

When I finally return to my luggage, it is dark outside. Pressure cookers sound in the flats around mine, students’ voices float up, doors bang, vintage John Lennon competes with Duran Duran in the hostels. By this time in Pema Gatshel, an exquisite silence would have settled over the valley and I would have been reading in bed by candlelight, not looking for a pair of proper shoes. I find the nun’s kira I bought in Samdrup Jongkhar, which I cut into curtains and staple over the wooden curtain rod in the sitting room. I set my blue teacup on the mantel. I find the pictures drawn by class II C, smiling suns, golden dogs, dancing girls, a bounteous blue moon, and tape them up all over the house. And finally, I find my shoes, wrapped in plastic at the bottom of a cardboard box. They are completely covered with the thickest green fungus I have ever seen.

Oh Dear

The college has everything that was promised: a library with racks of newspapers and stacks of books, an auditorium with a red-curtained stage and a public address system. The science labs have microscopes, Bunsen burners, test tubes, snakes and mice pickled in formaldehyde. There is a photocopier, and a computer room for the new computer-science course. The buildings themselves seem remarkably well-kept after the corroded cement corridors of Pema Gatshel Junior High School. There are blacktopped basketball courts, volleyball and badminton courts, a soccer field with bleachers. I walk around and around the campus, trying to adjust to the sudden and staggering luxury of it.

I meet Shakuntala, the librarian, a tall Indian woman about my age, dressed in grey corduroy trousers and a dark-red blouse, her expressive face framed by wavy, shoulder-length dark hair. Her direct, unconstrained manner puts me at ease, and I know instantly