Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [23]
“I am Drepung,” the young man said, “and the rimpoche here, our ambassador to America, is Gyatso Sonam Rudra Cakrin.”
“I’m Anna Quibler,” Anna said, and shook hands with each of them. The men’s hands were heavily callused.
Their waitress appeared. She did not appear to notice the unusual garb of the men, but took their orders with sublime indifference. After a quick muttered consultation, Drepung asked Anna for suggestions, and in the end they ordered a combination pizza with everything on it.
Anna sipped her water. “Tell me more about Khembalung, and about your new embassy.”
Drepung nodded. “I wish Rudra Cakrin himself could tell you, but he is still taking his English lessons, I’m afraid. Apparently they are going very badly. In any case, you know that China invaded Tibet in 1950, and that the Dalai Lama escaped to India in 1959?”
“Yes, that sounds familiar.”
“Yes. And during those years, and ever since then too, many Tibetans have moved to India to get away from the Chinese, and closer to the Dalai Lama. India took us in very hospitably, but when the Chinese and Indian governments had their disagreement over their border in 1960, the situation became very awkward for India. They were already in a bad way with Pakistan, and a serious controversy with China would have been…” He searched for the word, waggling a hand.
“Too much?” Anna suggested.
“Yes. Much too much. So, the support India had been giving to the Tibetans in exile—”
Rudra Cakrin made a little hiss.
“Small to begin with, although very helpful nevertheless,” Drepung added, “shrank even further. It was requested that the Tibetan community in Dharamsala make itself as small and inconspicuous as possible. The Dalai Lama and his government did their best, and many Tibetans were relocated to other places in India, mostly in the far south. But elsewhere as well. Then some more years passed, and there were some, how shall I say, arguments or splits within the Tibetan exile community, too complicated to go into, I assure you. I can hardly understand them myself. But in the end a group called the Yellow Hat School took the offer of this island of ours, and moved there. This was just before the India-Pakistan war of 1970, unfortunately, so the timing was bad, and everything was on the hush-hush for a time. But the island was ours from that point, as a kind of protectorate of India, like Sikkim, only not so formally arranged.”
“Is Khembalung the island’s original name?”
“No. I do not think it had a name before. Most of our sect lived at one time or another in the valley of Khembalung. So that name was kept, and we have shifted away from the Dalai Lama’s government in Dharamsala, to a certain extent.”
At the sound of the words “Dalai Lama” the old monk made a face and said something in Tibetan.
“The Dalai Lama is still number one with us,” Drepung clarified. “It is a matter of some religious controversies with his associates. A matter of how best to support him.”
Anna said, “I thought the mouth of the Ganges was in Bangladesh?”
“Much of it is. But you must know that it is a very big delta, and the west side of it is in India. Part of Bengal. Many islands. The Sundarbans? You have not heard?”
Their pizza arrived, and Drepung began talking between big bites. “Lightly populated islands, the Sundarbans. Some of them anyway. Ours was uninhabited.”
“Did you say uninhabitable?”
“No no. Inhabitable, obviously.”
Another noise from Rudra Cakrin.
“People with lots of choices might say they were uninhabitable,” Drepung went on. “And they may yet become so. They are best for tigers. But we have done well there. We have become like tigers. Over the years we have built a nice town. A little seaside potala for Gyatso Rudra and the other lamas. Schools, houses—hospital. All that. And sea walls. The whole island has been ringed by dikes. Lots of work. Hard labor.” He nodded as if personally acquainted with this work. “Dutch advisors helped us. Very nice.