The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [92]
“God, they’re so handsome,” said Uncle Potty, “who wants them to leave?”
He remembered the time he and Father Booty had first met… their admiring eyes on the same monk in the market… the start of a grand friendship….
“Everyone says poor Tibetans—poor Tibetans,” Lola continued, “but what brutal people, barely a Dalai Lama survived—they were all popped off before their time. That Potala Palace—the Dalai Lama must be thanking his lucky stars to be in India instead, better climate, and let’s be honest, better food. Good fat mutton momos.”
Noni: “But he must be vegetarian, no?”
“These monks are not vegetarian. What fresh vegetables grow in Tibet? And in fact, Buddha died of greed for pork.”
“What a situation,” said Uncle Potty. “The army is vegetarian and the monks are gobbling down meat….”
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Down they hurtled through the sal trees and the pani saaj, Kiri te Kanawa on the cassette player, her voice soaring from valley level to hover around the five peaks of Kanchenjunga.
Lola: “But give me Maria Callas any day. Nothing like the old lot. Caruso over Pavarotti:”
In an hour, they had descended into the tropical density of air thick and hot over the river and into even greater concentrations of butterflies, beetles, dragonflies. “Wouldn’t it be nice to live there?” Sai pointed at the government rest house with its view over the sand banks, through the grasses to the impatient Teesta—
Then they rose up again into the pine and ether amid little snips of gold rain. “Blossom rain, metok-chharp,” said Father Booty. “Very auspicious in Tibet, rain and sunshine at the same time.” He beamed at the sunny buds through the broken windows as he sat on his swimming ring.
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In order to accommodate the population boom, the government had recently passed legislation that allowed an extra story to be built on each home in Darjeeling; the weight of more concrete pressing downward had spurred the town’s lopsided descent and caused more landslides than ever. As you approached it, it looked like a garbage heap rearing above and sliding below, so it seemed caught in a photostill, a frozen moment of its tumble. “Darjeeling has really gone downhill,” the ladies said with satisfaction, and meant it not just literally. “Remember how lovely it used to be?”
By the time they found a parking space half in a drain behind the bazaar, the point had been too well proven and their smugness had changed to sourness as they dismounted between cows quaffing fruit peels, made their way past nefarious liquid pouring down the streets, and through traffic jams on the market road. To add to the confusion and noise, monkeys loped over the tin roofs overhead, making a crashing sound. But then, just as Lola was going to make another remark about Darjeeling’s demise, suddenly the clouds broke and Kanchenjunga came looming—it was astonishing; it was right there; close enough to lick: 28,168 feet high. In the distance, you could see Mt. Everest, a coy triangle.
A tourist began generously to scream as if she had caught sight of a pop star.
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Uncle Potty departed. He wasn’t in Darjeeling for the sake of books but to procure enough alcohol to last him through civil unrest. He’d already bought up the entire supply of rum in the Kalimpong shops and with the addition of a few more cartons here, he would be prepared for curfew and a disruption of liquor supplies during strikes and roadblocks.
“Not a reader,” said Lola, disapproving.
“Comics,” corrected Sai. He was an appreciative consumer of Asterix, Tin Tin, and also Believe It or Not in the loo, didn’t consider himself above such literature though he had studied languages at Oxford. Because of his education, the ladies put up with him, and also because he came from a well-known Lucknow family and had called his parents Mater and Pater. Mater had been such the belle in her day that a mango was named for her: Haseena. “She was a notorious flirt,” said Lola who had heard from