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By Root 466 0

Fernandel, came out of the house and enquired politely as to my business. I offered him the sack of fruits and vegetables that I had brought along as a gift, which was, I was happy to note, welcome to them. I was offered a rather rickety chair in their prayer-room, now empty as most of the younger monks had gone to collect firewood from the forest nearby. There was a small butter lamp burning in a make-shift altar on the mantelpiece over the old English fireplace. A calendar reproduction of the Dalai Lama's portrait in a cheap gilded frame, was the centre-piece of this altar. Beside it stood two gimcrack plastic vases stuffed with bright scarlet rhododendron blooms that covered the mountainsides at this time of the year.

I made the customary small-talk with the stout monk, who was seated across me on a packing crate. Tea was served, made, inevitably, with CARE milk powder that tasted overpoweringly of nameless chemical preservatives. After taking a couple of mandatory sips from my cup, I got down to business.

I asked him if any of the monks remembered having a white-man, an English sahib, as the incarnate Lama of their monastery. I was really not expecting anyone to remember much, especially as it was now over ninety years since Holmes's presence in the monastery in Tibet, and also as only very few of the older monks had managed to survive the exodus from their burning monastery to this bungalow in northern India. So it was a pleasant surprise when the big fellow replied in the affirmative.

Yes, he remembered being told of the English sahib who had been their abbot. One or two of the older monks would remember this story too, though the younger ones, the novices, would not know. I questioned him a bit more, especially about the date of Sherlock Holmes's arrival at the monastery and the duration of his first stay there. The monk's answers rang true each time.

'Sir,' said he kindly, 'if you are so curious about our trulku, I can show you something that may interest you.' He summoned a monk and sent him off to fetch something. The fellow soon returned from an interior room, bringing with him a rectangular package wrapped in old silk, which he handed over to the big monk.

My host carefully undid the silk cover to reveal a rather decrepit tin dispatch box, the sight of which caused my heart to skip a beat. He opened the case. Within it, among a few objects of religious nature, was a chipped magnifying glass, and a battered old cherry-wood pipe.

For sometime I was unable to utter a word, and when I did I am ashamed to say that in my excitement I unwittingly made a very ill-mannered and ill-considered request. 'Could you sell me these two articles?' I said, pointing to the lens and the pipe.

'I'm afraid that it would not be possible,' replied the big fellow, smiling, thankfully not offended at my gaucherie. 'You see, these things are of great importance to our monastery. They also have some sentimental value to me.'

'What do you mean, Sir?' I asked puzzled.

'Well, these are the very articles I selected as a child when they came to look for me.'

'What!' I exclaimed, 'You mean ...'

'Yes,' he replied a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. 'You need not look so surprised.'

'But that's impossible!'

'Is it really, Sir? Consider the fact carefully,' he said in a rather didactic manner, 'then apply this old maxim of mine: "that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however impossible, must be the truth."'

As I sat across from him in that dark room, lit only by a single butter lamp, he commenced to laugh softly in a peculiar noiseless fashion.

J.N.

Nalanda Cottage

Dharamsala

5 June 1989

Acknowledgements

All journeys end in the settiing of accounts: paying off porters, muleteers or camel-drivers, and rewarding the staff, especially the unfailing khansamah and, of course, the sirdar, the invaluable guide and caravan organiser. It is also the moment when one must seek adequate words of gratitude and recompense for the contributions of loyal companions, and least of all for the numerous acts of kindness