The Buddha of Brewer Street by Michael Dobbs

fingers of his hands was stretched a string of beads which he manipulated with difficulty, counting off his prayers one by one. Lobsang crept closer. Flat stones had been placed at the entrance to the cave on which flickered butter candles; beside them was an offering of fruit. A holy place, evidently. The air was still, like fresh crystals of ice, and silent. No birds here, no rustling of breeze and leaves. It was as though Nature itself was waiting. But waiting for what?
    Lobsang drew closer still, anxious, intruding. He could see something in the dark recesses, but what type of thing he couldn’t quite make out – some figure, some form, almost like a … As he stretched to see his foot found loose scree and he slipped, sending a cascade of stones quarrelling down the mountainside. The monk turned.
    His face was almost completely round, wrinkled and carved with time like a bodhi seed. The skull was scraped to the point of being hairless. Lobsang’s first impression was that the monk was as old as Life itself, yet the ears were large and pointed, giving him the appearance of a mischievous sprite. And the eyes brimmed with curiosity. Perhaps he wasn’t as ancient as Lobsang had first thought; the body, like the hands, seemed bowed by adversity as much as by age. The hands were now clasped uneasily together for support and were beckoning.
    ‘Come, my little friend. Share some fruit. I’m sure the spirits can spare a few mouthfuls.’
    Kunga Tashi held out a pomegranate from the offering bowl and Lobsang, more than a little nervous, stepped forward.
    ‘So you have found my secret place,’ the old monk offered in congratulation, and Lobsang nodded, biting greedily into the sweet-sour flesh of the fruit. The juice dribbled down his chin which he wiped with the back of his hand. Then he froze. He could see it now, in the shadow at the back of the cave. A man, bare-chested, sitting in the lotus position in the manner of a meditating monk. The eyes were closed. Not the smallest sign of movement, not the flicker of an eyelid, not even the shallowest of breaths. It was as though the figure had become part of the rock itself.
    ‘It is His Holiness,’ Kunga said. ‘The Dalai Lama.’
    ‘He’s lost his glasses.’
    Kunga smiled sadly. ‘He doesn’t need them any more.’
    ‘Is he meditating?’ Lobsang whispered.
    ‘No. He is preparing to die.’
    Everything was impermanence, of course. Particularly here, in this place, McLeod Ganj, in the mountains just above Dharamsala. The last time Kunga had been here was more than twenty years ago, when it had been little more than a tiny frontier post, a remnant of the British Raj squeezed into that mountainous part of northern India that lay between Kashmir and Tibet. In those days it had been almost unwanted, a sleepy collection of tin huts and a few crumbling masonry buildings that had somehow survived the great earthquake; now it seemed to him that the old village had disappeared beneath a flood of refugees that had turned every piece of pavement into a private emporium. The narrow, muddy streets bustled and sang. Here it seemed you could buy or sell almost anything.
    Its crowded central square was awash with the colours of Pathan, of Tibetan, Hindu, holy men and hippie, Kashmiri and Sikh. And, of course, the claret-robed Buddhist monks. A confusion of cultures – which made it an excellent place for him to hide. For when they had summoned him they had told Kunga that he must hide. There was danger here, great danger, and not just for the monk.
    They had brought him from his monastery in Tibet in the greatest secrecy. In normal circumstances such trips out of Tibet were difficult and frequently dangerous, the Chinese authorities suspicious of the activities of all monks and particularly those who held senior positions, as Kunga once had. But there was an advantage in being crippled, an anonymity that blinded officialdom and had eased his way through checkpoints and border