civilisation’s history. By the time the young Incarnate Lamas of this community have grown to manhood only a shell will be left of that unique tradition which bred them.
11 MAY
Among the friends I’ve made here during the past ten days is a nine-year -old schoolboy with one of those beautiful young faces that misleadingly denote an extreme degree of virtue. He is a pupil at St Xavier’s College, the big boys’ school run by American Jesuits for Nepalese students, and he speaks quite fluent English – as do an astonishing number of middle-class youths in the valley. I first met Rambahadur outside the GPO, where he loiters daily to contact his clients – those foreigners who wish to change money or travellers’ cheques on the black market. He came sauntering up to me and said – naturally out of the corner of his mouth – ‘Want to change?’ and when I replied ‘Yes, but not today’, he took my hand in his, showing a touching childishness rather at variance with his spare-time profession, and off we went to have a cup of tea together and make mutually convenient arrangements. At his age the ability to conduct shrewd financial transactions has a certain charm, and the necessity to do so a certain poignancy; we quickly became friends when I noticed that hewas not a scrounger, but simply worked to earn honest, if illegal, commission, and I arranged to meet him this morning to cash a £50 cheque. However, when I arrived at our New Road rendezvous I found not only Rambahadur but four others – two men and two youths – all waiting to capture my custom. Rambahadur looked small, forlorn and scared; but he was evidently going to stand his ground like a good little Gurkha and secretly I had no intention of deserting him. Yet this was my chance to hold an auction and secure a better rate, so I played the five off against each other until, in desperation, Rambahadur promised me Rs. 32/-N.C. to the pound. One of the men (a nasty-looking character) said that he too could get me Rs. 32/- and when I shook my head and held out my hand to Rambahadur the boy was at once knocked into the gutter by a savage blow from his rival. At this I lost my temper and gave the bully a box on the ear, whereupon all four vanished, leaving me to retrieve a sobbing Rambahadur from the gutter. And before my business could be transacted the negotiator had to be consoled and cuddled and mopped up. This incident struck me as typically Eastern: at one moment Rambahadur was a tough man-of-the-underworld, all set to do nefarious deeds down a back-alley, and the next moment he was sobbing in my arms, a big baby with a painful shoulder.
We then turned off New Road, with its would-be Western-style shops, and immediately were amidst that dank maze of narrow laneways which still forms the main part of Nepal’s capital. When we came to a small square Rambahadur glanced furtively around, though no one was in sight, before darting through a very low doorway and beckoning me to follow him. The domestic courtyard we now crossed was scattered with stone gods and phallic symbols, but I had no time to study these before being quickly hustled into a pitch-dark interior and led up a steep, shaky wooden stair to a squalid ‘bed-sitter’, where Rambahadur instructed me to await developments. He then disappeared, locking me in the little room – presumably as a precaution against inquisitive neighbours.
For the next twenty minutes there were no developments. The small window overlooked the courtyard, where a wrinkled, much-bejewelled woman was now scouring brass pots and platters with handfuls ofblack mud, afterwards rinsing them in sour-looking water. A dejected pi-dog, which had accompanied her, was nosing unhappily at a heap of refuse, and then a tiny naked boy toddled out to make his contribution to the excrement already in evidence – being afterwards called by granny to have his bottom cleaned, also with black mud and water. In general this scene was not
11 MAY
Among the friends I’ve made here during the past ten days is a nine-year -old schoolboy with one of those beautiful young faces that misleadingly denote an extreme degree of virtue. He is a pupil at St Xavier’s College, the big boys’ school run by American Jesuits for Nepalese students, and he speaks quite fluent English – as do an astonishing number of middle-class youths in the valley. I first met Rambahadur outside the GPO, where he loiters daily to contact his clients – those foreigners who wish to change money or travellers’ cheques on the black market. He came sauntering up to me and said – naturally out of the corner of his mouth – ‘Want to change?’ and when I replied ‘Yes, but not today’, he took my hand in his, showing a touching childishness rather at variance with his spare-time profession, and off we went to have a cup of tea together and make mutually convenient arrangements. At his age the ability to conduct shrewd financial transactions has a certain charm, and the necessity to do so a certain poignancy; we quickly became friends when I noticed that hewas not a scrounger, but simply worked to earn honest, if illegal, commission, and I arranged to meet him this morning to cash a £50 cheque. However, when I arrived at our New Road rendezvous I found not only Rambahadur but four others – two men and two youths – all waiting to capture my custom. Rambahadur looked small, forlorn and scared; but he was evidently going to stand his ground like a good little Gurkha and secretly I had no intention of deserting him. Yet this was my chance to hold an auction and secure a better rate, so I played the five off against each other until, in desperation, Rambahadur promised me Rs. 32/-N.C. to the pound. One of the men (a nasty-looking character) said that he too could get me Rs. 32/- and when I shook my head and held out my hand to Rambahadur the boy was at once knocked into the gutter by a savage blow from his rival. At this I lost my temper and gave the bully a box on the ear, whereupon all four vanished, leaving me to retrieve a sobbing Rambahadur from the gutter. And before my business could be transacted the negotiator had to be consoled and cuddled and mopped up. This incident struck me as typically Eastern: at one moment Rambahadur was a tough man-of-the-underworld, all set to do nefarious deeds down a back-alley, and the next moment he was sobbing in my arms, a big baby with a painful shoulder.
We then turned off New Road, with its would-be Western-style shops, and immediately were amidst that dank maze of narrow laneways which still forms the main part of Nepal’s capital. When we came to a small square Rambahadur glanced furtively around, though no one was in sight, before darting through a very low doorway and beckoning me to follow him. The domestic courtyard we now crossed was scattered with stone gods and phallic symbols, but I had no time to study these before being quickly hustled into a pitch-dark interior and led up a steep, shaky wooden stair to a squalid ‘bed-sitter’, where Rambahadur instructed me to await developments. He then disappeared, locking me in the little room – presumably as a precaution against inquisitive neighbours.
For the next twenty minutes there were no developments. The small window overlooked the courtyard, where a wrinkled, much-bejewelled woman was now scouring brass pots and platters with handfuls ofblack mud, afterwards rinsing them in sour-looking water. A dejected pi-dog, which had accompanied her, was nosing unhappily at a heap of refuse, and then a tiny naked boy toddled out to make his contribution to the excrement already in evidence – being afterwards called by granny to have his bottom cleaned, also with black mud and water. In general this scene was not
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