It Happens With Gurkhas E-Book

J P Cross

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 357

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Gurkhas have served with the British for almost 200 years, first with the army of the East India Company, then with the Indian Army of the Raj, and then in 1947 becoming an integral part of the British Army. This anthology of articles from The Kukri, the Gurkha regimental journals, by J.P. Cross covers much of the past sixty years of their history, taking in the last days of the Second World War and the Indonesian Confrontation in the 1960s, and also gives an insight into the everyday life, culture and beliefs of these renowned soldiers. As a Gurkha officer, J.P. Cross had many unusual experiences in his long career: in 1945, for example, he was attached to a Japanese battalion in Indochina that was fighting for the British against the Viet Minh, and the only photograph taken of this Japanese unit finally laying down its weapons appears in this book. Later, he just managed to resolve a potentially deadly dispute between an offended Gurkha and a visiting South Vietnamese trainee at the Jungle Warfare School. He also describes several seemingly supernatural experiences whilst serving with troops from a culture where such things are firmly believed in. This is a unique anthology of articles drawn from an equally unique military career and a relationship with the Gurkhas that has lasted for over half a century.

Leseprobe

IT HAPPENSWITH GURKHAS

IT HAPPENSWITH GURKHAS

TALES FROM AN ENGLISH NEPALI, 1944–2015

J.P. CROSS

I dedicate this book to my Gurkha comrades in arms in war and near war, near peace and in peace, for more than seventy years. Thank you for your comradeship, steadfastness and life-saving devotion to duty, all of which I have tried to reciprocate. You have made my life fuller and more purposeful than has been the lot of many, many others and of this I am humbly and proudly aware. Thank you.

Cover illustrations: Front: A group of Gurkha trainees; Rear: A parliamentary delegation visits the Jungle Warfare School in 1969.

First published in 2016

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2016

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© J.P. Cross, 2016

The right of J.P. Cross to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 6930 7

Original typesetting by The History Press

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Foreword by Sir Hew Strachan

Introduction

In the Beginning

Sunday

Morning Walks

Two Epiphanies

On Patrol in Borneo with an Umbrella

Chief Guest

Aimed or Unaimed?

Cross Words

My Sapper Grandson’s Wedding

Cure or Curse?

As Others See Us

Background to Brahmanism in Nepal

Faith in his British Officer

Friend or Fiend?

Monsoon 1988

Two Vows

Three Virtues

The Dangers of Gossip

Two Royal Visits to British Gurkhas, Pokhara

Ears to the Ground

The Gurkha Independent Parachute Company vs Indonesian Infiltrators

Onomastics and Teknonymy

Names

Giving of Myself

Mind over Matter

Numbers

Bangkok Embassy Prowler Guard

A Beached Submariner

My Long Quest for Survival

‘J.P. Cross has Gone Native’ – Correct or Not?

1/1 Gorkha Rifles: 200th Anniversary

Final Thoughts of an Old Soldier

Foreword

The Gurkhas are different from other regiments because their interests and backgrounds are so diverse. They must acquire fluency in another language; they need to engage with and understand other religious faiths; and they have to embrace and admire a different culture. No British Gurkha officer has immersed himself more deeply in these opportunities than John Cross.

Nepal requires British soldiers who serve in the Gurkhas and wish to become Nepali citizens to renounce their British citizenship. John Cross is only the second to have completed the course, and the first man and first former British officer to have done so. Today he lives in Pokhara, in western Nepal, adjacent to the British Gurkhas’ selection centre, where newly commissioned British Gurkha officers come to learn the language and culture of the soldiers they will command. John Cross lectures to them every year. He inspires them with the love of Nepali culture that has shaped his life, while not losing sight of their roles as soldiers.

The stories in this book reveal a love of language and a sense of humour which pricks pomposity: Gurkhas are good at that. For them, and for those who know and love Nepal, John Cross is a legend in his own lifetime.

Sir Hew Strachan

Professor of International Relations

University of St Andrews

Introduction

In the introduction to my first book of articles, Gurkha Tales, I wrote that Gurkhas, certainly the older men and especially former soldiers, love telling stories. The habit of ‘capping’ stories is not confined to gnarled fingers grasping pint pots of ale in English pubs: one-time Gurkha warriors also manage to cap them just as well, if not better. As my father told me, ‘Most stories have a cocked hat and a sword.’

In this second book of articles, reminiscences, essays – call them what you will – I have repeated the mixture as before, my limit being the amount of words allowed by the publishers. One aspect that troubles me is that many of the stories, far too many some will deem, contain ‘me’ more than any modest person should allow. However, my only excuse, were one needed, is that without me those stories would not have happened at all. So, warts and all, here they are.

The one major difference in Nepal between the time frame in which I produced Gurkha Tales and this book is that many villages that were thriving communities have had major population reductions. The twelve-year-long insurgency problem that drove many people from their traditional village habitats, the move to the towns for better education for children and permission for Gurkha ex-servicemen to live on a permanent basis in Britain are the three main reasons. I have kept the stories in this book from touching on any of these three points; likewise the massive earthquakes that took place in 2015 play no part.

One personal change to me has been the granting of Nepalese citizenship, a process that took thirty-two years, six months and two days. Rudyard Kipling’s words about not trying to hurry the East stood me in good stead and patience was rewarded. The story of becoming only the second English Nepali is in the book: the first Briton, some fifty years ago, was an English lady, Ms Eileen Lodge, who founded the leprosarium, Green Pastures, not far from my house. Since then the granting of citizenship for some types of Nepalis as well as for foreigners has become exquisitely harder. Since becoming a Nepali, however, in spite of the staggering amount of joy and happiness shown even by those with whom I had never previously spoken, no more stories have eventuated.

The year 2015 was the 200th year of British–Gurkha military ‘together-ness’, as soldiers of the Honorable East India Company from 1815, then, from 1858 until 1947, the (pre-partition) Indian Army – there was never any military formation named the ‘British–Indian Army’ – and, since 1948, the British Army. In April I was the only pre-partition ex-member at the 200th anniversary of one of the three original regiments of 1815, the 1st Battalion of the 1st Gorkha Rifles. A description also appears in this book.

I shall be 91 when this book is published. ‘Birthdays’ are not traditionally observed by hill folk – most not knowing when the appointed day falls – and I have told my surrogate family not to bother about any of mine till I am 100! Even at 90 I have had to wear tunnel vision spectacles for more than one-third of my life; I have also lived with civilian Nepalis and military Gurkhas for more than seventy years, slightly more than one-third of our combined military life. Had either been prophesied when I was a youngster I would probably have thought such a prophecy madness as well as thoroughly frightening. As Camus put in The Plague, ‘one grows out of pity when it’s useless’ and self-pity was never on my menu. I spoke to ex-king Gyanendra in 2013 and told him how sorry I still was that I could not personally thank his late elder brother how much I appreciated his gift of permanent residential status and being an authorised land and house owner (the only foreigner in Nepalese history so honoured) which had made the late autumn of my life so happy. ‘Sarkar,’ I said, using the correct protocol word had he still been king, ‘I have a request. When you get back home, please go to your family shrine and personally thank your late elder brother for his kindness to me.’

A lovely smile spread over the ex-king’s face. ‘Of course I will,’ he said.

I know that without the late king’s benevolence and without either of those two mathematical unthinkables many of the stories in these pages would never have come to be written.

I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing the composite pieces.

J.P. Cross

Pokhara

June 2016

In the Beginning

‘Thirteen, unlucky for some!’ is a cry tombola fans know well. I do not count fear of the number thirteen, ‘triskaidekaphobia’ to the buffs, as one of my many weaknesses but recently it did just cross my mind to take note of it. You may wonder why.

Well, apart from being reported dead three times in three months during my nearly thirty-eight years of military service in Asia, I have been shot at from 4 yards in front and less than that behind, nearly had my head cut off twice – once by an angry Iban armed with a Japanese sword and once by an even angrier Gurkha armed with a kukri – as well as been threatened from 3ft away by a mad Gurkha who had a loaded and cocked rifle with the safety catch off, inches from my navel. I have had a price put on my head twice and received two death threats, one by post and the other by word of mouth – all in so-called peacetime. Any self-respecting cat might well be jealous at my score of twelve.

In my middle years of soldiering I found I was ‘ploughing a lonely furrow, often against the grain’ by qualities that fitted me for an arduous and unconventional type of life, often with strange people whose upsurge of confidences and friendliness were reward in themselves, and often away from the crowd – a life remote and austere but one that I found infinitely more satisfying than the shallower, more conventional, surface-skating rat race that so many of my more successful peers preferred. Comfort, a large salary or even promotion in themselves had no particular attraction.

But not only that: the towering vantage points of hindsight and passing time have let me see many aspects of my unusual life in Asia in a different, possibly controversial, light and I don’t want to waste the time spent away from the land of my birth in letting it all sink without trace.

Before the next, and possibly final, report of my death – after all, how long can one person’s luck last? – it struck me that now was a good time to put on record my peculiar findings as well as some of the strange and unreasonable happenings that came my way during those years.

My stamping grounds went from the North-West Frontier of India, later to become Pakistan, over to Hong Kong and zigzagged south, through Indo-China and Burma, down into Malaya and across to the Borneo Territories – ‘south-east Asian rain forest terrain’ – with ten of the first thirty years spent under the jungle canopy when all the months, weeks and days are added together. Since 1976 I have lived in Nepal. Even though I still fail to understand much of Asian life, I have come to accept it. What in Europe is seen as Sod’s Law is seen in Asia as God’s Law, leaving plenty of banana skins for the unwary, the ignorant or the plain bloody-minded to slip on. After all, ‘Asia’ is a four-letter word.

The first thirty-eight years were in the army with Gurkhas – with nary a home posting, surely a British Army record? – in countries with a Muslim king, a Buddhist king, a Hindu king, an atheist communist prince and, in my earliest days overseas, the Christian and (very) British king emperor in India – or at least his representative the viceroy. I even had a letter of introduction to Lord Wavell, ‘Give this to Archie,’ murmured my great uncle Stephen Phillimore, his classmate, when I went to say goodbye to him on my pre-embarkation leave. Years later I threw it away unopened.

I was neither old enough to vote nor to marry when, as a lance corporal, I was detailed to go to India for officer training in mid 1944, a great help to my New Year’s resolution of saving £1 from my pay each month. Troops, garnered from many countries and geared for most conditions, had started their invasion over the English Channel the day before my group of potential officers embarked on our month’s voyage away from the cold-climate European theatre of war into a much, much hotter Asian theatre with Burma soon to be centre stage.

Despite lectures on what we might expect to find in India and lessons in elementary Urdu, the Indian Army’s all-embracing ‘Esperanto’, when we arrived in Bombay after a month on board an overcrowded troopship, our initial reaction was one of disbelief at the diversity of it all, the cultural shock of the unknown and the incongruous. Could we get used to it? We wanted to and, eventually, did.

Our officer training took place in the Indian Military Academy (IMA), in Dehradun. The camp was superb, set in spacious grounds made wonderfully green by the monsoon rain. After the cramped conditions at sea, our quarters seemed palatial and being looked after by a bearer was a welcome sign of elevation from being ‘one of the rank and file’.

During our training we found what the old lags had said was true, ‘The scene changes, but the music never.’ For elementary subjects we were taken in hand by gnarled British warrant officers and sergeants who told us that, ‘When in Rome you do as India does. Get it?’ And get it we did. Officers taught us tactics and jungle warfare. Only as training progressed did earlier lectures on the Indian Army penetrate my insular mind and begin to make sense as different peoples were produced in the flesh and I began to be able to tell one type of person from another by sight. It had never occurred to me that the majority of India’s millions did not speak Urdu as their first language and, initially, I found that very hard going.

I first met Gurkhas as ‘exercise enemy’ when we went out for field and jungle training. They immediately attracted my attention as superb people but I feared a language barrier and an inadequacy of personal performance to match theirs. Six weeks or so from the end of our course we were asked which army, British or Indian, we wished to be commissioned in and to give three regiments we would like to join. I really had no idea, so I sought advice from the company second-in-command, a man called Griffiths. Although I might be one of those about whom it could be said that his men would follow him if only out of curiosity, he told me to try not to go to a British unit as any experience in the Indian Army would stand me in good stead. However, I was advised not to go into the Gurkhas as linguistically I was not even up to speaking Urdu let alone having to learn a second language, Nepali. So I put my name down to join an Urdu-speaking Indian regiment, dismissing the idea of Gurkhas entirely. In the event I was commissioned into the British Army but seconded to the 1st Gurkha Rifles (1 GR).

Having left England on 8 July 1944, I thought one day I’d have a return ticket. Now, in my 92nd year, I find I don’t need one as I am still with Gurkhas and am now a nonagenarian citizen.

Sunday

Kathmandu, End of Monsoon 1984

Sunday, the first working day of the Nepalese week, starts this cloud-laden monsoon morning as on any other – cocks crowing, from 4 a.m., dogs barking and, in the zoo, the tigers roaring their sad threnody of caged despair. By 5 a.m. it is fully light and the valley wakes up.

The valley is ringed by hills that stand some 3,000ft higher, at around the 7,500ft mark. Nestling in their lee are villages peopled by Tamangs, Magars and some Gurungs, all of whom have long since forgotten their tribal languages. They live as elsewhere in Nepal, houses separate from one another and surrounded by patches of cultivation – chiefly, at this time of year, maize. Below them, on the valley floor, the villages, peopled by Newars, Chhetris and Bahuns, are of a completely different character. They are heavily concentrated, with narrow, angled streets, and houses of three storeys, all joined together. Idols and shrines are fitted into odd corners, daubed and dabbed saffron and red, and are also imprinted on some of the paving stones with which the streets are built. There will be a main temple in a small durbar square and a tank made of slabbed stone, full of filthy water. Standpipes are now a feature of these villages and, at the end of the monsoon, there is no shortage of water like there was for the period leading up to the arrival of the rains. At these standpipes the village maidens bring their copper vessels and queue for their turn to fill them for the meal that has to be cooked so that the man of the house can go to work, and the children to school, having fed. Later on in the day, if the sun comes out, the dry-dugged gammers will wash as there was too much of a scrimmage on the previous day, the Saturday, when the men who go to work during the week had time off for their ablutions.

These villages are mute witness to the violent history of the valley; compact and secure, housing more than 1,000 able-bodied men, they are built on ground overlooking the fields, forts against enemies fighting dynastic wars or just looking for plunder. Their angled streets would prevent an easy rush through and would be useful for blocking purposes or mounting counter-attacks. They also have the great advantage of leaving maximum space for cultivation. Now the scene is one of a large green sea of growing paddy with villages on the higher ground standing sentinel. However, as land prices soar beyond belief, plots near feeder and main roads are being sold for building, thus starting an erosion of the old pattern.

Beyond these villages is the Ring Road, built a decade or so ago by the Chinese. This neatly encircles the two towns of Kathmandu and Patan, divided by that very holy river, the Bagmati. Two generations ago the townsfolk would drink the river water but nowadays this is impossible, such is the pollution.

The low cloud, with its patches of drizzle, has lifted slightly by 6 a.m. On the side roads and in the gulleys, it is muddy. Small children and dogs start on their daily routine of recycling nature. On the Ring Road a few early morning travellers, dressed in some sort of raincoat or merely with the almost universal umbrella, go about their business: a relief for an overnight watchman; votive offerings of flowers being taken to a shrine; a couple of grave-faced, shaven-pated monks, robed in maroon and amber; two spindly-legged, dhoti-clad Indian plainsmen, pushing a flat-topped cart of fruit to their chosen selling place; some people waiting for the delivery of milk; and the occasional taxi. Some soldiers, mostly recruits, from the nearby barracks, double along under command of an NCO. When it is dry the squad will form up by the side of the road and then lie down to do various exercises, but today, in the all-pervading dampness, running is enough for them. Other soldiers, in a large lorry and a small Jeep-like vehicle, are also out practising driving. Some stalwarts are out jogging, a few of them from the Tibetan refugee camp, and the occasional older man, probably a retired army officer, takes his morning constitutional. Near the perennial springs, the large daily wash – hotels’ linen in the main – starts. It may even dry.

By 7 a.m. the first news broadcast of the day can be heard. The flat-toned, monotonous voice of the reader blurts out from many of the houses, following a passer-by so closely he can hear its bulletin as he goes on his way. Apart from that, it is generally quiet.

There is a wide swathe of grass on both sides of the Ring Road, with warning notices proclaiming to the general public that no building is permitted within a specified distance, a copy of one of the last laws the British passed in India before independence. Cattle, untethered and untended, can be found on it any day. They graze happily, now that the days of parched fodder, or no fodder at all, are at an end. Some have a heavy piece of wood hanging from their neck to impede movement, a type of hobbling device. A few are disconsolately lonely and it could be those that have been let loose as a propitiation when a Brahmin dies. All look much sleeker than before. Little knots of goats and sheep are also to be found. With very few leeches to pester them or their herdsmen, life in the valley has some advantages over other places in the rest of the country at this time of year.

Sun peeps through the dispersing mist, revealing the lush green of growing paddy. The colour varies from a golden green, to a rich velvet green and then to a darker moss green. In places the smoothness is broken by clumps of 8ft-tall maize, the long leaves now becoming sere with the pods ripening. The old shrine of Swayambhunath, perched on top of its own sanctuary-like hill, glints. Whoever decided to build it where it is was a genius, so well and ethereally does it fit into the landscape. It, to the south of the valley, and Bodhnath, to the north, both command a good view of the fields; it is said that no animal may plough within sight of these two shrines. True or false, ploughing is seldom done by animals in the valley; heavy-handled mattocks, bent backs and strong arms are still the order of the day.

In the town the day seems to start later than in the villages. Shops are open until late at night and many do not open again till 10 a.m., which invites a later start. Street sweepers do what they can against the mud and filth, mendicants beg for food at house doors, stray dogs scavenge and children start to play in the streets. Nowadays, with the spread of transistor radios, videos, television and of education, there are different ways of passing an evening than in previous years. On the whole, Kathmandu dwellers seem to go to bed later than their village counterparts. However, the children have as unfettered a time as ever. They are never left on their own away from their immediate dwelling and an elder sister or a mother is not far away. In Nepal it is good to have a daughter before a son so that there is someone to look after a second child. On this morning one toddler escapes detection and comes out of a house to paddle in some of the puddles formed by the overnight rain. He sees a small and innocuous dog nearby and the inborn desire to chastise it is so strong that he looks for a weapon. He finds a tiny piece of gravel and, hardly able to walk straight so young is he, makes his way up to the dog and hurls the minute handful at it. So puny is the effort that, even had contact been made, it would have been unnoticed. But that youngster will be a chastiser of dogs all his days!

Apart from the Nepalese townsfolk, there is a goodly sprinkling of Indian merchants. One such comes out of his house, dressed in white dhoti and Gandhi hat. He looks neither to left nor right and, lifting his dhoti free from the wet ground, makes his way to a temple for his morning devotions. He returns a short while later, high stepping, tika-daubed and disdainful in his purified and virtuous isolation. Not far away, another Indian, of more humble origin, carries a flat tray of mangoes on his head as he goes to his pitch past a temple, the very temporal home for some not very spiritual monkeys. One realises that mangoes are being carried and it only needs a jump and a snatch for a juicy meal. It sidles up, warily eyeing both vendor and fruit, its intentions obvious. The vendor fears an attack and tries to get out of range quickly, but his load is such that haste is imprudent. The monkey paces him, tensing its muscles until, in desperation, the Indian puts his free hand up over the rim of the tray and picks out the first mango that comes to his fingers. The monkey continues to eye him – has this all happened before? – and as the vendor throws it away over the animal’s head, it lollops off after it, with the Indian hurriedly moving off in the other direction, glad that his one-mango offering can be counted as a holy gesture rather than an act of self-protection. This little pantomime attracts no attention from the passers-by.

By 9 a.m., from the surrounding villages, a stream of workers and school children make their way in to either Patan or Kathmandu, picking their way around the dirtier patches on the narrow paths. By now the clouds have dispersed and a hot sun is blazing down. The men who are going in to work as peons in a bank, functionaries in a government office or even the local telephone exchange are overdressed in a coat over their traditional wrap-over tunic, the daura, and jodhpur-like trousers, the saruwal. All wear the ubiquitous Nepali hat and, despite it being a tidy rig, it is unrealistically hot. To compensate for the heat from their coats and clothes designed to keep out the cold, they carry umbrellas, unfurled whatever the weather. Some will be dressed in white, mourning for a year the death of a close relative. Those whose work lies in humbler trades, such as carpentry or metalworking, wear sloppier, cooler clothes and go bareheaded. Many may still have a petal or two on their heads, showing that they have paid their religious respects for the day. Some of these people will have walked for two hours by the time they reach work: two hours there and two hours back – all for about £15 to £20 a month.

The schoolgirls are dressed tidily, in yellow, red, blue or white depending on which school they go to, all with well-oiled and beautifully combed hair. They walk demurely along, occasionally a ripple of laughter escaping their lips, all looking angelic, as though ghee would not dissolve on their tongues. Nothing but the Newari language is heard as these people move into town. The boys, also, for the most part, are in uniform, carrying their midday snack in a tiffin carrier, books in a satchel on their backs. Bolder than the girls, they take longer to get to school as they find a particularly muddy piece of ground to play in or another like-minded lad to play khopi with. This is a game throwing coins at one already on the ground, with the one that lands the nearest to it winning, as in bowls.

By 10 a.m. the main roads of the town are blocked with traffic. The police on point duty cope valiantly with the onslaught: waving arms and blowing whistles, as those better endowed than the villagers go to work. The amount of diesel fumes the policemen inhale in one day must be more than is good for them in one month, so dirty are most vehicles. Motorcyclists weave their way in and around the vehicles, as do many pushbikes, defying death, or courting it, reminiscent of the Japanese suicide pilots in the Second World War. And yet few stiffs or even hobblers are encountered! By 10.30 a.m. most of the staff have joined up with their desks and maybe even the man with the keys has come so that anything locked up overnight can be got out. Little groups of men form and disperse, only to reform, gossiping to their hearts’ content, for isn’t important work only done between 12 and 2?

In the streets, calm and bustle intermingle: a horoscope reader; a seller of trinkets, of farinaceous food-stuffs, of biri and betel; a few beggars and other paupers, pitifully distorted by unchecked disease, all squat with undignified resignation by the road; and, of course, the crowd, kaleidoscopically changing, always the same, as in any town anywhere.

Meanwhile, out in the fields the women start another phase of the day, now that breadwinner and children have left the house. For the most part this is weeding the rice crop, a woman’s job; whatever else the menfolk do, it is not this. Valley folk are thin-legged men compared with the hill men; there are no hills to climb up and down, no heavy loads to be toted from afar. Not that life is easy, but it could be harder. Only the hewers and carriers of ever-precious firewood, brought from the valley rim, have legs fully muscled.

Near the weeding women flocks of egrets poke about for insects. How do they manage in the dry weather, when only one or two are ever seen? Now they are in their flocks of thirty and, at times, even of up to fifty. The expert will say that the only place in Europe that the egret can be found is in the Pripet marshes of south-east Poland. Here they are commonplace and of two main kinds – one almost white all over and one, less common, with more brown on head and neck. There is a saying among the Nepali elite, about anyone who is obviously better qualified than his peers, that he is an ‘egret among the ducks’. But now both egret and duck are happy as they splash around for their more plentiful diet. In the River Bagmati, still greatly swollen by the rains, birds of prey gather around the corpse of some animal swept down in the spate and stuck on a sandbank.

In Kathmandu, past the international telephone exchange, the road falls away towards the stadium, where, later on in the day, devotees of soccer will be able to watch the final of the women’s football competition, Pokhara versus Dharan. Taking a load of parsnips down this road in a rickshaw, the rider, a mere youth, does not see that his cargo is starting to fall out. One does fall and a woman, walking in the same direction, picks it up, gleeful in possessing something for nothing. A cyclist following the rickshaw shouts out that his load is falling and the driver tries to turn round and see, but his view is blocked by the width of the rickshaw and the canopy. As he tries to look from a wider angle, the rickshaw starts to swerve from side to side to such an extent that the rider can no longer control it. It overturns, narrowly being missed by a taxi, and the driver sprawls on the ground surrounded by parsnips. He picks himself up, shaken though unhurt, and starts to gather up his load. He then turns his attention to the rickshaw and finds it too heavy to right. The inevitable crowd has gathered and willing hands help him to right it. By the time the woman has reached the rickshaw, unnoticed by the youth who is still a bit dazed, one of the onlookers says, ‘There she goes, taking the one that fell off farther up the road!’ The youth looks up, sees her and makes a lunge at the parsnip that she is holding behind a package. She senses his coming, flinches and snarls at him, claiming the vegetable as her own. He snatches at it and regains it, triumphantly. Inconsistently – in that she is wearing red – he hisses at her, ‘You green-clad widow!’ and returns to his uncompleted task of repacking his load. She, for her part, angrily and proudly continues on her way, staring resolutely to her front.

Inside the bank where the foreigners have to go for their money, a gaggle of new-world, low-budget travellers turn the pages of the book in which the arrival of demanded money is written. None understand the inevitable two-week time lag between date expected and date announced. They are a motley crowd, unused to the heat and the dampness of monsoon conditions. They give off an aura of unwashed sadness that may belie some of them. The bank staff regard them with a tolerance born of familiarity. Some of them are very shabbily dressed, draggle-bearded and unkempt; they are a permanent target for small boys who now call all of European stock ‘American’, regardless of snubs, snarls or smiles they may get in return. Where these foreigners go on leaving the bank is a mystery – like flies in winter.

By noon, all the very important people are busy, ensconced in lordly isolation in upstairs offices, all aware of the responsibilities with which they are entrusted and all keeping a fine balance between prospect, probity and policy. In outer offices deferential subordinates diligently apply themselves, ready in an instant to answer the desk bell that rings when higher authority demands their presence. This tempo is kept up till 2 p.m., when the important go to meetings with other important ones and the lesser minions revitalise their severely depleted vitality with glasses of over-sweet and lukewarm tea.

Life unwinds gradually until around 5 p.m., when the morning rush begins in the other direction. The sun has gone in, the clouds hang low and menacing, and it starts to drizzle. The crowd converging on the stadium to see the women’s football final brings near-pandemonium in the vicinity, but slowly conditions return to what goes for normal and, by 6.30, the roads are as empty as they were before the homeward rush started – with the Pokhara Ladies justly proud of their muddy victory over their rivals from Dharan.

The women toilers have returned from the fields, tired and wet, to prepare the evening meal for the ever-hungry throng. The breadwinner gets home and relaxes. After being fed, the children huddle up to a lamp and do their homework, men gather out of the rain in twos and threes and gossip, and the women are just thankful that yet another day, when so much has to be packed in to keep the minimum momentum needed to sustain life, is nearing its end.

Then it is bed time and, for those who live near the zoo, the roar of the tigers – driven to distraction in their small cages by a day-long inquisitive, teasing crowd of onlookers – joins the shrill and never-ending barking of the dogs, so, however tired people may be, they are forcibly reminded that, though another day is over, the night is still young.

Morning Walks

‘Grandfather, take out one of your eyes.’ The command was imperious and insistent; its deliverer was a tousle-haired 9-year-old Nepali boy, with authority well beyond his years, clearly leader of the cluster of kids with him. Surrender or walk on regardless? I was two hours from home and not quite halfway round one of the circuits of my morning walks. I looked at them, all with eyes button-bright and overflowing enthusiasm: how many other mid octogenarians would be similarly challenged?

I suppose the morning walk habit started when I was in Laos, living alone. On high days and holidays I would take my dog, Singha, my pedometer showing me that I walked between 21 and 28 miles. In my early days I would take language cards and I would ask people I met a question from the top word in the pile. They would be surprised to be asked if they caught crabs in the swamp or what noise their buffalo made when scratched. I was only accepted without hostility or suspicion when people learnt I was neither French nor American but a khon Añgit, an Englishman.

I met Pathet Lao patrols as I ranged far and wide. After the communists had taken over, every morning, everywhere, the ritual of political indoctrination would take place. One Saturday morning, early, miles out in the sticks and still a bit chilly, I saw an armed group of young Pathet Lao soldiers – looking for all the world like our Gurkhas – sitting cross-legged in a circle in a harvested rice field on the outskirts of the village they were garrisoning, being lectured by a hard-faced ‘cadre’. They were directly in the line I was taking. I did not deviate but kept on towards them. I talked to Singha, in Nepali, telling him not to chase the goats or the pigs. The soldiers saw me coming, then heard a strange language. The cadre stopped talking, turned and stared at me, as did the soldiers, scowling severely. I sensed tension in the air but, having committed myself, chose to ignore it.

I walked into the centre of the group and told the dog to sit, give me one paw and then the other. He obliged me. In Lao I said to the group, ‘That’s discipline. That’s how you won the war. Without it that’s how you’ll lose the peace.’ I pointed to Singha. ‘You can call him the “little soldier” but don’t call me the “big dog”.’

Blank amazement greeted this utterly unexpected stricture. Nothing existed in the book of rules for such behaviour that was neither hostile nor rude, merely eccentric. I wobbled my hands and knees, then my eyebrows and ears, asking the soldiers if they could. They burst out laughing, all semblance of severity gone. I put my arm round the shoulders of the cadre, a Vietnamese, my hand on his head and made a squeaking noise with my mouth. He gave a start but stayed silent. Such an occurrence was evidently not yet a common experience.

‘You’ve got a mouse in your head,’ I said sympathetically and inanely. ‘I hope it doesn’t hurt. And you teach politics?’ By then I had gone as far as I dared so, telling the dog to follow me, turned and left without looking behind. For a brief moment I felt mighty cold on the back of my neck. I never heard anything about that trivial, unnecessary and entirely unrehearsed incident.

Once I had started living in Pokhara, in 1986, I only started walking after we began to keep dogs. With dogs, the morning walk habit set in properly. The dogs loved it: we had two. Three neighbours’ dogs joined us to make five and the most I ever had trailing behind me was seven. ‘Morning walk’, along with ‘half brain’ and ‘love marriage’ are Nepali neologisms – ‘paper wedding’, to aid foreigners’ citizenship process, is another fairly new one. No, I will not put words into your mouth by conflating the first two.

By now I have, on a conservative estimation, walked more than 100,000km, more than three times round the world at the equator. It was on one of our earlier walks when Buddhiman (my surrogate son) and I were wondering how much or how little the countryside had changed in the past 500 years when the idea of historical novel writing occurred to me.

When I was struggling with any passage in the book I was writing – for instance when I had nearly had the hero killed halfway through and felt I had to have him rescued, even though the scene I had set did not allow it – ‘Winking little thoughts into my tiddlecup’, unquote Lolita, I would drift for two or three hours mulling over a number of possible scenarios. Then suddenly, bingo, an answer would come.

On one walk in an unusual place in my early days I was heckled, rather rudely, by some schoolboys. I was, as normal, wearing shorts and traditional Nepali headgear. I did not answer them. I was chi-iked again and did not answer. I then heard an interesting comment from one of the boys: ‘I thought he was a foreigner but he must be a Nepali because he refuses to talk to us.’

Twice I have limped back to the house bitten and bleeding, once when attacked, from either side, by two dogs and once when I found myself in the middle of our dog and a neighbour’s fighting: anti-rabies jabs both times.

Buddhiman and I have seen pine martens, ferret badgers, mongooses and, once, a badger. Twice we have seen either a leopard or a tiger in the flesh and, separately, their droppings. Then the dogs seemed almost to walk on tiptoe, directly behind us. Our small bitch, Leenie, always attacked snakes. She would bite them on the tail several times, shaking them violently. The hapless creatures would turn around to try to retaliate but eventually would tire when she would bite them behind their heads. She was equally industrious with mongooses. Once one clung to her nose as she clung to its tail and almighty squealing ensued from both creatures. Buddhiman’s wife, Bhim, was angry that we did not bring the skull back as it makes excellent anti-diarrhoea medicine. We have seen a group of mules chasing a horse’s foal, trying to kill it. Monkeys are always a target for the dogs. Once, near a river, one swam a surprisingly long way under water trying to escape. They got it when it eventually came up for air on the far bank.

The ‘foot’ part of ‘foot and mouth disease’ is distressful to see. The cure is to soak the infected feet with crocodile’s urine (10 rupees per bottle from the Kathmandu zoo) and molasses. We have seen a distraught bull watching over his mate’s tiger-torn body.

The only fish we have come across have been in the monsoon when some have foolishly ended up in water-filled paddy fields (first cousin to the Irishman with the same name?) and those trying to climb a concrete dam on their way to spawn.

As for birds, I am always fascinated by watching long-tailed tits diving on vultures or jumping on their back and pecking them to drive them away but unhappy to see a vulture tearing the innards out of dying cattle – that is why they have featherless necks, to stop them sticking halfway. No dying or dead cattle are attacked when they lie exactly on a north–south axis. Egrets, in flocks of many hundreds or individually amongst cattle, are commonplace. I have only once seen a dozen vultures fighting hard to get at a recently decapitated sheep’s head. Our dogs have been swooped on by long-tailed tits and, twice, by an aggressive fish owl.

Only once have Buddhiman and I been swept down a river in spate – and that was once too many.

As for men, some of the jogis