Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic

In order to administer their great Empire of enlightened paternalism the British had to meet the formidable challenges of the Indian environment. It is said that the average lifespan of an English gentleman living in Calcutta and working for the East India Company, or later the Raj, was merely two or three monsoons. Evidence of this is plain enough in the Park Street South Cemetery. Grave after grave speaks of men – and many women too – who came to work in India and who died at an early age, usually from malaria or dysentery. The English found the heat and grime and dirt and disease of India almost unbearable.

Accordingly, they had to adopt strategies to ameliorate their situation and to overcome the challenges they faced. One such strategy was the institution of the hill station. In order to escape the conditions of the Indian plains they found cool places in the hills to which they could retreat. These were places, moreover, where they could re-create vestiges of English life as a means of preserving their own institutions, codes of civility and sense of identity amidst the exotic chaos that was India. The British hill stations were tiny enclaves of England transplanted to the cool hills of the Indian sub-continent.

On the plains, the British developed a distinctive architecture. They fused classical (Graeco-Roman) styles with many features adopted from Mahometan buildings. The Moghuls before them had developed imperial public buildings that would remain relatively cool in the scorching summers. The English took some of these features and blended them with their own architecture creating a unique Anglo-Saracen style that can be seen in such buildings as the India Museum – formerly the Royal Asiatic Society building – in Calcutta, and many other examples. Although undoubtedly British and European these buildings have broad porticos and walkways that create shade and cool spaces after the manner of Islamic buildings.

In the hill stations, however, there was no need to appropriate Saracenic styles. The cool environment meant that the British could confine themselves to European architectural modes without exotic oriental elements. In keeping with the function of the hill stations, moreover, these were private rather than public buildings and so there was more scope for individuality and personal expressions of taste and wealth. The challenges were different. There were two main ones. Firstly, the hills tended to be very steep, quite unlike the English landscape. And second, the whole environment was prone to earthquakes from time to time, a danger with which the English were not accustomed. Hill station architecture had to be adapted to these factors.

In the first place, the Victorian gothic cottage or manor house was blended with styles and modes more adapted to steep hills, specifically to Scottish baronial architecture. But this proved to be prone to earthquake. The Scottish baronial building is made of heavy stone and is several floors high. Through tribulation the British learnt that this was not well suited to an earthquake zone. Instead, they also turned to the Swiss chalet and blended elements of Swiss wooden architecture with English gothic styles. Thus they created a distinctive hill station architecture, the so-called Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic.

This is the type of architecture that one finds still in the Indian hill stations - Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic - although much of it is in advanced disrepair today. There are some well-preserved examples, but the modern Indians often show a blithe disregard for the heritage of the Raj era (and indeed for heritage in general). Worse, as well as suffering appalling neglect, Raj architecture has been crowded out by the tasteless inhuman concrete monstrosities (and earthquake death-traps) that are typical of post-colonial Indian building.

* * *

Below readers can find a pictorial essay of such Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic buildings as the present writer was able to observe in Darjeeling, the great hill station once attached to Calcutta. The town was first settled as a sanitarium for British soldiers recovering from malaria, but later became the celebrated site of the British tea industry. It is now populated by Nepalis and Tibetans and Gorkas and, while still charming and a place of great beauty, much of its architecture, alas, has suffered the fate mentioned above.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Lear in Darjeeling

Kanchenjunga from Darjeeling, painting by Edward Lear

The Five Treasures of Snow (Mount Kangchenjunga), the third tallest peak in the world, is, as the author has related in previous posts, a mere fifty or so miles from Darjeeling and stands with awesome and imposing majesty upon the northern horizon. As it happens, the days have been exceptionally clear over the last week and so the mountain and its many companions in this eastern end of the Himalayas has been highly visible every morning and throughout the day. Not surprisingly, both locals and of course tourists have been taking the opportunity to photograph the mountain, while others just stand pondering from the various vantage points in the town that afford excellent views. There is, as far as this author is aware, no other major town - Darjeeling, the Queen of the British hill stations, boasts a population of about 100,000 - in such an immediate proximity to such a substantial mountain. It is what makes Darjeeling so remarkable. The British came here to escape the heat and more especially the mosquitoes (and so malaria) of the Indian plains, but they soon came to value the location just for its extraordinary natural beauty. 

Among the notable Englishmen who have resided here (leaving aside the notorious Aleister Crowley, who has been mentioned in a previous post) is none other than Mr. Edward Lear, the reputed father of the limerick and master of English nonsense. Readers may or may not be aware that the present author is a great enthusiast for the work of Mr. Lear and indeed has modelled some aspects of his own poetry and fiction upon his. Indeed, the author - writing under yet another assumed identity - has a website where he keeps his works of fiction, principally short stories, by the Leariferous name of Runcible Highway. See here. The word "runcible", need it be said, is possibly Mr. Lear's most enduring contribution to the English language, an all-purpose neologism adaptable to all adjectival occasions. He excelled at neologisms and other nonsense and brought a much-needed sense of the silly to otherwise sombre Victorian literature. The present author's own "stranded adjective technique", so-called, owes a direct debt to Mr. Lear. This was a man who was known to introduce himself as Mr Abebika Kratoponoko Prizzikalo Kattefello Ablegorabalus Ableborinto Phashyph. 

What is less well known is that Edward Lear was also a (serious) painter of some note, and in particular he painted scenes from his various travels. At the top of this page readers will find a reproduction of  a painting he made of Mount Kanchenjunga as seen from Darjeeling during his time in the town. It is difficult to ascertain exactly from where the view was taken. The vantage point of Observation Hill has long been occupied by the Mahakal Mandir (Temple) and no temple is to be seen in Lear's painting, unless that is the standing object around which people are gathered in the left foreground. The path that leads into the distance would then be what is now called Mall Road, leading to the so-called 'Hermitage' near the Raj Bhavan. Certainly, the vegetation has changed, but the broad outlines of the topography are unfamiliar. All the same, the imposing presence of the mountain has not changed at all. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Untrod Snow

The general foundation for the symbolism of the mountain is simple: since the earth has been associated with everything human (the etymology of the word "human" is from humus, soil), the earth's peaks, which reach to the sky and which are transfigured by perennial snow, were spontaneously regarded as the most apt material to express, through allegories, transcendental states of consciousness, inner spiritual realisations, and apparitions of extra normal modes of being, often portrayed figuratively as gods and supernatural beings. 

- Baron Evola, 

Some Remarks Concerning the Divinity of the Mountains

For a long while it was believed that Kangchenjunga was the tallest mountain in the world. It was only at the dawn of the 20th C. that finer estimations established that Everest – or Peak XV as it was known – was slightly higher, with so-called K2 in Kashmir in between them. So officially, today, Kangchenjunga is the third highest peak on Earth. It remains, though, one of the least climbed. This present author gave an account several posts ago of the ill-fated 1905 expedition led by the English psychopath, the self-styled Prophet of the Aeon of Horus, Aleister Crowley. Although Crowley established a viable path, he failed to reach the summit. This feat was not accomplished until decades later, and since then only rarely. The north-east face – which the present author can view with spectacular clarity from the Darjeeling hills as he writes (see accompanying pictures) – has only been conquered thrice and is regarded as one of mountaineering’s most perilous challenges. 

Moreover, it is not likely to be conquered again any time soon since the good government of Sikkim, the northern mountainous province of India on the border of which the mountain is located, has issued a decree that no further climbing expeditions will be permitted. The reason for this is that the mountain is regarded as sacred, and the spectacle of disrespectful mountaineers climbing and very often dying all over it outraged religious authorities. The former King of Sikkim, who was deposed when the republic of India annexed the territory, held a firm policy on this, and it has now been renewed by the provincial authorities. The mountain has always been sacred to the Sikkimese people – the mountain’s immense presence dominates the entire territory – and they will not permit foreigners to trample its sacred snows. Even when in the past climbing parties were permitted on the mountain they were required to agree to stop short of the summit itself out of respect for the gods of the mountain. This was a sensitivity observed by most mountaineers. One party, for example, climbed the mountain but planted their flag of triumph six feet from the actual summit as a gesture of respect. (No doubt the megalomaniacal Crowley would have shunned this convention if he had had the chance.) 

This, at least, is the case for those who approach from Sikkim. Unfortunately, the mountain can be accessed from Nepal to the west and the Nepalese – more interested in revenue from climbing permits - impose no such requirements. Mountaineers can violate the summit through Nepal, that is to say, and indeed they do. There are those mountaineers who scoff at the Sikkimese and, contrary to the wishes and pleas of the Lamas and Brahmin, summit the sacred mountain through Nepal instead. This is the same fraternity, let us recall, who have in recent times trashed Mount Everest to the extent that it is now a rubbish dump of litter and dead bodies. Comments by representatives of this fraternity suggest that they do not really appreciate what is at stake. A certain Mr. Bauer, an Austrian and spokesman for a group clambering to climb the north-east face (his grandfather tried twice and failed) denounced the ban and said, "We revere mountains in Austria too. Climbing does not mean the mountains and landscape cannot be preserved, but it does give the locals an opportunity of making some money.”

Readers will note what these comments reveal about Mr Bauer’s values. For him it is a matter of “revering” mountains – we revere them, that’s why we climb them -, of environmental conservation and, yes, money. But none of these concerns are within the orbit of the concerns of the Sikkimese. Mr. Bauer’s concerns are entirely secular. They do not actually address the idea that the mountain is sacred. The entire category of “sacred” completely escapes Mr. Bauer, it would seem. Even the contemporary Western phenomenon of “eco-spirituality” which, if we are kind, we might ascribe to Mr. Bauer’s comments, really belongs to an entirely different order of ideas. What we have here is a clash of modernity and tradition. The good people of Sikkim – for the most part simple Boodhist peasants – have a traditional regard for the mountain. They do not “revere” it, and they do not value it because it is ecologically intact, nor indeed because it might be a source of income. No, they regard it as sacred. What exactly does this mean? In general, modern people have no idea.

This is not the place to elaborate upon this question, but let us merely say that to the traditional mind the sacred represents some aspect of a transcendent order of Reality (Yes, Reality, with an upper-case R.) It is the transcendent – that which transcends the earthly – that is the important factor. To find a mountain “inspiring” or similar, as modern people do, does not involve anything transcendent whatsoever. It is a profane and shallow emotion. Similarly, “eco-spirituality” is an entirely profane affair as well. For a mountain to be sacred in the traditional sense it must be a symbol, an object that points to, or embodies, a higher (and deeper) reality. When modern people look upon a mountain – even one so immense as Kangchenjunga – they never leave the confines of their limited worldview. When they cry “Oh! It’s magnificent!” or “Oh! How beautiful!” or “Just look at that, Bill! Isn’t it amazing?” they never extend themselves beyond merely sentimental responses. Such responses are of a totally different order to the way in which traditional people regard a mountain.

One important difference is this: the traditional idea of sacred involves fear. The sacred is to be feared. If there is one thing that modern man – even where he might count himself “religious” – is lacking, it is the fear of God. The traditional response to a mountain as immense and imposing as Kangchenjunga is awe. Awe – true awe – is a religious emotion. Mr. Bauer and his mountaineers are not in awe of Kangchenjunga. If they were they would never entertain the idea of subduing such a mountain. They might be impressed or daunted by the scale of the mountain, but they conspicuously lack any deep and appropriate sense of awe. The religious people of Sikkim fear and dread both the mountain and, even more, its gods. That is the difference. 

The present writer touched upon this idea in another earlier post when he made the point that traditional people fear wilderness. They fear what modern people call “nature”. Again, the category of ‘eco-spirituality’ which elevates ‘eco-systems’ and ‘biodiversity’ and the like to pseudo-deities, fails to encompass this entirely. It is not the same thing at all. Whether it is a jungle or a mangrove swamp or a desert or a mountain, the modern mentality does not view wilderness (that which is by definition beyond the human realm) with the same sense of awe (i.e. a sacred fear) that even the most ecologically spiritual modern person does. There is no “sacred fear” in “eco-spirituality” and there is no hint of it in the way Mr. Bauer claims Austrians “revere” mountains either. 

This is not to say, nevertheless, that there is not or cannot be an integral spiritual dimension to mountaineering. For this, see the work of Baron Julius Evola. There is a very fine collection of Baron Evola's writings entitled Meditations on the Peaks & Mountain Climbing as a Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest which collection is probably the preeminent text on the issue. Baron Evola is not blind to the promethean and thuggish self-engrandizement that can characterise the conquerors of mountains, but he insists - rightly - that mountain climbing need not be insensitive to or incompatible with the sacred aspect of mountains. 

Although the ancients did not practice mountain climbing... they nonetheless had a very vivid sense of the sacredness and symbolism of mountains. They also thought - and this is rather telling - that climbing mountains and living therein was the prerogative of heroes and initiates, in other words beings who were believed to have gone beyond the limits of the common and mediocre life of the plains.

- Baron Evola

* * * 

What, specifically, makes Kanchenjunga sacred? How, in what way, is its sacredness understood among the people of the holy land of Sikkim? The name Kangchenjunga means, it is said, “the five treasures of snow”. One common explanation of this - preferred in tourist pamphlets - is that it refers to the five valleys that shape the sides of the peak. This is almost certainly the profane explanation of geographers. Such an explanation really only takes account of the idea of "five snows" but makes nothing of the designation "treasures". A more likely and more traditional explanation - as offered by local people - is that it refers to the idea that five treasures are concealed there, concealed, that is, by the snow, in which case the important part of the name is precisely "treasures" and the number five has nothing to do with any supposed five-sided topography. 

These treasures are said to be gold, salt, scriptures and an invincible armour (or alternatively grain, turquoise, medicine etc.since there are differing accounts of these five things). It is said that these will be revealed to the pious at the close of days or as required as the cycles of time decline. This idea is related, that is to say, to the important concept in Boodhism (of the Mayahana type and the Nyingma sect in particular) of terma, namely the notion that certain scriptures, relics and precious objects were hidden by enlightened beings of former times for the benefit of those of us unfortunate enough to live in more opaque and less propitious times. At selected times, as required, these secrets will be revealed. Nyingma Boodhism, readers must appreciate, is a tradition of on-going and continuous, which is to say unfolding, revelation. Certain terma have been hidden in secret places. They are and will be "found" when needed. Kanchenjunga is one such stash of secret treasures. But they are, for now, beyond the reach of mortal men. 

Thus, other than being an abode of the gods in the general sense that mountains always are – especially since they seem to float in the air as celestial (transcendent) realms detached from the earth – this, we can assume, is what makes Kangchenjunga especially sacred to the Sikkimese. It is a place of hidden, sacred treasures. It is a trove of the most sacred terma. This is the pertinent aspect of its transcendent quality. This is to what its name refers. These are treasures hidden beyond the profane realm. And this is why its snows must remain untrod.


Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Adventures in the Tea Trade

Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Lao Tse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.

Tenshin

* * * * 

Coffee, as a friend of this blogger has pointed out most unhelpfully, is not without its spirituality. Its use was largely pioneered and promoted among the Soofi orders of the Mohametans and even to this day there are Soofi groups among whom the 'coffee maker' is an esteemed officer. We will concede this, but otherwise the blogger will have none of it. He recalls a conversation on exactly this subject with the late Lithuanian scholar, Dr. Algis Uzdavynys, himself a ten-coffee-a-day man, who explained that the Soofis used the stuff as a means of staying awake during all night vigils. The night vigil, especially during the sacred month of Ramadan, is meritorious in Mohametan piety, and there are Soofis among whom it is a preferred practice. They discovered that coffee, good and strong, will waylay sleep and thereby facilitate extended prayer and recitation through to the dawn salat. They employed it, that is, as a crude stimulant. 

This is most unsubtle, of course. Two lines of cocaine will do the same, and it hardly amounts to a spiritual adjunct in itself. It is more true to say, therefore, that coffee has been used in a spiritual context, yes, but it is stretching a point to ascribe to it any particular spiritual powers beyond keeping one awake. Tea, on the other hand - so this present writers insists - is much more than a mere analeptic. Far beyond just stimulating and refreshing, its energies are inherently internalising and meditative. It is, in and of itself, a spiritual drink. Coffee is incidental to a few Soofi outfits; tea is integral to entire traditions, most notably Taoism, Zen and the Japanese Boodhists.

****

Around the Darjeeling hills there is no shortage of tea experts and aficionados who are ready and willing to impart their knowledge and enthusiasm to novices, such as the present author confesses to be. They will explain the history and the processes of quality tea growing to anyone interested. There are, moreover, many tea gardens that offer guided tours that are informative and instructive. The young lady at Happy Valley Tea Gardens, a small concern just out of Darjeeling proper, is - it must be said - deeply knowledgable, articulate, terribly pleasant and gives a thorough account of every aspect of the entire growing, drying and fermentation operation, and is therefore to be recommended. She offers, furthermore, an excellent tea tasting session, explaining all the subtleties and mysteries of flavour. One comes away feeling that the whole business is not so complex after all. There are those who would love to mystify it, but in essence it is simple.

Regarding processes, it goes in stages as follows:

1.Picking

2. Withering

3. Rolling

4. Fermentation

5. Drying

6. Sorting

The leaves are picked. Then they are left to "wither" (i.e. wilt) which reduces their liquid content. Then they are rolled, which is to say slightly bruised. Then the bruised leaves are left in the open air to oxidise ("fermentation")- that is, they go black upon exposure to air. Then, at a crucial point, they are dried to stop further fermentation. Finally, they are sorted and graded. 

So, it is not really very complicated in itself, although tweaking of each stage in the process produces different results, and this is where the experts and egg-heads come in. Picking at different times in the plant's growing cycle will yield radically different flavours. Withering can be longer or shorter. And so on. In particular, the oxidisation stage is all-important. The amount of caffeine and such qualities as anti-oxidents are largely determined by how long and in what conditions the rolled (bruised) leaves are allowed to ferment. 

As far as the finished product is concerned there are really three main types: black, green and white. Green teas have had less processing - especially oxidation - than black teas, and so-called white teas are altogether virgin, having had very little processing at all. Black teas are the most common but have more caffeine and less antioxidants than green or white due to longer oxidation.

Teas are typically graded according to degrees of physical intactness as follows:

1. Whole leaf

2. Brokens

3. Fannings

4. Dust

Whole leaf grades produce a more subtle cup of tea. The broken grades - in which the leaves are broken into smaller portions - typically produce stronger and fuller cups of tea, with tea dust producing the strongest brew of all. 

Then there are seasonal variations. These are:

1. First flush
2. Second Flush
3. Autumnal

First flush - spring teas - are finer and more subtle. The second flush - which is to say the second picking - produces a more full-bodied tea. Autumn teas are more full-bodied again. 

Beyond these grades, teas are then classified according to a quite esoteric system of codifications. The very best grade is coded by the letters FTGFOP which stands for Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe - although the standard joke in the tea trade is that it really stands for Far Too Good For Ordinary People. Sometimes, to these letters the numeral 1. will be added, thus: FTGFOP1. This is your highest quality tea. Lesser teas are graded: TGFOP, GFOP, FOP, and so on. 

If readers aspire to become a professional tea snob then these are the codes to learn. 

None of this, however, counts nearly as much in practice as the garden from which the tea comes. Location, soil, climate, slope, season - these are the key determinants. 

* * * * 

Every year, they say, some 50,000 tonnes of Darjeeling tea is sold and consumed throughout the world. This is a most curious fact because, in actuality, the tea gardens of Darjeeling only produce about 10,000 tonnes of tea per year. Thus, some 40,000 tonnes is spurious. The lesson from this then is beware of imitations. Genuine Darjeeling tea now carries a government-enforced stamp of authenticity, thus:

When purchasing what you believe to be genuine Darjeeling tea look for this label. It will no doubt add to the price of the product but you can at least be sure that the product is the real thing. Darjeeling tea is prized for its special characteristics: its depth and complexity of flavour, its floral and fruity tones and especially its "muscatel" qualities. The tea you buy should reward you with exactly these qualities. This is the true test, above and beyond the label. The question is: Does it taste like a genuine Darjeeling tea, or is it just an ordinary brew like any other with an expensive label?

* * * * 

Muscatel flavours are characteristic of Darjeeling teas and are most pronounced in the more full bodied second flush, summer and autumn teas. These, at least, are the preferred teas of the present author, in his shamefully limited experience. Here is a sample of those he has tried at Darjeeling tea houses and would not hesitate to recommend:

Red Thunder

From Gopaldhara Garden, a full-bodied muscatel, 6000 rupees a kilo. 

Castleton Muscatel

From the Castleton Gardens, a second flush summer muscatel, 7000 rupees a kilo.

Thurbo Second Flush

From the Thurbo estate. Described as a Tippy Clonal FTGFOP1, only 10,000 rupees per kilo. 

Giddaphar Muscatel

From the Giddaphar garden. A FTGFOP1, second flush muscatel. 2400 rupees per kilo. 

An Orange Pekoe with Red Thunder

* * * * 

For an excellent blog from one of the world's foremost and expert tea travellers, see

http://www.discoveringtea.com

* * * * 

Everyone has to build anew his sky of hope and peace… Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.

- Tenshin

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

A Nyingma Monastery at Aloobari

What is one to make of the Dalai Lama these days? His Holiness, spiritual leader of the Tibetan Boodhists, has reduced his fourteenth incarnation to the unabashed spouting of puerile New Age cliches. It is a tragedy. His smile is so sweet and confected it would put an honest man into a diabetic coma. The night before last the present author had the misfortune of watching His Holiness speaking during an hour-length documentary, ostensibly on the origins of Boodhism in ancient India, and was simply appalled at the manner the fourteenth Bodhisattva of Compassion blatantly trivialised his entire tradition in order to pander to the lowest soft-brained prejudices of mushy Western liberals. It was an hour of sugar-coated pop psychology, pseudo-science and the cheesiest of liberal nonsense. One could not help but retire from it thinking that the great wisdom of Tibet has, like other traditions – alas! - lost all its integrity and been mutilated by modernity into a vapid travesty of itself.

Thankfully, though, this is not to be a lasting impression. Today, rising early, the author set out from Darjeeling, where he currently resides, and trekked along the ridge three or four miles towards Ghoom and – after getting lost in forests of rhododendron - encountered on his travels the beautiful little monastery at Aloobari, officially the Mak-Dhog monastery of the Tantric Nyingma sect. The encounter was a suitable antidote to any suggestion that the Tibetan tradition is devoid of a living spirit. 

Recently renovated following earthquake damage in 2011, this monastery is a jewel set among the forests and tea gardens and against the mighty backdrop of the eastern corner of the Himalayas. The young monks in attendance, who had trained in caves in Nepal, they said, gave an excellent account of the Dharma, and a knowledgeable layman who fetched the keys to the gompa offered a tour of the building with its icons and majestic decorations. It is perfectly clear that the tradition lives on and that, the Dalai Lama’s rhetorical patter for Westerners notwithstanding, the arcane and esoteric, not to say occult and magickal, practices of Lamaism still prevails. 

Aloobari is the name of the village on the ridge. It means “The Potato Field”, and it is usually as “Aloobari Monastery” that the location is known. The name “Mak-Dhog” means “warding off war” (or similar) and alludes to the fact that the monastery was first built in 1914 at the outbreak of the Great War and so was, from the outset, dedicated to peace. It is perhaps not widely appreciated that an earlier incarnation of the Bodhissatva of Compassion, just like the well-known Mr. Fourteenth, had fled to India following troubles with the Chinese, and in 1910 took up refuge in Darjeeling. The Tibetans who came with him needed places of worship. The Aloobari Monastery was made for that purpose, namely to service the Tibetan enclave. 

The authoritative text on gompas such as this is Himalayan Architecture by Ronald M. Bernier, which text includes an extensive account of Aloobari. “It is one of the most unusual monuments to be treated here,” he writes, “largely because it is a hybrid that mixes several styles.” He explains that, “It is not an early building, and it is likely that European/Chinese contact inspired its inclusion of open balconies with metal grillwork for railings.” It is, he says, “a most unusual building, at least on the outside,” – which even I ncludes some Islamic elements - although the iconographical program of the interior, including the ceiling mandalas, are more or less traditional. 

Wall painting, lower chamber. 

Bernier’s account, however, is of the building prior to its renovation. As older tourist reports relate and photographs show, the building had been in some disrepair. The earthquake then caused an entire wall of the lower floor to collapse. The building has now been reconstructed, reinforced and repainted and so it looks perfectly new, although the upper level’s interior remains as before. This upper chamber is old and somewhat dank, but quite mysterious for that, and the wall paintings - said to have been done with primitive grass brushes in a unique manner – are faded with water damage. The lower chamber, in contrast, is spectacularly fresh and clean and clear with glowing colours of celestial scenery. It has the same iconographical program described by Bernier, but now redone. “The walls are covered with hundreds of painted images of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas as enlightened Buddhas-to-be, teachers and saints,” he writes. “They make up a kind of family album or family tree of those imbued with the pure truth of the Buddhist way.” 

A view of the old monastery, prior to renovation. 

Its Chinese elements are especially evident.

The statues, too, are the same as Bernier describes, but have been replaced since the main altar in particular was crushed in the earthquake. The central figure on the main altar is Avalokitesvara who Bernier describes as “the most compassionate of the Buddhas-to-be and ‘he who looks down’ with compassion on the world.” He is many-armed and many-headed, the many signifying the symbolic number one thousand. “The elaborate form is quite usual in the hills [around Darjeeling]” Bernier explains, “where multiple arms indicate omnipotence and multiple heads show omniscience.” This is just how it was described to the present author who saw its new rendering.

Lower (renovated) Chamber.

Upper (unrenovated) Chamber.

Despite its peculiarities, the whole building, as Bernier further explains, “is one of thousands of constructed mandala forms.” He gives a useful general account of its function that conforms exactly with what this author was fortunate enough to see. “Its interior is spacious and high-ceilinged as it provides halls with rooms for assembled monks to gather for prayer, chanting, reading from the sacred books and instruction from high Lamas.” What Bernier does not detail, since it does not pertain to his interest in architecture and decoration, is that Aloobari contains an impressive collection of very old or even ancient sacred Boodhist texts. These are held in glass cabinets on the upper floor and were thankfully not damaged by the earthquake. Regrettably, the kind gentleman who gave the tour of the upper chamber was unable to give an account of just what texts were in the collection, but he did relate that some are rare and early. 

Sacred texts in glass cases, Upper Chamber. 

All of this – beauty, solemnity, tradition, form, ritual – is a testament to the great and continuing wealth of Lama Boodhism. It is encouraging to learn that it has not, after all, succumbed to the driveling sentimentality that the Dalai Lama feels the need to put on whenever he is in front of a camera.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Darjeeling versus the Sunderban

It is surely true to say that Calcutta is not a premiere tourist destination. The city is better known for her poverty than for her spectacles and attractions. The sights and charms of Calcutta are underestimated, though: it is a wonderful city, especially in regards to its extensive colonial heritage. But that, in part, is the problem nowadays. Grand colonial architecture – either well-preserved or, more likely, in various stages of decay – is not relished by the progressive one-world post-colonial tourist. An English lady whom the author met there complained, for example, that the Victoria Monument – one of the most grand and best preserved instances of colonial architecture in the city, and a testament in marble to Queen Victoria, Empress of India - was “a bit Anglo-centric.” Well, indeed! If the contemporary tourist is squeamish about colonialism then Calcutta is bound to be a disappointment. As it happens, this writer has no such post-colonial sensitivities. Much of the best of modern India is British. And, to be frank, post-independence India is a rambling mess. Wonderful, but a rambling mess all the same. It is actually not hard to find Indians who feel the same, although they only say so quietly and have no place in the nation’s political or cultural discourse.

Similarly, the contemporary tourist does not care much for the achievements of man. In progressive Western ideologies today humanity is simply a blight upon the earth. It is a strangely self-loathing ideology. The contemporary progressive is not only ashamed of the history of their civilisation, they are ashamed of the entire species. Over the past generation humanist values have been displaced by a humanity-hating environmentalism that ends, finally, in nihilism. It is not hard to find so-called progressives today who will tell you in all earnestness that the earth would be better off without mankind and that mass annihilation by disease or war might not be such a bad thing. 

Tourists of this mind go in search of those remote corners of the globe that are untouched by human hands. Their assumption is that whatever man has touched is thereby polluted. Man is vermin. Only what is untouched is unspoilt. There is the tourist paradox that they themselves, by searching out such places, render them ruined, but this hardly occurs to them. People of this mind that one meets in Calcutta are busily organising treks into the Sunderban. This is the place where the many-fingered Ganges spreads across a wide plane and slowly empties into the Bay of Bengal. It is the world's biggest and densest mangrove swamp. Trips into the Sunderban are now big business. Post-humanist Westerners head there in search of that rare commodity, true wilderness. 

The Indians, for their part, find this curious. They tend to roll their eyes and smile to each other as if to say, "Stupid Western people, paying good money to look at a swamp!" Because, other than your post-humanist eco-tourist no one in their right mind would venture into the Sunderban. Certainly, traditional people - like the Hindoos - would not venture there unless they had to, and they would do so with fear. For them the Sunderban is not a place of wonders (to be valued because no human being has touched it) but to be feared (precisely because no human being has touched it.) Wilderness is feared by traditional man. It is only the commercial prospects of exploiting cashed-up Westerners that has persuaded Indian tour operators to offer tours there. 

The present author is reminded here of the PhD work of an acquaintance, Dr Brian Coman, who wrote at length about this issue. He describes the traditional attitude to nature and contrasts it with that of the new ideologies of ecology which are, as he says, profoundly anti-traditional in all their values and assumptions. The traditional doctrine is summed up in the adage: Where man is not, nature is barren. Traditional values seek a nature that is tamed and guided by human hands. Eden, after all, was a garden, not a jungle. There is a type of neo-primitivism that has taken hold of the post-industrial West, at least amongst its progressive elites, that reveres the jungle and despises the garden. This is what leads middle-class, well-fed, well-educated do-gooders to pay thousands of dollars to spend their holidays floating around in a swamp at the mouth of the Ganges. 

And in this context the present author is reminded of the degree to which he himself is pathetically traditional. His options after Calcutta were to travel on to the Suderban or to head into the highlands to Darjeeling. The choice was (a) a swamp or (b) tea plantations. As readers will be aware, he chose the latter. And he has to report - or confess - that Himalayan foothills crafted with tea gardens are a sight of unparalleled beauty to him. You can keep your smelly mangroves! Darjeeling is beautiful, and precisely because it has been shaped and nurtured and made lovely by human hands. There is a background of wild nature, namely the forests and especially the snow-capped mountains, but these are sacred, ethereal places full of spirits and demons and not a proper abode for man. Darjeeling abounds in natural beauty, to be sure, but it is enhanced by the tea gardens and the charming habitations of human beings. 

Darjeeling

The Sunderban

There are some eighty-seven tea gardens around Darjeeling. (They are called "gardens" rather than "plantations".) There are thousands of hectares of cultivation under camellia sinensis and lesser areas under the broader leafed camelia assamica. There are, no doubt, those who lament the fact that these gardens have replaced what were once native forests, since all that man touches is ruined, but this is not a sentiment the present author shares. There are those who think that wherever an Englishman trod in India is somehow defiled, and that colonialism was a relentless travesty and crime, but this too is not the view of this author. 

Overall, the British - and here we might distinguish them from other colonialists such as the far more rapacious Dutch and French and Portuguese - enhanced rather than defiled India. It was the English who brought tea to hills around Darjeeling and adopted Darjeeling as their favourite hill station. It is no tragedy that they did so. Certainly, this author does not feel any post-colonial shame nor, by extension, any post-industrial cringe about the way human hands have shaped the environment here. In any case, as indicated in previous posts, (see here) the author is a partisan for tea and tea culture (Teaism as Tanshin called it). He is taking this sojourn in Darjeeling to learn about tea cultivation and preparation and the finer points of tea culture. Let the coffee guzzling progressive class enjoy their untrammelled mangrove swamp. He is happy sipping tea in the colonial hotels of Darjeeling. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Colours of Darjeeling

Many posts and half a world away, (see here), it was pointed out that, contrary to staid classical expectations, the traditional art of the gothic cathedral, like that of the ancient Greeks, was bright and garish with an emphasis on primary colours. We might value the hewn beauty of gothic stone, but medieval man did not. He had no hesitation covering cathedrals and statues with bright colours in a garishly unsubtle array. The author is reminded of this once again because the good people of the Himalayan hills, where he is currently situated, display exactly the same love of bright colour. 

That previous post made reference to the shock of colours found in a typical Hindoo temple. This is certainly true, and there are many instances of it all about, but it extends further to the domestic and other architecture of these quite traditional people. Darjeeling, queen of the hill stations, is festooned with colour. The houses, doors, windows, lintels, panes – everything – is typically painted in bright enamels, a splash of copious colours against the sober green of the tea gardens and the forests of the region. Certain colours are favoured, certain shades of blue and green, but the over-all effect is of a patchwork. There is a festival of colours here, usually applied by amateur painters as required, with little thought for the surrounds. Certain combinations are favoured, and even what might loosely be called ‘colour schemes’, but it is clear that personal preference prevails along with, most probably, the demands of whatever paints might be available. 

The patchwork is part of the great charm of the hill station, but it is not by any means peculiar to Darjeeling. The simple fact is that traditional people like bright colours. They paint their houses bright, and if something is sacred – a temple, an idol – then they paint it even brighter. Here are some samples of the colours on domestic architecture, some of it the domestic architecture of very poor people, found around the sloping streets of the town.

A point worth noting, is that the people here – like traditional people everywhere, in fact – have no particular affinity for nature, as such. It is a total fallacy to suppose that these people – sturdy, poor hill dwellers – are “close to nature”. Not at all. They are not hippies who try to make their houses blend into the forest. Earthy as they are, they have no particular “earth consciousness”. If, out of necessity, they have to construct their homes of crude natural materials, they will quickly slap a coat of bright blue enamel paint over it, with glowing orange trims, as soon as they can. Their connection to the earth and “nature” is nothing like what romantic fantasies of Western ecologists imagine. If anything, they have a very traditional fear of nature, if we may describe it so, and want to distinguish their homes from the works of nature as much as they can. If a stone is sacred, they will not leave it “natural” – they will paint it blood red, as primal and as “unnatural” as possible. They have no respect for "natural". This is not New Age “biotecture” and is not related to it in any sense. 

The one important exception to this, let us admit, is found in Japan, for the Japanese do have a love of natural materials and will let the colours and textures of nature prevail. Western sophisticates have inherited this Nipponese aesthetic, but it is in fact part of modernity’s debt to Japan – the Japanese set out to be authors of modernity, and we see it in preferences for simplicity and naturalness in modern tastes. But it is not the norm elsewhere, neither in the traditional (medieval) West nor in the East today or yesterday. Primal man loves primal colours.

Below are some further samples of the many colours of Darjeeling:

Readers might be aware that the author maintains a photography website, Seance in Grey, with his photography being rigorously monochrome. Do not be deceived. The love of monochrome is a metaphysical yin and yang gesture more than anything - along with a hopelessly nostalgic worldview. But in fact the author loves colour as much as anyone, and in fact shares with these erstwhile "traditional" folk a love of primal colours. He has dabbled with painting a few times in his life. In part, his explorations of the multi-coloured orient are a preparation - a field-trip - for new painting ventures in the future. He is building up a palette.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black