Before the clouds burst

Soumitra Das recalls another freak deluge in Ladakh 15 years ago

flashback

The roof of Hemis monastery battered by the rains being repaired by the Archaeological Survey of India in 1995. Picture by Soumitra Das Exactly 15 years ago to the month, a tiny news item had appeared in a daily published perhaps from Delhi that reported the devastation caused by a freak deluge in Ladakh. The torrent had ruined many of its ancient Buddhist monasteries or gomphas, where the Tantric Vajrayana school of Buddhism is still practised. When I arrived there a couple of weeks later, the town of Leh was bone dry once again, and there was no trace of even a puddle anywhere. The sky was an impossibly intense blue, and although the chill seeped in through my layers of woollens and the wind-cheater, the sun seemed to glare through a magnifying glass, its rays bouncing off the tarmac, TV antennae and solar panels, exaggerating every detail of the arid landscape. Even down-at-heel peasants could not help sporting dark glasses. I had heard from an uncle, who was posted there about two decades earlier, that the colour green was alien to Ladakh’s barren ridges of ochre, grey and verdigris. But I spotted several clumps of trees in the distance. Vegetation cannot take root in this bleak terrain, not unless water is artificially made available. This was surely the army’s doing, and the army was ubiquitous. It was also difficult to miss the hoardings promoting the use of LPG for cooking in that rarefied atmosphere, where men, if that advertisement was to be believed, still braided their hair, wore turquoise-studded caps and yak hair-lined shoes.  In reality, the practical salwar kameez was becoming regulation dress. Traders from Kashmir had started making inroads into Leh, and the local Buddhists were not celebrating the presence of these “outsiders.” This was when the winds of change had started blowing over Ladakh, generously littering its pastures and irrigation runnels that criss-crossed “moonland” with plastic bags, which threatened to upset its delicate ecological balance. More than the town of Leh, it was the monasteries that bore the brunt of the improbable downpour. The raingods had unleashed their fury on these gomphas, 13 of which had been declared as “protected” monuments in 1978. Among them were Hemis, Thikse, Lamayaru, Phyang and Alchi monasteries, and Leh and Shey palaces, which, besides being seats of learning, were home to hundreds of lamas, who practised meditation and nurtured the mystical and magical arts inspired by their faith. Painting thankhas and murals or making colossal clay and metal images are still considered means of attaining salvation. But these massive structures, many perched precariously on scars, were not designed to withstand that August’s deluge.  Many flat-roofed houses built with sun-baked brick and stone put together with mud simply disintegrated. And the monasteries, the countless chortens (stupas) that dot the wild countryside and the walls close to them crumbled. Grass had started sprouting in the flooded prayer halls of the centuries old Likir monastery. Precious works of art had to be protected with sheets of polythene but these ancient edifices were still at the mercy of the elements. However much these objects may appeal to our aesthetic sensibilities, for the monks their creation is an article of faith.  Lamayaru, the oldest gompha, is an eyrie encircled by fortress-like formations. Smaller shrines and chapels and the humble homes of farmers that clung to the sides of this amphitheatre of ochrous rock had been pounded by the rain. On the pinnacle sits the sanctuary itself. Its upper storeys had collapsed and only the skeletal framework remained. Twenty cells of the lamas had been reduced to rubble. As in Thikse and Likir monastery, much of the wall painting depicting the Buddha in his many glorious incarnations in one, and a macabre dance in another, had dissolved in the cascading rain water.  In one monastery, I discovered that the 1,000-armed Avalokitesvara, once tinted brilliantly, was dull and faded. Even the ferocious, pot-bellied protector of the monastery, had turned into a mud-splattered figure. Many of the wall paintings had been retouched but the synthetic paint that was already in use then was no substitute for the natural pigments used traditionally. At Likir monastery, high enough to take one’s breath away, I had the privilege of entering Stop Gas’s atelier, which commanded a spectacular view of the farmland below. Mattresses covered the floor, but outside the winds howled like lost souls. Like many artist-monks, the 68-year-old monk, Stop Gas, wore a beatific smile. He used the hairs of his pet cats for his brush and a stick of charcoal served as his pencil. His job was to reproduce a tankha damaged in the rain. But even he used chemical colours available in the market. He did not have a choice. There is no escaping time’s trap. (The Telegraph Calcutta)