The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Power of Meow (The Dalai Lama's Cat 3)

It was the first time I’d heard that particular explanation!

Then Serena said, “She lives with His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet.”

Watching the inspector take all this in, Kusali suggested smoothly, “You might say that she is a Sacred Being.”

The inspector took a few steps toward me. “A Sacred Being . . . ,” he repeated.

“Who abides in the bookshop,” Kusali affirmed.

“Indeed.”

This was how, dear reader, I came to find myself with another name. One soon to be noted in Council records, to be preserved in some dusty archival room till the end of time.

But at that particular moment, my attention was distracted by something else entirely. While the inspector had been regarding me, Serena had pulled back the plans spread across the table to look at the clipboard underneath them. What she saw drained all the color from her cheeks.

She was still in a state of shock after the inspector left the premises. It took her only moments to draw Kusali to one side and tell them what she had seen: on the front page of the register, the complainant was named as Mrs. Prapti Wazir.

CHAPTER FIVE

The day started badly when I awoke to a cold bed: the Dalai Lama was away on a teaching trip to Korea, and without his compassionate presence my world just didn’t feel right. Getting up much later than usual, I made my way to the kitchen. Seafood medley again! Fifth day in a row! His Holiness would never dream of serving me the same thing for breakfast twice, let alone five times—I was a cat who liked variety. Whoever was on HHC meal service that week just wasn’t getting it. The Dalai Lama was returning later today, and not a moment too soon!

After a couple of mouthfuls of the briny sludge, I made do with some dry food. That would tide me over till lunchtime down at the café, where I would be served a few gourmet morsels of that day’s spécialité du jour.

Just before lunch service was due to begin at the café, however, Kusali was called away on a family emergency. Without the head waiter, the remaining staff came under pressure to fill his role. A casual visitor may not have noticed any difference, but as a longtime observer I saw it in the way that empty water glasses remained unfilled for minutes longer than usual. The way that patrons had to wait fractionally longer for their orders to be taken. Of much more personal importance, the way that no gourmet morsel was produced for me from the first batch of mains. And that day’s spécialité was sole meunière—a particular favorite.

With Kusali gone and Franc buried in his office, I seemed to have been forgotten. Every time the kitchen doors swung open, there would come another mouthwatering gust from the stove tops. Surely someone would soon notice? I kept telling myself. It’s not as though Kusali was the only one who ever served me lunch. One of the other waiters would often be dispatched. What’s more, the kitchen staff was well aware of the routine.

I had no choice but to keep waiting, my displeasure mounting. With every appearance of a waiter from behind the kitchen doors but no sign of my saucer, my disgruntlement grew.

What a dreadful day it was turning out to be! From the moment I got up, it seemed, everything that could possibly go wrong had gone wrong. I should have stayed in bed. Instead of eating even those few mouthfuls of the dire seafood medley, I should have sunk my teeth into the ankles of the nearest monk in the kitchen. That would have shown them! As for the waitstaff at the Himalaya Book Café, couldn’t they cope with one man down? The moment Kusali left, it seemed, they began running around like headless chickens.

More time went by, and things moved into the late stages of the lunch service. A lot of the diners were already on to dessert. The aroma of sole meunière was gradually replaced by bursts of citrus and lime. The grind of roasted Zimbabwean coffee beans wafted over from the espresso machine. I was exasperated. Starving. My stomach growled loudly.

The last straw was when a waiter came to take the orders of a family of Germans sitting in the banquette nearest my shelf. The teenage daughter asked for the sole meunière. The waiter replied, “I’m very sorry, miss. The sole was very popular today and we have run out.”

Run out? Of sole meunière? What sort of establishment was this?!

Stepping down from the magazine rack, I stalked out of the café in high dudgeon, my mood unimproved by the fact that no one paid me a blind bit of notice. There was no frisson of excitement at catching a glimpse of His Holiness’s Cat. No attempts to coax the Sacred Being to a table with an unfinished portion of fish—or even a few licks of cream. Despairing that all that remained between now and dinner was a bowl of dried cat food, I wondered how things could possibly have sunk so low.

I passed through the gates of Namgyal and saw the bench on which I had so recently sat with Yogi Tarchin and Serena. I remembered what the meditation master had said about becoming aware of one’s own thoughts. How His Holiness had said much the same thing to the TV interviewer. I recollected the Buddhist view that, when we focus the spotlight of attention on our thoughts, instead of dwelling on them and becoming their victims, we have the choice to let go.

And that was when I realized something.

In previous weeks, I had been through far worse than today’s petty disappointments. Only ten days ago I had been completely drenched in a downpour and couldn’t get back inside the house for hours because someone had shut my window. At the time I had been frustrated but stoic. Because I had practiced meditating, my thoughts had been calm and at peace. I knew a door or window would eventually open. Just as I knew, right now, that there were greater misfortunes in the world than having to eat seafood medley for breakfast and missing out on a lunchtime treat.

Realizing the effect that the meditation practice had on my mind came as a wonderful surprise. I felt almost grateful to have missed out on the sole meunière! I had proven, for myself, the difference that meditation made—and I knew this revelation would make it that much easier to return to regular practice again. Feeling almost celebratory, I scampered along the upstairs corridor. I heard lively chatter coming from the executive assistants’ office and peeked in. I remembered something about Serena coming in to discuss a VIP lunch the following week: in her mother’s absence, she had offered her services as VIP chef. Along with Serena and Tenzin sat the D

alai Lama’s new translator, Oliver.

Oliver had been working at Namgyal for less than a month, but he and Tenzin had already become fast friends after the latter discovered that Oliver came from Berkshire, in England. Having attended Oxford University in the distant past, Tenzin was a staunch Anglophile. He soon learned that he and Oliver shared a deep appreciation for the BBC, Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, and tea correctly served—which invariably it wasn’t in McLeod Ganj. Just then, all three of them were gathered around the two executive assistants’ desks, a tea tray in front of them.

“I’m not at all surprised at her doctor,” Oliver was saying. “Of all the research done, there have been more studies on high blood pressure and stress than on anything else.”

“I had no idea,” said Serena.

“Dozens of them, in top medical schools. The results are consistent. Meditation has a major impact on every biological marker of stress. It brings down high blood pressure. Slows hardening of the arteries. Boosts endorphins and the immune system. Increases the production of melatonin, a powerful antioxidant that destroys free radicals.”

“Yes,” Serena chimed. “Her doctor mentioned free radicals.”