There had been some talk around this time about what would happen when His Holiness left on a three-week trip to Australia and New Zealand. With this and many other travels planned, should I remain in the Dalai Lama’s quarters, or would it be better if I were found a new home?
New home? The very idea of it was crazy! I was HHC and had quickly become a vital part of the establishment. There was no one I’d rather live with than the Dalai Lama. And I’d come to treasure other parts of my daily routine, whether it was sunning myself on the windowsill as His Holiness talked to visitors, or eating the delicious food he and his staff served me on a saucer, or listening to lunchtime concerts with Tenzin.
Although His Holiness’s cultural attaché was Tibetan, he was a graduate of Oxford University in England, where he had studied in his early 20s, developing a taste for all things European. Every day at lunchtime, unless there was very pressing business to attend to, Tenzin would get up from his desk, take out the small, plastic box of lunch his wife had prepared for him, and make his way along the corridor to the first-aid room. Seldom used for that purpose, it contained a single bed, a medicine cabinet, an armchair, and a portable sound system that belonged to Tenzin. Following him into the room out of curiosity one day, I watched him settle back in the armchair and press a button on the remote control of the sound system. Suddenly, the room was filled with music. Eyes closed, he rested his head against the back of the chair, a smile appearing on his lips.
“Bach’s Prelude in C Major, HHC,” he told me after the short piano piece ended. I hadn’t realized he even knew that I was in the room with him. “Isn’t it exquisite? One of my all-time favorites. So simple—just a single melody line, no harmony, but conveying such depth of emotion!”
It turned out to be the first in an almost daily series of lessons in music and Western culture that I received from Tenzin. He seemed to genuinely welcome my presence as a being with whom he could share his enthusiasm for this operatic aria or that string quartet—or sometimes, for variety, the reenactment of some historical event in a radio drama.
While he ate whatever was in his plastic lunch box, I would curl up on the first-aid bed—a liberty he indulged since it was just the two of us. My appreciation of music and Western culture began to develop, one lunch hour at a time.
Then one day, something unexpected happened. His Holiness was over at the temple, and The Door was left open. By then I had grown into an adventurous kitten, no longer content to spend all her time cosseted in fleece. Prowling along the corridor in search of excitement when I saw The Door ajar, I knew I had to go through it, to explore the many plac
es that lay beyond.
Downstairs. Outside. Overseas.
Somehow I made my shaky way down two flights of stairs, grateful for the carpeting, as my descent accelerated out of control and I landed in an undignified bundle at the bottom. Picking myself up, I continued across a short hallway and went Outside.
It was the first time I’d been outdoors since being plucked from the gutters of New Delhi. There was a bustle, a feeling of energy, with people walking in every direction. I hadn’t gotten very far before I heard a chorus of high-pitched squeals and the pounding of many feet on the pavement. A tour group of Japanese schoolgirls caught sight of me and took pursuit.
I panicked. Racing as fast as my unsteady hind legs would take me, I lurched away from the shrieking horde. I could hear them gaining ground. There was no way I could outrun them. The leather of their shoes slapping the pavement became a thunder!
Then I spotted a small gap between brick columns that supported a verandah floor. An opening that led under the building. It was a tight squeeze, and I had very little time. Plus, I had no idea where the gap led. But as I bolted inside, the pandemonium abruptly ended. I found myself in a large crawl space between the ground and wooden floorboards. It was dark and dusty, and there was a constant, dull drumming of foot traffic overhead. But at least I was safe. I wondered how long I would need to stay there until the schoolgirls had gone away. Brushing a cobweb from my face, I decided not to risk another attack.
As my eyes and ears adjusted to my surroundings, I became aware of a scratching noise—a sporadic but insistent gnawing. I paused, nostrils flared, as I searched the air. For along with the sound of incisors chomping came a pungent whiff that set my whiskers tingling. My reaction, instantaneous and powerful, triggered a reflex I hadn’t even known I possessed.
Even though I had never before seen a mouse, I recognized it immediately as a creature of prey. It was clinging to brickwork, its head half-buried in a wooden beam that it was hollowing out with its large front teeth.
I moved stealthily, my approach masked by the constant sound of footfalls on the floor above.
Instinct took over. With a single swipe of my front paw, I swept the rodent off balance and onto the ground, where it lay stunned. Leaning down, I sank my teeth into its neck. Its body went limp.
I knew exactly what I must do next. Prey secured in my mouth, I padded back to the gap between the brick columns, checked the pavement traffic outside, and, seeing no Japanese schoolchildren, hurried back along the pavement and back inside the building. Dashing across the hallway, I made my way up the stairs to The Door. Shut tight.
Now what? I sat there for quite some time, wondering how long I would have to wait, until finally someone from His Holiness’s staff arrived. Recognizing me but paying no attention to the trophy in my mouth, he let me in. I padded down the corridor and around the corner.
Because the Dalai Lama was still at the temple, I went to the office of the executive assistants, dropping the mouse and announcing my arrival with an urgent meow. Responding to the unfamiliar tone, Chogyal and Tenzin both turned and looked at me in surprise as I stood there proudly, with the mouse on the carpet at my feet.
Their reaction was nothing like I had expected. Exchanging a sharp glance, they both shot out of their chairs. Chogyal picked me up, and Tenzin knelt down over the motionless mouse.
“Still breathing,” he said. “Probably in shock.”
“The printer box,” Chogyal said, directing him to the empty cardboard box from which he had just removed a fresh ink cartridge.
Using an old envelope as a brush, Tenzin herded the mouse into the empty container. He regarded it closely. “Where do you think—?”
“This one has cobwebs on its whiskers,” observed Chogyal, cocking his head in my direction.
This one? It?! Was that any way to refer to HHC?
At that moment, the Dalai Lama’s driver came into the office. Tenzin handed him the box with instructions that the mouse was to be observed and, if it recovered, to be released in the forest nearby.
“HHC must have gotten out,” said the driver, meeting my blue-eyed gaze.
Chogyal was still holding me, not in his usual affectionate embrace but as though restraining a savage beast. “HHC. I’m not sure about that title anymore,” he said.
“It was only a provisional title,” concurred Tenzin, returning to his desk. “But His Holiness’s Mouser doesn’t seem appropriate.”