There is a quotation attributed to Goethe, much loved by the manufacturers of fridge magnets, greeting cards, and other inspirational trinkets. It runs: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” Although Tenzin told me that Goethe never wrote any such thing, the words have a compelling resonance to them.
Once I began to be more self-confident about my meditation practice, I found it affected a lot of other things. I wouldn’t eat every last scrap of Mrs. Trinci’s diced chicken liver just because it was there. I would walk, tail high, into meetings with the most distinguished of His Holiness’s visitors. Why shouldn’t I?
And the most curious of things: Tashi and Sashi, the street-urchins-turned-novices whom His Holiness had instructed to take particular care of me, continued to visit me in the Jokhang visitors’ room from time to time. Usually they’d sit on the floor for five minutes and scratch my neck. Sometimes they’d recite mantras.
One afternoon, a few days after my change in attitude, they happened to visit. Following the usual format, I rolled onto an elaborate rug, arms and legs splayed, to allow them to run their fingers up and down my tummy.
It was at this point that Chogyal came into the room.
“Very nice.” He nodded to the two boys with a smile.
“She has grown into a beautiful cat,” said Tashi.
“A Himalayan,” Chogyal told them, bending to massage the velvety tips of my ears. “Usually, only wealthy people can afford cats such as this one.”
Sashi had a faraway look in his eye for a while before he said, “This cat’s mother was owned by wealthy people.”
“She was?” Chogyal raised his eyebrows.
“Even though we were in a poor area, we used to watch the mother walk along the wall from the big house—”
“Very big house,” interjected Tashi. “With its own swimming pool!”
“She went there to eat,” Sashi said.
“One day we followed her to the kittens—” Tashi began.
“That’s how we found them,” finished Sashi.
“They had several very shiny Mercedes at that house,” Tashi recalled. “And a servant whose only job was to keep them polished!”
Chogyal straightened. “How interesting. It seems that HHC may be a purebreed after all. But you know, it is our vow, as Buddhists, not to take anything unless it is freely given. I wonder if it is possible to contact the family she originally came from, to offer them payment.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Visits by heads of state almost always created a stir of activity at Jokhang. In the days running up to them, hatchet-faced intelligence officers would want to see the inside of every cupboard in the complex. Chiefs of protocol would meet to discuss the tiniest of details. Extraordinary lengths were taken to ensure that every contingency was accounted for, from the location of security detachments on nearby rooftops to the texture of toilet paper provided for the VIPs, should that particular need arise.
This was why I was caught completely unaware the day His Holiness received a visitor who was not just a national leader but a real-life queen.
There had been none of the usual elaborate preparation beforehand. Only a low-key security visit half an hour earlier, which was ironic, because I knew that this particular royal visitor was one whom His Holiness was especially eager to meet. I had overheard him speak of both the young queen and her husband very warmly in the past. Not only was she extraordinarily beautiful but she was married to the king of the only Himalayan Buddhist country in the world.
I am talking, of course, about the queen of Bhutan.
For those readers who didn’t spend their school days poring over atlases of the Himalaya region—do such people exist?—Bhutan is a small country east of Nepal, south of Tibet, and a bit north of Bangladesh. It’s the kind of place that might have escaped your attention had a flake of smoked salmon fallen from your bagel onto just the wrong spot on the map. The same point could be made about half the countries in Europe, but to have missed Bhutan would be a terrible oversight, because it is, quite simply, the closest place to Shangri-la on Earth.
A remote and secluded kingdom, impenetrable behind the Himalaya ranges, until the 1960s Bhutan had no national currency or telephones, and television only arrived in 1999. The focus of people’s lives has traditionally been on cultivating inner wealth rather than material well-being. It was the ruling King of Bhutan himself who, in the 1980s, set up a system that measured national advancement according to Gross National Happiness rather than Gross Domestic Product.
A land of gold-roofed temples perched on the unlikeliest cliff ledges, of prayer flags fluttering across deep, mountain chasms, and of monks chanting in incense-suffused seventh-century temples, Bhutan is pervaded by a magical quality. And there was an extraordinary presence to the young queen when she appeared in His Holiness’s suite.
I had been at my usual place on the windowsill, dozing in the morning sun, when I heard her announced by Lobsang. At the words “Her Royal Highness,” I rolled onto my back and let my head hang over the edge of the sill.
Even viewing her upside down, I could see she was the most exquisite of beings. Petite, golden-skinned, with long hair that was dark and lustrous, she had a captivating delicacy about her. In her traditional Bhutanese kira—an ornately embroidered ankle-length dress—she seemed almost doll-like. Yet the way she moved was natural and unaffected, suggesting great personal warmth.
I watched her present His Holiness with the traditional white scarf, her face bowed and hands folded together at her heart in a gesture of devotion. After the ceremonial exchange she glanced around the room before sitting down—and immediately caught sight of me.
Our eyes met and even though we held each other’s gaze for the briefest of moments, something important was communicated. I instantly knew that she was one of us.
A cat lover.