Franc swung around to see who was behind him. But finding no lama or holy man, he looked curiously at the monks.
“The Dalai Lama’s cat,” one of them explained.
“Very good karma,” his companion added.
A group of monks coming along behind them repeated the bowing.
“You’re sure?” Franc was astonished.
“His Holiness’s Cat,” they chorused.
The change that overcame Franc was immediate and total. Drawing me to his chest, he placed me carefully on his other arm and began stroking me with the hand that only moments before had been poised to throw me. Back into Café Franc we went, crossing to a section where a display of English-language newspapers and magazines lent a cosmopolitan flair to the establishment. On a broad shelf, there was an empty space between The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal. It was here that Franc placed me, as delicately as if I were a very fine piece of Ming dynasty porcelain.
“Warm milk,” he ordered from a passing waiter. “And some of today’s chicken. Chop, chop!”
Then, as Marcel trotted over, baring his teeth, his owner warned, “And if you so much as look at this little darling”—Franc raised his index finger—“it’ll be Indian dog food for you tonight!”
The chicken duly arrived and was every bit as delicious as it had smelled. Recharged and reassured of my newfound status, I climbed from the lowest shelf on the rack to the highest, finding a congenial niche between Vanity Fair and Vogue. It was a position more appropriate to the Snow Lion of Jokhang, not to mention one that afforded a much better view of the brasserie.
Café Franc was a truly Himalayan hybrid—
metropolitan chic meets Buddhist mystique. Along with the glossy magazine rack, espresso machine, and elegant table settings, it was decorated with Buddha statues, thangkas, and ritual objects, like the inside of a temple. One wall featured gilt-framed black-and-white photographs of Franc: Franc presenting a white scarf to the Dalai Lama; Franc being blessed by the Karmapa; Franc standing next to Richard Gere; Franc at the entrance to Tiger’s Nest Monastery in Bhutan. Patrons could gaze at these while a hypnotic musical arrangement of the Tibetan Buddhist chant “Om Mani Padme Hum” emerged from the speakers.
As I settled in my newfound aerie, I followed the comings and goings with keen interest. When I was noticed by a pair of American girls who began cooing and stroking me, Franc crossed over to them. “The Dalai Lama’s cat,” he murmured.
“Omigod!” they squealed.
He gave a world-weary shrug. “Comes in all the time.”
“Omigod!” they squealed again. “What’s her name?”
His expression went blank for a moment before he recovered. “Rinpoche,” he told them. “It means precious. A very special title usually only given to lamas.”
“Omigod! Can we, like, take a photograph with her?”
“No flash.” Franc was stern. “Rinpoche must not be disturbed.”
The pattern was repeated throughout the day. “Dalai Lama’s cat,” he would say, indicating my presence with a nod of the head as he handed customers their bills. “Adores our roast chicken.” To others, he would add, “We take care of her for His Holiness. Isn’t she divine?”
“Talk about karma,” he liked to point out. “Rinpoche. It means precious.”
At home, I was HHC, treated with much love by the Dalai Lama and great kindness by his staff, but I was a cat nonetheless. At Café Franc, however, I was a celebrity! At home, I was given cat biscuits at lunchtime, proclaimed by the manufacturers to provide growing kittens with fully balanced nutrition. At Café Franc, beef bourguignon, coq au vin, and lamb Provençal were the daily fare, offered up to where I sat on a lotus cushion Franc soon installed for my comfort. It wasn’t long before I forsook the biscuits at Jokhang in favor of regular visits to Café Franc unless the weather was inclement.
Quite apart from the food, Café Franc turned out to be the most wonderful entertainment venue. The aroma of roasted, organic coffee exerted a magnetic spell on Western visitors to McLeod Ganj of every age, temperament, and coloring imaginable, who arrived speaking a great variety of languages and wearing the most astonishing range of clothing. After spending all my short life surrounded by soft-spoken monks in saffron and red, visiting Café Franc was like visiting the zoo.
But it wasn’t long before I began to realize that beneath all the apparent differences, there were many more ways in which the tourists were quite similar. One way, in particular, I found intriguing.
On days when Mrs. Trinci wasn’t in the kitchen, food preparation up the hill was always uncomplicated. Most meals were rice- or noodle-based, garnished with vegetables, fish, or, less often, meat. This was the case in both the Dalai Lama’s household and the nearby monastery kitchens, where huge vats of rice or vegetable stew were stirred by novices wielding broom-length ladles. But although the ingredients were basic, meal times were occasions of great enjoyment and relish. The monks would eat slowly, in companionable silence, savoring every mouthful. There would be an occasional observation about the flavor of a spice or the texture of the rice. From the expressions on their faces, it was as though they were on a journey of discovery: what sensory pleasure awaited them today? What nuance would they find that was subtly different or gratifying?
A short wobble down the road at Café Franc it was a different universe. From my lookout on the top shelf of the magazine rack, I could see directly through the glass panel of the kitchen door. From well before dawn, two Nepalese brothers, Jigme and Ngawang Dragpa, were hard at work baking croissants, pain au chocolat, and all manner of pastries, as well as sourdough, French, Italian, and Turkish breads.
The moment the café doors opened at 7 A.M., the Dragpa brothers launched into a breakfast service that included eggs—fried, poached, scrambled, boiled, Benedict, Florentine, or in omelets—as well as hash brown potatoes, bacon, chipolatas, mushrooms, tomatoes, and French toast, not to mention a buffet of muesli and cereals and fruit juices, accompanied by a full range of teas and barista-made coffees. At 11 A.M., breakfast would segue into lunch, which demanded an entirely new menu of even greater complexity, and that, in turn, was succeeded by an even more diverse range of dishes for dinner.
Never had I seen such variety of foods, prepared to such exacting standards, with ingredients from every continent. The handful of spice jars in the monastery kitchen seemed altogether inadequate when compared with the multiple racks of spices, sauces, condiments, and flavorings in the kitchen of Café Franc.
If the monks up the hill were able to find such pleasure in the most basic of foods, surely the delectable cuisine offered to patrons of Café Franc should be the cause of the most intensely spine-tingling, claw-curling, whisker-quivering ecstasy imaginable?
As it happened, no.