The Art of Purring (The Dalai Lama's Cat 2)

Having spent most of her adult life in Europe, Serena had arrived back in McLeod Ganj—the part of Dharamsala where the Dalai Lama lives—only a few weeks earlier. She had grown up there, in a household devoted to food. So after high school she had gone to catering college in Italy and then worked as a chef, rising through the ranks at some of Europe’s best restaurants. Recently she had left her post as head chef at Venice’s iconic Hotel Danieli for the top job at a fashionable restaurant in Mayfair, an upscale part of London.

I knew that Serena was ambitious, energetic, and extremely gifted, and I had heard her explain to Franc, owner of the Himalaya Book Café, how she had felt the need for a break from the 24-hour treadmill of restaurant life. She was burned out from the relentless stress, and it was time to rest and recharge: when she returned to London in six months, she would be taking on one of the most prestigious jobs in the city.

Little had she known that her arrival home would coincide with the exact moment that Franc needed someone to look after the café. He was returning to San Francisco to take care of his father, who was seriously ill. While managing any kind of food business hadn’t figured in Serena’s holiday plans, compared to what she was used to, taking care of the Himalaya Book Café would seem like a part-time job. The café was open for dinner only from Thursday through Saturday; and with the head waiter, Kusali, overseeing daytime service, the demands on Serena would not be great. It would be fun, Franc assured her, and give her something to do.

More important, he needed someone to take care of his two dogs. Marcel, the French bulldog, and Kyi Kyi, the Lhasa Apso, were the other two nonhuman habitués of the café, dozing through most of the day in their wicker basket under the reception counter.

Within two weeks Serena’s presence at the café had made its mark; on meeting her, people immediately fell under her spell. Patrons of the café couldn’t help but respond to her vivacity: she seemed to know just how to turn an evening out into a night to remember. As she breezed through the café, her warmth and upbeat personality soon had the waiters falling all over themselves to please her. Sam, the bookstore manager, was openly captivated by her, and Kusali, tall and shrewd—an Indian Jeeves—took her under his paternal wing.

I had been resting in my usual place—the top shelf of the magazine stand, between Vogue and Vanity Fair—when Franc introduced me to Serena as Rinpoche. Pronounced rin-po-shay, it means precious one in Tibetan and is an honorific given to learned Tibetan Buddhist teachers. Serena had responded to the introduction by reaching out and caressing my face. “How utterly adorable!” is all she said.

My lapis-blue eyes had met her gleaming dark ones, and there was a moment of recognition. I became aware of something that is of the utmost importance to cats, something we innately sense: I was in the presence of a cat lover.

Now, in the wake of my run-in with the dogs and the spice shop, Serena, with help from Kusali and some warm, wet cloths, was tenderly wiping away the spices that had become embedded in my thick coat. We were in the restaurant laundry, a small room behind the kitchen.

“Not so nice for Rinpoche,” remarked Serena as she removed a dark smudge from one of my gray boots with great delicacy. “But I just love the smell of all these spices. They take me back to our kitchen at home when I was growing up: cinnamon, cumin, cardamom, cloves—the wonderful flavors of garam masala, which we used in chicken curry and other dishes.”

“You prepared curries, Miss Serena?” Kusali was surprised.

“That’s how I started out in the kitchen,” she told him. “Those were the flavors of my childhood. Now Rinpoche is bringing them all back.”

“Our esteemed diners are often asking if we have Indian dishes on the menu, ma’am.”

“I know. I’ve had several requests already.”

There was no shortage of kiosks, street kitchens, and more formal restaurants in Dharamsala. But as Kusali observed, “People seek a trusted purveyor.”

“You’re right,” agreed Serena. Then, after a pause she added, “But Franc was pretty clear about sticking to the menu.”

“And we must respect his wishes”—Kusali was emphatic—“on the nights the café is customarily open.”

There was a pause while Serena removed several whole peppercorns that had lodged themselves in my bushy tail and Kusali dabbed tentatively at a garish splash of paprika on my chest.

When Serena spoke next there was a smile in her voice. “Kusali, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Sorry, ma’am, I am not understanding.”

“Are you thinking we might open on a Wednesday, say, to try out a few curry dishes?”

Kusali met her eyes with an expression of wonderment and a broad smile. “A most excellent idea, ma’am!”

We cats have no fondness for water, and a damp cat is an unhappy one. Serena knew this, so as soon as she and Kusali had cleaned my coat to something approaching its usual pristine condition, she dried me with a towel chosen especially for its fluffiness, before asking Kusali to find a few morsels of chicken breast to tide me over until she took me home to Jokhang.

Being a Monday evening, the restaurant was closed, but Kusali found some delectable morsels in the fridge and warmed them briefly before placing them in the small china bowl kept exclusively for me. From force of habit, he took it to my usual spot at the back of the café, and Serena followed with me in her arms.

Although the café was in semidarkness, it so happened that Sam Goldberg, the bookstore manager, was hosting a book club meeting that night. Leaving me to my dinner, which I attacked with gusto, Serena and Kusali went to the bookstore section of the ca

fé, where 20 or so people were sitting on chairs set up in rows, watching a slide presentation.

“This is an illustration of the future from a book written in the late 1950s,” a male voice was saying. The speaker’s shaven head, wire-rimmed spectacles, and goatee gave him a cheeky look, adding to the aura of naughtiness about him. I recognized the face instantly. Sam had hung a poster of him in the store several weeks earlier, along with a quote from Psychology Today describing the man—a well-known psychologist—as “one of the foremost thought leaders of our time.”

It was then that I noticed Sam standing at the back to greet latecomers. Fresh-faced and handsome, Sam has a high forehead, curly, dark hair, and hazel eyes that, behind his somewhat geeky glasses, convey a luminous intelligence, along with a curious lack of self-confidence. Like Serena, Sam had been working at the Himalayan Book Café for only a short while, although his was a permanent job.

Sam had established himself as a regular patron at the café several months ago, and when Franc quizzed him about the books and downloads that seemed to hold his constant attention, Sam explained that he had worked in a major Los Angeles bookstore until it had recently closed down. This had instantly grabbed Franc’s attention. Franc had been thinking of converting the underused space in Café Franc, as it was known then, into a bookstore, but he needed someone with experience to make it happen. If ever there was a case of right person, right place, right time, this was it.

But it had taken some persuasion. Sam was still nursing his wounds from being laid off when the LA bookstore closed down and didn’t think he was up to the job. Franc had had to use all of his charm—aided by the considerable powers of persuasion of his lama, Geshe Wangpo—to get Sam to relent and set up the bookstore section of the Himalaya Book Café.

“Bearing in mind that from a 1950s perspective, today is the future,” continued Sam’s guest speaker, “would anyone care to comment on the accuracy of the author’s vision?”