A Visit with A Nun

In Sonam Phuntso’s village the rains were relentless. We had been fortunate in Pema’s village to have a break in the rain and to be able to see the high peaks; we could walk freely and unencumbered. But in Sonam Phuntso’s village the wet clouds descended and unleashed a constant flow of rain that kept the villagers indoors. I wanted to explore, much to Sonam Phuntso’s dismay. As I was both a guest and his teacher, his family compelled him to take me out around the village. He told me that I should carry an umbrella if we were going out in the rain, but I said that we were going hiking so a raincoat would be better. He shrugged and unfolded his umbrella and I zipped up my jacket and it wasn’t one hour before I was soaked and Sonam Phuntso was still dry.

We walked the steep green hills behind his house, past an occasional old stone home and through pastures where the horses were wet from the rain and bloodstained from leeches that had latched onto their skin, drunk to their fill and then, distended with blood, leapt off of the horses and into the grass. I checked my pants frequently for leeches and occasionally found a few small ones that had yet to take hold and start sucking.

The way was steep and I plodded on with resolve. Sonam Phuntso meandered casually with his umbrella propped against his shoulder and his cell phone in his hand, sending text messages to a friend every few minutes. I beat him to the high points, if only to show him that I wasn’t a weak old man—as I think he believed—but also to convince myself of the same. Still, at the tops of the hills I was breathing heavily and Sonam Phuntso was not.

At the peak of one hill there was a forgotten temple, barely visible in the rain clouds. It was an imposing, haunting structure, like a Savannah plantation or a lost Gaelic castle; two stories, constructed mostly of stone, with an ornate attic on top. We approached the front porch and an old woman sitting at the massive prayer wheel saw us and retreated inside with a limp. The wheel was left spinning ever so slowly and a ding of the prayer bell rang out when the wheel made its full rotation.

We climbed the stairs, Sonam Phuntso shaking off drops from his umbrella and I taking off my boots and beating the soles against the stairs to clear the mud. The entryway was an ample porch that had the same well-worn wood floors that I had seen in the villages, planks pulled from large, solid trees, ages ago, now polished and smooth from the traffic of bare footsteps. The walls were painted with deteriorating images of deities, some you couldn’t make out because they were too weathered, others emerged like specters, sitting in the lotus position, adorned with Buddhist symbols.

Sonam Phuntso knocked at the thick wooden doors. We waited and I continued to look at the paintings. We heard the doors unlatched from the inside and they creaked open and the light shone in on the great hall. The old woman came out from behind one of the doors. Her head was shaven and she wore the tired, old maroon colors of a nun. Her right arm was twisted and bent, forged there like iron.

“She’s the caretaker, sir.”

She showed us into the vast room that smelled of wood, incense, and butter. The only light that entered came from the open doors; most of the room was dark and cold. There were golden statues of Guru Rinpoche and the Buddha that had a thick layer of dust on them. We prostrated three times to each statue. Sonam Phuntso gave me a butter lamp to light. I am not religious, Buddhist or otherwise, and I did not know what I should do with it.

“Set it on the altar and light it, sir.”

“What should I pray for?”

“Sir?”

“When you’re lighting the butter lamps, what do you pray for?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Nothing? Then why are you doing it?”

“It’s our custom, sir.”

“But it must have a reason.”

“Sure, sir.”

“So what are you hoping for when you light it?”

“Just a custom, sir.”

I could see something was getting lost so I turned to light the butter lamp and let Sonam Phuntso light his. I prayed for a continued safe journey. The wick took long to light and I thought the flame would sputter out and my prayer would be lost, but as the heat from the match just barely began to singe my fingers, the wick caught and my safe journey was secured.

We toured the upper rooms of the temple, all very cold, simple and sparse. Each room had statues of religious figures encased in glass on wooden altars. Again we prostrated to the figures and offered small denominations of bills. I prayed again, this time for direction and a sense of bearing and I also prayed for the rain to stop. 

We thanked the nun and when it was time to leave she invited us for tea. Such invitations are custom, but you could hear loneliness in her voice. What it must be like to be a caretaker of a temple in a remote area of eastern Bhutan. Sonam Phuntso looked ready to return home, but I told him that I’d like to have tea with the nun.

She led us to her quarters, a single room in a small barracks behind the temple, where monks used to live. The room was black with soot. A fire pit sat at the far end and there was no chimney. The ashes were thick in the fire pit and spilled out over the edges.

“I didn’t realize she’d have to start a fire to prepare the tea, Sonam Phuntso. Maybe we should just decline.”

The old woman hobbled out of the room and asked Sonam Phuntso to join her. I was left alone in the nun’s quarters, sitting on a thin foam pad on the floor that she used as a bed. In a minute, Sonam Phuntso returned.

“She’s preparing the tea in a room next door on an electric kettle.”

“Ah, much better than the fire, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

She hollered something at Sonam Phuntso and he disappeared again, helping her with the tea. I sat and observed the room, the beaten wood cabinet with woolen clothes and blankets piled on top, the blackened pots and aluminum ladles sitting around the fire pit, a ramshackle shelf with a hodgepodge of plastic bowls and containers. A rooster came and stood at the doorway, watching me cautiously. A cat came behind the rooster, scaring him and sending him fluttering away. I could hear the clanging of kitchen work next door; the wall was merely wood slats and I could peer in and see the two preparing the tea.

When they returned, Sonam Phuntso set the tea in front of me and I thanked him. The nun drank from a small wooden bowl, the steam wafted around her in the light and made her presence ethereal. We were silent, listening to the patter of rain outside and to the sound of our lips sipping the hot tea. When we finished, I asked if I could take a picture of her and she told me to wait. She wanted to put on her nice clothes. She hobbled over to the wood cabinet and with one arm she took up a light woolen sweater that was embroidered at the waist with what were once vibrantly colored patterns but had long since faded. She struggled to get her bad arm into the sleeve and I stood and helped her. She then took out a thick, red cape-like garment and draped it over her back. Her final piece was a woolen hat that she placed carefully on her head. She hobbled back to where she was sitting on the floor and with struggle sat back down.

“Now you can take the picture.”

Like so many pictures, something was false. And now as I write this I realize that I also don’t have the words to write the nun truly. I hoped somehow I could hold onto the moment and freeze it and that time would rest its relentlessness for a while. But the mugs of tea were empty and I had taken enough photos and it was time to leave again. In the pause that comes before accepting it is time to depart, she began to talk to us more than she had since she first opened the doors to the temple. Sonam Phuntso translated.

“My arm and leg seized up when I was thirteen,” she said. “Before thirteen I was a normal little girl. I played with my friends and I ran around the village and I didn’t have any problems. Then I turned thirteen and I became crippled and my whole life changed.”

It was useless to ask about doctors and diagnoses. To this day the closest road to the village is a two hour hike away. When she was thirteen the road was much farther and even then there were not doctors in the larger villages that had roads. It is likely that there was a lama in her village that tried to cure her, and when he didn’t succeed he spoke of karma and spirits and the reasons people suffer in their reincarnations.

“I was very angry,” she continued. “I hated my life. It was unfair that I should know a life where I could use my body and then it should be taken away. But then I became a nun and I spent my time in prayer and in study. Now I am no longer angry. I have accepted my fate in this life.”

She smiled at us. She was missing many teeth but that did not weaken the smile. Again we found ourselves in a silence that was asking something of us. Sonam Phuntso began to say goodbye.

The nun held my hand in both of hers and said, “I hope that we will one day meet again.”

“I hope so too,” I said and asked Sonam Phuntso to translate.

We stood. I put on my jacket and Sonam Phuntso opened his umbrella and again we were back in the rain. The nun stood in the doorway, bracing herself against one side, and watched us leave, down the green hills until we disappeared in the fog. 

A Visit in a Student's Village

In the morning, after a breakfast of leftover kopa and rice, Pema took me to his grandmother’s house.

“Didn't you tell me that she was ill, Pema?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, perhaps I should leave her to rest. She probably doesn’t want a foreigner to come in and bother her when she is trying to get better.”

“No, sir, this is our custom. When someone is sick in the village, we always pay the person a visit. When we are sick, we do not want to be alone. Everyone knows this. So we all go and spend time with the person and wish her to get better.”

“I see.”

“Besides, I think that Grandmother will be moving on to the next life now. She is truly, very sick. My mother is very sad. Maybe today my grandmother will pass on. We must visit her.”

At Pema’s grandmother’s house another woman wearing traditional dress was waiting at the door. She looked me up and down and spoke to Pema who explained that I was his teacher, visiting for a few days. At this she gave a suggestion of a smile and motioned for me to enter the house.

“When you enter, you give money. It’s our culture, sir. Go to my grandmother and with both hands give her fifty or a hundred Ngultrum. Say, ‘Kuzu zangpo la.’ I will translate that you wish for her to get better.”

Standing at the doorway I could see that there were many women around the grandmother. They stood to receive me. Each one of the women looked hard as nails, calloused by village life, stoic amidst the prospect of Grandmother’s death. Grandmother was sitting and rocking slightly against a young, high school aged girl. The girl lovingly embraced the grandmother and rubbed her back and they both rocked back and forth.

I approached the grandmother slowly. She didn’t realize I was there. She was focusing on something else, something far away. Her eyebrows were furrowed and she whispered to herself, some message that was hers alone.

I bowed and quietly said, “Kuzu zangpo la,” and I held out the hundred Ngultrum note with both of my hands. The younger girl whispered to the grandmother, signaling to her that I was there. The old woman slowly looked up at me with honest eyes, wondering who this foreigner was, why was he here, what was this a sign of? She held out her hands which were both calloused and fragile, trembling hands, and she received the money and then continued to look right at me, curious, frightened perhaps. She continued to whisper, ardently focused on the secret message she whispered to herself again and again. Then she closed her eyes and leaned back against the young girl and the girl continued to rock her back and forth.

I sat down on a small rug, and as I did the others sat as well. I was struck by how much older this house looked on the inside than Pema’s did. The stone walls were black with the varnish of years of smoke and the wood floor was polished from constant traffic, walking and sitting and the shuffling of rugs. The room echoed the tinny pitter-patter of rain hitting the roof. There were double the amount of yak skins filled with cheese as there were in Pema's house and the room was more pungent with the sour odor. The women wore the traditional dress for their area, once vibrant dresses that were worn from washing and age.

His aunt offered me souja and I accepted the tea though I couldn’t fathom more butter and salt in my system. She went to work on an old butter churn, a tube with a stick coming out of the end. I could hear the thick milk sucking from the vacuum as she pushed the stick up and down. I was afraid that my request brought a sound that violated the sanctity of the space considering Grandmother’s condition, but no one seemed to be bothered. Even amidst death, daily life must go on. 

My culture tiptoes around death, believing that maybe we can hide from it if we don’t make too much noise, or if we show enough politeness and tact, or if we pray. The villagers in this house continued about their routines, knowing that death is inevitable. Or maybe it was something else. Pema kept repeating, “She’ll go to the next life very soon.” Perhaps it wasn’t a turn-of-phrase. When one believes truly in reincarnation, there is less to be broken by when faced with death. But still, there was a sadness in that room. Sadness and a reverent waiting. 

I watched the young girl rocking and saw the grandmother’s lips murmuring to herself and the atmosphere was very solemn. Pema’s aunt put the mug of souja in front of me and then placed another one in front of Grandfather who I only then noticed. He wore a red woolen hat, an old, frayed down coat and sweatpants with stains and holes. His eyes were puffy and red and as he sipped at his tea he kept looking over at Grandmother and then he looked back at me. I was certain that Grandmother was going to pass away right there and I was afraid. I have never seen someone die and it wasn’t fair that I should be in the home for such a moment. But should I be there or not was a question of fate and destiny, another part of the routine of daily life that would go on and would not stop for me, nor stop for Grandmother even though it might be her last day. 

Grandfather looked back at me and he smiled, though there was much pain in his eyes.

Grandmother became very quiet. She stopped whispering and she lay very still against the young girl. The women and Grandfather looked on. I also watched and I wondered if it had come. It was a moment where I wanted to no longer be a part of the village, I wanted to be a tourist again and to be outside in the rain wondering what kind of life goes on in these households. I was tense, watching Grandmother motionless. We all were. The tension came from a collectively held breath, a moment of pause between a way-of-life that once was and a drastic change that was soon to come. In the pause, my foreignness and their foreignness and whatever minute dot we formed on a map together disappeared. 

Before death and after death, culture is its most defined. There are rituals and medicines and gods to pray to; there is etiquette for how to hope and deny before death, and then rules for how to grieve and how to console and what to believe after death. But in the moment when one is about to witness death, there is no disparate culture. There is only the silent recognition that all of us, one day, will cease to exist. We will all have a moment where we stop living. Our final moment. 

Grandmother's final moment was yet to come. She opened her eyes again, looking surprised that she was in the room and then she cringed in pain and she began rocking again while the young girl rubbed her back. The room suddenly felt bigger and the women realized there was a guest to offer more tea to. They continued about their lives.

When I finished my tea, Pema signaled to me that we could leave. I stood outside and a light rain fell and I took in the view of the verdant peaks all around us, their vibrant greens like none I have seen before, an emerald kingdom of forest and meadow. The clouds were thick at the peaks, threatening to descend into the valley and engulf us.

Grandfather came out of the house and removed his hat, standing with us in the drizzle.

“Grandfather is showing you great respect,” Pema explained.

I felt abashed and unworthy. Grandfather shook my hand weakly. I held his in my own two. His were hands of a million stories and a million hardships and I felt like today was one of the hardest. After I let go of his hands he rung them uncomfortably and he looked up at me.

“Tell him thank you for letting me into his home,” I told Pema.

Pema translated and the grandfather nodded and said something in his language and then he slipped away again back into the house, to be with Grandmother. 

"Grandfather says to please come again for tea," Pema told me. "He says that you are always welcome here."