Hemis by Madhu Tandan

Author:Madhu Tandan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Lhapa

18 August: Morning

An unexpected crisis hit the monastery. Nawang, a thirty-year-old monk with doe-eyes, was writhing with pain on the floor, clutching his left abdomen.

‘Seems like a kidney stone. Horrid things! Probably eight on the Richter scale of pain to make Nawang groan like this,’ the abbot muttered, looking worried. Nawang closed his eyes tightly as a fresh spasm of pain twisted his small frame and a single involuntary tear slipped past his clenched eyelids. Ajay rushed to his room for a painkiller. Half an hour later, Nawang was no better.

‘We can’t even get him to a hospital with the roads blocked,’ Anna said.

One of the monks coughed. The abbot turned to him and he said something in Tibetan. The abbot nodded his head and said to Anna, ‘A lhapa has come from the upper Changpa reaches, and he is in the village below for a short time. Our only option is to take Nawang to him.’

‘But he needs a doctor,’ Ajay protested.

‘A lhapa is another kind of doctor. He is a shaman, a healer.’ The abbot rose and gave rapid instructions to two of the monks.

Within minutes, a stretcher was improvised, and four monks carried Nawang on it. The abbot nodded his consent to Ajay and Anna to accompany the monks. Tsering led the party, walking ahead briskly as a self-appointed guide. The four men cautiously climbed down the monastery steps, careful not to jerk Nawang. ‘Take your attention away from the pain,’ Tsering advised Nawang. ‘Focus on a blank white screen. Once attention is withdrawn, the pain becomes more bearable.’ Nawang closed his eyes, and for a few moments, his body did relax.

‘Practise with pain, practise without pain, but practise all the time,’ Anna murmured with respect. The teaching seemed like a living being walking alongside them in every situation.

‘Only a lithotripsy can remove kidney stones,’ Ajay whispered sceptically to Anna. ‘What can a lhapa do in a situation like this?’

‘Oh Ajay! The shamanistic conception of disease is a different belief system. Like the allopath, the shaman also attributes disease to specific causes, but their attribution appears very strange to us. They believe demons and evil spirits enter human bodies, bringing illness. Or objects are magically intruded into the victims, causing disease. Just as we are convinced germs cause them, they believe black magic is the source,’ Anna explained.

‘Unbelievable. What’s the proof?’

‘I may develop an infection from a cut with a rusty knife. They ask what made the knife slip. An evil thought or a curse might have caused it to slip. They look for causes that made the knife slip while we attribute cause to what happens after the knife cut the skin.’

Ajay shrugged. ‘Ok, you can’t argue about someone’s belief. But even if we grant this bizarre cause, how is the disease cured?’

‘A lhapa mediates between this world and that of the gods. With the help of drumming or chanting, he enters a trance. I suppose you could say the lhapa vacates the body for the god called Lha to enter.

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