In Memoriam Captain Sonam Yongda

ALEX PAIKADA

It was a cold, drenched August. The year was 1985.

I had traversed nearly 3,000 kilometers from my hometown on the southwestern fringes of India, drawn irresistibly into the romantic mysteries of the Himalayas. I had just out an from engineering college—a social greenhorn, brimming with idealism and possessed by a deep fascination for the elusive currents of Oriental mysticism.

I arrived in Gangtok as a complete nobody—a non-entity, ignored and dismissed, no better than a wandering cur. I roamed aimlessly, searching for a place to rest, a place where I could resonate with the spirit of the mountains. I wandered to the Chogyal’s palace, only to be chased away by CRPF personnel who, with lavish contempt, showered me with expletives.

I found myself back at MG Marg, standing still amid the movement, pondering the emptiness of existence, the quiet ache of insignificance. I was too young, too withdrawn to assert myself, to charm my way upward through the world’s invisible hierarchies. Days passed, and I became a spectacle of disarray—lanky, unkempt, almost feral, like a creature strayed from the woods.

And then, I saw him.

A swarthy, stocky man in a traditional kho, with a sparse yet valiant sprig of beard. His eyes were sharp—alive with awareness and authenticity. He spoke warmly with a lady beside him. I waited, instinctively sensing a man of substance.

When she left, I stepped forward and introduced myself, uninvited.

He looked me over, from head to toe—a scarecrow apparition. Perhaps he had never encountered someone like me before. Without a word of judgment, he asked me to get into his jeep. We stopped at a hotel where the staff rose in reverence at his presence. He instructed me to bathe, to brush my teeth, to make myself presentable.

Then we drove.

The jeep surged uphill through winding roads as night descended upon the slopes. A fine drizzle fell, and mist gathered like silent thoughts in the valleys below. At the ridge, we entered the palace grounds. The same CRPF guards who had driven me away now stood stunned—speechless—as the “wandering cur” arrived beside a man of authority.

He led me to a shrine within the palace and showed me how to strike a great traditional drum. Its deep resonance rolled down the precipice, dissolving into the chaotic hum of the town far below.

Later, we went to a house on Tibet Road—Netuk House—where his daughter and son-in-law, Prince Pema Namgyal, lived. I sat in the warmth of their kitchen. Pema, young and regal, stared at me in disbelief—an Indian in his kitchen was an impossibility. He rushed to confirm with his wife and father-in-law before accepting what he saw.

Only then did I learn who my benefactor was.

He was Captain Sonam Yongda—the Chief of Staff to the King, a revered figure among the original peoples of Sikkim.

He gave me a book—the history of Sikkim—set against the turbulent backdrop of its annexation by India in 1975. He himself was a central figure in that story.

The next day was a festival. At the royal monastery, masked dancers moved in ancient rhythms. Aristocrats, devotees, and Western tourists watched in quiet absorption. I stood among them—awkward, out of place. The dancers themselves paused to push me away; my presence was unwelcome.

Yet I persisted, slipping back in each time I was expelled, determined to witness the spectacle.

At last, when one dancer took it upon himself to drive me out repeatedly, I leaned in and whispered, “I am here at Yapo’s request.”

The effect was immediate. I was left undisturbed.

On the first of September, 1985—a Sunday—I journeyed to Pemayangtse Monastery. The air was crisp, the drizzle gentle yet insistent. And there, I beheld Mount Kanchenjunga—the sacred summit, the silent guardian of the land.

I became, in time, a part of a quasi-monastic school. In my own modest way, I taught the children—not just from textbooks, but from stories, from lives of great men and women, from the deep well of human experience. They listened, absorbed, awakened.

I wandered through remote hamlets, across rills and dells, through forests and silent valleys where even angels might hesitate to tread. I met an eclectic gathering of souls—seekers, wanderers, lovers of solitude, lovers of music, lovers of the quiet intoxications of life.

Time dissolved.

There was no urgency, no ambition—only a vast, unhurried eternity.

And then, I discovered a treasure: the library.

It was a golden seam. Thousands of books—the finest from the Western world—rested there in quiet dignity. I immersed myself in them, mining their depths.

The school was Yapo’s vision—his true calling. When the corrosive forces of power and politics grew unbearable, he withdrew and devoted himself to shaping a future. He gathered children from the margins—orphans, the forgotten, those from remote and frozen valleys where mysticism whispers to silence.

Today, I am told, many of those children have risen—scholars, scientists, administrators, thinkers—scattered across the world.

And I, once a wandering non-entity, had the privilege of witnessing the beginning of that quiet revolution.

In the years that followed, I wandered deeper—into remote habitations, into military camps along frozen frontiers, into places where the wind itself seemed to test the limits of human endurance. I travelled through Lachen, Lachung, Yumthang, Shivamandir, the base camps, Yuksom—names that now echo like distant chants in the corridors of memory. There, the cold was not merely felt; it pierced, like a thousand fine needles pressing against the skin.

I met sages, ascetics, and mystics. But more than that, I met myself.

I lived with shepherds, spent days in yak farms, and dwelt in rarefied silences where the sky shimmered with a hue that rivaled pure aquamarine. Those years did not merely pass—they annealed me, tempered me, reshaped the very grain of my being.

Meanwhile, the world moved on.

My classmates advanced, conquered territories of knowledge and ambition, scaled visible summits of success. They built careers, claimed spaces, carved their names into the firmament of the known world.

And I—when I finally walked away from the depths of the Himalayas—walked away empty-handed.

Or so it seemed.

For what I carried could not be measured. I carried memories—fragments of stillness, whispers of wind, faces etched in kindness and austerity. Memories that even now I hold close.

Yet, at the end of all things, when the firmament blushes and shadows stretch long and distorted across the earth, it is only memories that remain.

And even they will fade—like a pinch of salt dissolving into the ocean of eternity.

Then, there will be silence.

Yesterday, a voice message reached me—from none other than Pema Namgyal. He told me that his father-in-law had slipped into eternity.

Yapo was gone.

He had lived as he believed—quietly, resolutely, shaping destinies. He became the architect of countless lives, lifting children from obscurity into purpose, from silence into expression.

Now, sitting in a distant corner of this blue orb, I remember him—through a cascade of memories, poignant and luminous, steady and enduring.

Thank you, Yapo.

You allowed me to touch the fragile edges of immortality. You opened for me the hazy garden of stars. You showed me a world untouched by the restless alarms of ambition, by the endless stratagems of competition.

You found “many a gem of purest ray serene,”

and many a flower that bloomed unseen in the wilderness.

And where did you go, after your brisk and dynamic passage through the mundane?

Where else—

but into the dimensionless eternity,

into the quiet luminosity of the infinite.

(Alex Paikada taught Mathematics & Science at DPC Academy, Pelling)