Khangchendzonga: A Little Lonely Today

Yapo Sonam Yongda. That was an era, not just one man. A man who first nearly threw me away but later gave me everything that I wanted to learn about Sikkim and Vajryana. It is befitting that he died the same day that his fanatically loved king, Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal had ascended the throne sixty-one years ago

SUJIT CHAKRABORTY

Standing at the crossroad point in Upper Pelling, from where one road goes up a forested pathway to Pemayangtse, the other towards Darap,and the one to the right towards Sanghachoeling Monastery, I was seeing something that had been foretold by ancient history of Sikkim; or even before that. Predicted by Guru Padmasambhava in the 9^th century.

The old man with whom I was standing just in front of Garuda Hotel, told me: “This is the fourth horses saddle, where we are standing.” Then he raised his hand and pointed in front of me as the horizon stretched out. Indeed, there were four mountain ranges parallel to each other, each of them shaped like a gigantic horse’s back, or saddle.

“This has been mentioned as the identifying sign of the holiest spots mentioned by Guru Padmasambhava and that is why the Cardinal Monastery of Sikkimese Buddhism, Pemayangtse is situated above it. And if you pivoted around standing there, one can see Mount Khangchendzonga, Sikkim’s protecting deity.”

Earlier, I had been walking with the old gentleman in his full Lama’s decorative dress through a somewhat dense jungle back from the Pelling helipad. While walking, I sensed some strange wave flowing over my body. It was not eerie exactly, but a distinct wave that was strangely powerful.

I had asked gentleman why I was feeling that way. He had said, pointing at a house inside the forest: “That was my Root Guru’s mother’s house. She lived and prayed there for seventy years. This is the continuous vibration of the mantras.”

Captain Sonam Yongda was anything but a superstitious man. What he said, he not only believed in. He knew them to be truth.

The Find

It was June of 2000. I had just started working on the state tourism department’s project of creating a web portal. And the instruction from the then Tourism Secretary, Karma Gyatso (IAS-Retd) was specific.

“I do not want just some pretty pictures of pretty places. I want serious research on the culture, food, customs, history and religions of Sikkim.”

That would be tough: visiting pretty places like Uttarey or Ravangla was one thing. But the history, religion and culture? I needed some top expert. And since I had known Pema Namgyal (the late Netuk Lama’s eldest son) from an earlier visit, I asked him sitting in his resort, Netuk House.

“Well, in fact my own father-in-law is perhaps the best expert, but you must catch him at the right time,” he laughed mysteriously. I did not know the meaning then. “You can go to visit him in Pelling, and you can stay at my brother-in-law’s hotel as my guest.”

I went there. Pema’s brother-in-law, Utpal Yongda ? just the perfect Bhutia young man of classic breeding ? met us at the gate and he called his father, Yapo Sonam Yongda over the phone. Utpal did not address him as “Apa” (father) but as Yapo.

“He will come to see you here this evening at around 4:00 pm,” Utpal said.

He didn’t come. Not at 4, nor at 5, nor six… it was 9.00 pm when he landed up with an old lady by his side. “I follow not the time on your watch,” he said. “I go by the universal time.” It took me years to understand that.

Then started his complete refusal. “Why should I tell you what Pemayangtse means? Didn’t Chamling (then Sikkim’s chief minister) tell you? Did you ask Karma Gyatso? Did you ask Sonam Tenzing (the chief secretary)?”

Yapo Sonam Yongda was livid. But I did not know why. He just growled at me at every sentence. Relentless in his anger at the officials he named.

After about half an hour of such growling, the old lady became seemingly annoyed with him. I don’t know what she said in Bhutia, but it seemed to me that she was arguing: “Why are you angry with him? What is his fault?”

The old man kept mum for a while and then said: “Okay, you come to my house for breakfast tomorrow at nine.” He left.

The Tutorials

From the next day began my tutorials. I had no proper line of interview, as I knew nothing of the subject. My questions were all over the place. From what is a khada to what did Guru Padmasambhava say to what is the meaning of Pelling… random questions, unlinked to each other.

He was a ferocious man, especially after four or five in the afternoon. I later came to know that every politician, every senior government officer and every policeman was terrified of him.

It is known that he once went to a senior official to get the funds for his charitable school released. The man was perhaps new on the job. For he certainly was not aware of Yapo’s temper. He sent Yapo empty handed three times.

So when Yapo went to the officer for the fourth day, something snapped in him. He looked at the officer had said: “Do you know what you are? You are a public servant. And do you know who I am? I am the public. So you are my servant!” I do not know if the man held it or it had leaked before he could reach the washroom, but that day the work was done!

The Angry Old Man

There is a reason behind this. Yapo Sonam Yongda, you see, was ferociously patriotic and he had just one icon: Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal, the 12^th and last coroneted king of the erstwhile Himalayan kingdom.

Whenever the issue of Sikkim’s independence came up, he would become impenetrably dense. I do not remember which year it was, but after Sikkim was annexed by India, Indian police practically abducted Yapo and he was tortured for 13 straight days in Bardhaman jail in West Bengal. He did not break.

He was also immensely knowledgeable. Once he was at home in Pelling, on holiday from his Darjeeling school, when the King suddenly decided to visit Pelling and Pemayangtse. The administration was in disarray with his majesty’s sudden decision. But young Sonam organised his friends and prepared as best as he could a welcome gate and a small ceremony.

“I did not know what his majesty felt, but in the evening, a police jeep arrived at my home: His Majesty wants to see him. I was trembling when I went and the king asked me to sit. But to my surprise, the king asked me if he would join the Sikkim Guards.”

He took military training in India and rose to the level of a captain. But then he gave up: “You see, Sujit-ji” (I do not know why but he always addressed me in the Hindi honorific) “I am a Buddhist, but a soldier has to go to war and kill. I could not do that. So I quit.”

Sired, Not Fired

But still, he was always known as Captain Yongda. And he became the king’s personal bodyguard. One day he was at his post, standing at a respectable distance when His Majesty was having breakfast with a guest.

The king quoted a shloka uttered by Guru Padmasambhava predicting the future land of the devout, Baeyul Demojong. The king translated the shloka for his guest. But the young captain could not stop himself, and corrected the king.

That was sacrilege almost. The king, displeased, quietly asked him to leave. He could not attend duty. “I was just carrying my resignation letter in my pocket,” he told me.

Then about two days later, he was summoned by His Majesty. He was told to go the palace garden, where he found a table with breakfast laid out for two. There were two chairs. He stood, waiting for the king and what he though be the king’s guest. He had already decided to resign.

When he arrived, however, the king smiled and asked him to sit in one of the two chairs. The captain nearly fainted, he recalled. Sit? In front of the king? But the king repeated the gentle request. So he had to.

The king then said that he had thought it for two days and went back over the meaning of the shloka. “I was wrong,” His Majesty said. He asked Yongda to join as his ADC and focus on the education in the kingdom.

The Escape Refused

The fanatical love Captain Yongda had for the king was unmatched. When India had planned the attack to capture Sikkim a secret plan was made. Yapo then lived inside the palace.

During his long illness four years ago, when he was in Sikkim House, I would visit him every two or three days. One of those days, he told me about this. Some of the Indian army officials attached to the palace too were very fond of the king and wanted to save him

“They and I made a very safe plan. The king and his family would leave in someone else’s car late at night, and they would travel to a point in Nepal Himalayas. From there, His Majesty and the family would ride the mules to Yatung, and thus be saved.

“One very late night, I found the king’s bedroom door open, which was unusual. So I went inside and explained to him the plot. But the king flatly refused. He told me he cannot leave his kingdom when his subjects are facing Indian bullets.”

I think I am the only one to whom Yapo-la had disclosed this in recent times, but it was easy to see that if you had just such a king, your love for him was bound to be fanatical.

The Massive Scholar

Captain Yongda being made ADC in charge of education was natural. He had attended the shedra at Pemayangtse. This was at a time when only Bhutia children from aristocratic families could enter the Pemayangtse shedra. And what normal students finished at age 14, he had completed at 11.

I later learned that once the Dalai Lama had come to Sikkim and visited West District, the hub of Sikkimese spirituality. The Dalai Lama wanted to know the essence of the Southern Cave. But no one could answer to his satisfaction.

It is then that Sonam Yongda explained the totality of the Southern Cave, Lho Khandro Sang Phug, one of the four sacred caves where Guru Padmasambhava had meditated on his way to Tibet.

His explanation astounded the Dalai. He asked Tapo where he had learned that. Yapo-la named the book the page and the section of the page where this has been stated.

As I was saying, he taught me everything and from the sources. It was he who first said that Guru Padmasambhava had consecrated the hill of Tashiding as the most sacred spot in Sikkim.

Interestingly, one day, Yapo told me: “The Neysol pecha, written by Gyalwa Lhatsun Chenpo, who was sent by the Great Fifth Dalai Lama in 1642 to establish the Namgyal Dynasty, had mentioned that Baeyul Demojong would lose its independence when a giant black snake would completely surround the base of the Tashiding Mountain. You know, Sujit-ji, I always wondered what it meant. But one day, it struck me that in 1973, the black metalled road around Tashiding had been constructed by the Indian engineers. And in 1975, India annexed Sikkim.”

Trust and Knowledge

One day, I asked him something that would seem sacrosanct. But while I respected him enormously, he too seemed to have a great trust in and affection for me, so I could ask him whatever I wanted to know.

You see, on the first floor of the Pemayangtse monastery, as you enter from the door, there are a series of nine statues of Guru Padmasambhava. Eight of these reflect one of his eight emanations.

But there is a ninth statue, either made of gold or is gold-plated. It was Guru Padmasambhava and a consort in what can easily be misconstrued as an immaculate, deeply emotional sexual embrace, reflecting pure bliss. But very few know of this.

First of all, most pilgrims, even Sikkimese devotees, do not go to the first and second floors, the later having the exquisite Sangtoedpalri architecture. Besides, most of them have no one to guide them.

What does it signify, I asked Yapo-la. In fact, when I had first asked him some six years earlier, he had flatly refused to explain. But six years on, he and many other Rinpoches like Khye Rinpoche, the fourth Lachen Gomchen Rinpoche and others had gotten to shower their affection and knowledge on me.

“This is not easy to understand,” Yapo-la said. “It is the multiplication of spiritual power, the night meeting the day, the heaven meeting the earth, the male meeting the feminine. This is the essence of Vajrayana Buddhism, tantric Buddhism. The feminine here is Yeshey Tsogyal, the Guru’s second and most important disciple. This union of the opposites multiplies the powers not to its double, but many, many times more.”

The Two Protectors

On one such occasion, Yapo-la told me the story of Khangchendzonga. When Gyalwa Lhatsun Chenpo tried to enter Sikkim, Mount Khangchendzonga stopped him, asking for his credentials to enter the most sacred of all Baeyuls. “I have been told by Guru Padmasambhava to protect this land.”

Gyalwa Lhatsun Chenpo then proved his credentials, and only then the mountain took the form of a swan and flew, showing him the way into Baeyul Demojong.

The Khangchendzonga was also witness to and protector of the Blood Brotherhood Treaty between Bhutias and Lepchas that marked the inception of the kingdom.

Actually speaking, there were two protectors of Sikkim, the esoteric, Mount Khangchendzonga, and Yapo Sonam Yongda the last cultural, human protector of a kingdom that was snatched from his king.

But now, Yapo is gone, and the Khangchendzonga does look a little bit lonely!

(The author was earlier the publisher and ditor of Weekend Review newspaper and has spent considerable years in researching on Sikkim. The opinion expressed are entirely his own)