The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Power of Meow (6 page)

All had seemed well until Serena detected that, despite outward appearances, it wasn't just the three of them in this relationship. Sid had planned a first, glorious vacation for the three of them to Europe, during which they were to visit London, Venice, and the South of France. But a week before they were due to leave, they were told that the health of Mr. Wazir had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. The holiday had been canceled. Sid hurried Zahra up to see her grandfather who, it turned out, wasn't nearly as ill as they had been led to believe.

More recently, the house Sid had bought for them as a new family home had become a source of stress. Not wanting Serena to move into the building from which he ran his businesses, Sid had purchased a spacious bungalow for the three of them. Although well located, the house apparently needed a makeover. Instead of taking only a few months to complete, the planned renovations had become bogged down with inexplicable building delays.

As the yoga class ended and students began making their way onto the balcony outside, Sid and Serena sat up on their mats. Reaching over, Sid took her hand in his.

“So . . . ,” he said with a playfulness in his expression, but a genuine concern, too. “You think I am trapped in ways of thinking that no longer serve me well?”

Serena drew his hand closer, folding it between hers. “You are the kindest of men, Sid.” She glanced down. “Sometimes I just think you are maybe too trusting.”

There was a pause before he nodded. “This is about the Wazirs.”

“Sid—”

“They're still her grandparents, whatever else happened between them and me.”

“I know that. You've been very honorable.”

“It's not about honor. It's about Zahra having a normal relationship with her grandparents and a link to her mother.”

“Which I would never want to interfere with.” Serena looked back at him. I could see the anguish in her eyes.

“Well, then . . .” Sid shrugged. Withdrawing his hand from hers, he rose to his feet, turned around, and began to roll up his yoga mat.

“I know you worry about me being taken advantage of, and I am touched that you do.” He reached out and traced her cheek with his forefinger. “But you have no need to be concerned, my darling. It's right that Zahra should stay in touch with the Wazirs, but they have nothing to do with you and me and our life together. They live in a different world.”

Padding along the upstairs corridor that evening, after my return from the yoga studio, I paused outside the executive assistants' office. Tenzin was behind his desk and on the phone—he would sometimes stay late to make international calls. Whatever he was talking about seemed to engage him. There was a sparkle in his eyes. Wobbling into the office, I hopped onto the empty desk on the other side of the room. Until the year before, this desk had belonged to Chogyal, His Holiness's adviser on monastic matters. But Chogyal's untimely death had left a vacancy that, despite many interviews, had so far been impossible to fill.

“Well, HHC!” Tenzin beamed as he put down the phone. “You're becoming quite the celebrity!”

At that very moment, the Dalai Lama stepped into the room.

“That was the producer of this afternoon's interview, Your Holiness,” Tenzin said as he gestured toward his phone. “With a request.”

His Holiness raised his eyebrows in surprise and came over to where I was sitting on Chogyal's desk. I flopped over to my side, stretching my paws out in front and behind me as far as they would go, offering the full curve of my fluffy white tummy for him to stroke.

“They were planning to cut HHC out of the interview and record a different ending,” Tenzin continued. “But when everyone in the editing suite saw her, they loved the segment and are insisting she be kept in. They are requesting your permission to show the whole thing, unedited.”

The Dalai Lama shrugged, unconcerned, as he leaned over to stroke my luxuriant tummy. “You see, all sentient beings can create happiness. Look at this little one. She will help more people to learn about loving-kindness than most beings on Earth. She will also make many people laugh.”

“Her methods are certainly . . . unorthodox,” observed Tenzin.

“Spontaneous. Delightful.” His Holiness chuckled. “Soon, I think, this cat will be more famous than the lama.”

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

Are you regularly mean to someone? Do you belittle a particular person quite frequently? This may seem a strange question. Readers of a more sensitive nature may be offended that I am even asking.

But I have encountered many souls who are nevertheless possessed of a curiously compulsive cruelty—in every case directed at just one individual. Such people will manage the casual selfishness of strangers with equanimity. They will overlook the disappointing behavior of their friends with gentle forbearance. But let one particular individual show the slightest deviation from perfection by sending an e-mail in error, for example, or eating a delectable slice of Black Forest gâteau while on a diet, or failing to successfully install new software even though he or she never professed to know the first thing about computers, and all notion of fairness is abandoned. The person is admonished for being a complete idiot, a glutton, a ham-fisted incompetent. Foul language may be used. A stream of harsh invective may be directed at the hapless individual with utter disregard for the person's mental well-being.

What is the reason for this horrific double standard? you may reasonably ask. How can someone who is so understanding toward everyone else be so pitilessly judgmental about the behavior of this one individual alone?

And in case there is any doubt who I'm talking about, move from where you are currently sitting to the nearest mirror and look into it. There you may, dear reader, find yourself staring into the eyes of your most jaundiced and unyielding critic.

I can't deny that I'm guilty of exactly this behavior. If I inadvertently collapse while scampering along the runner, I will pick myself up and press my ears firmly back with displeasure. If I open my mouth to meow and instead produce only a high-pitched squeak, I berate my own foolishness—what sort of a sound is that, pray tell, for a cat of my breeding?

As for meditation, despite the inspiring teaching of His Holiness, I became acutely aware of what fertile ground it can be for self-reproach. Even though the Dalai Lama said that mental agitation is normal, I found it hard to avoid criticizing myself for my own pitiful inability to concentrate on one single thing for even twenty seconds. As soon as I tried, my mind would again be scrambling with fleas.

I persisted, every day. When His Holiness got up to meditate at three in the morning, I did so, too, sitting with my paws tucked beneath me, trying to focus on my breath. But it wasn't easy. It would have been so much easier to give up trying than to descend down that spiral, drawing in every other negative thought I had about myself.

Exactly how we deal with such challenges is a subject each of us has to deal with on an ongoing basis. In most cases, there is little outward sign of our inward battle. In others, by contrast, long-latent pressures may break to the surface in the most unexpected ways.

The Himalaya Book Café, a short wobble down the road from Namgyal, is a favorite tourist destination, an oasis of civility away from the chaos and crowds of downtown Dharamsala. Inside the doors, to the right of an ornate reception counter, the café is all white tablecloths, cane chairs, and a large, brass espresso machine. Elaborately embroidered Tibetan wall hangings, or
thangkas
, bedeck the walls. To the left-hand side of the counter and up a few steps is the bookstore section. Its well-stocked shelves are interspersed with a cornucopia of cards, gifts, and Asian trinkets. To one side are polished teak shelves stacked with daily newspapers and glossy magazines from around the world. Over the years the top shelf, between the covers of
Vogue
and
Vanity Fair
, has become my preferred vantage point. It is a place from which—like His Holiness's windowsill—I can maintain maximum surveillance with minimum effort.

One afternoon my top-shelf siesta was disturbed by a large furniture delivery van parked directly outside the front doors of the café. Its engine proceeded to idle noisily, all the while belching a stream of dark fumes. The café's omniscient head waiter, Kusali, the Jeeves of Dharamsala, headed over to close the doors. A uniformed driver emerged from the cab just then, delivery book in hand, and demanded a signature. In the meantime, two huge men began lowering a large object from the open rear doors of the van. It was clad in blankets and ropes, and what it was I couldn't begin to imagine.

By now Serena had taken charge, providing a signature and directing the movers toward a bare space of wall on the far side of the café. Whatever the blanket-swathed object, it was being treated with the utmost regard by the two men. They glided it reverentially across the polished parquet flooring before beginning to undo the belts and buckles holding the padding in place.

This was more than I could resist. Hopping down from the top shelf, I made my somewhat lurching way over and arrived to inspect the foreign object just as the movers stripped the last piece of shrouding from its highly polished rosewood exterior. Serena and Kusali had been joined by Sam, the manager of the bookstore, as well as a couple of curious waiters.

“Franc's piano,” announced Serena as I stepped forward to sniff the pungent, full-bodied fragrance of furniture polish. I tried to make sense of the object's strange shape and the polished-brass pedals protruding from the bottom.

Producing a cell phone from her pocket, Serena scrolled down for Franc's number. “He'll be thrilled.”