When my Himachal Roadways bus to Kaza in Spiti valley passed Tabo nearly a decade ago, I promised I would come back someday and stay there. That would help me find out what there was in the Buddhist monastery there that brought people from all over the world despite travel taking several days each way even today.
Tabo is the oldest continuously functioning Buddhist monastery in India and the Himalayas with its original decoration and iconography still intact, the reference books said, whetting my appetite. When I actually faced it in the setting sun, I found an incredibly small flat-roofed single-storeyed building, bearing the look and feel of clay, which could not be more different from the massive grandeur of Tawang monastery in Arunachal. But what made you take notice was the plaque by the gate that read "ESTD 996".
The smallness and modesty of the main temple and the few around it were accentuated by the mountains that hemmed them in. They were bare, craggy perpetually frowning. An explanatory plaque said that in earlier times the monks stayed in caves in the nearby cliffs. Amidst those caves was even a prayer hall. By the time I soaked in the spirit of the place, I realised smallness had a meaning. It was a god of little things that held within itself enormous riches.
The monastery is so important because of the beauty of its art. The main temple, say the books, has extraordinary riches that record the history and culture of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism in the 10th and 11th centuries. It was a centre of translation and learning where Indian pandits and their learned Tibetan counterparts made up a huge intellectual and cultural process known as the later diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet. In keeping with the harmony and peacefulness of the process, the Tibetanness of the region has remained.
I learnt the hard way the remoteness and smallness of Tabo when early in the journey to it I realised I was without cash. At the main bus station in Reckong Peo, the Kinnaur district headquarters, in the hurry to get bus tickets to good seats, I forgot to draw money from the ATM. Not to worry, I thought, some ATM would turn up before we stopped at Nako lake to spend the night, only to be told by a young Indian accompanying an Israeli girl, that there was no ATM by the highway till you reached Tabo 150 km away. Tabo may let you down, he added, but don't worry, the next stop at Kaza was sure to oblige. My spirits sank. The early June night would not be too cold to spend in some shop verandah (it would be foolish to ask a hotel owner to accept credit cards) but still there was food for the two of us, our son and I, to pay for as also the bus fare next morning' for Tabo.
Then something very unusual happened. When the bus made its first halt at picturesquely named Spillo, I looked not for a tea shop but one that seemed modern and friendly. I entered one that was selling cell phones and accessories (very ambitious, I thought, when only BSNL connections worked in the entire Spiti valley). I unburdened by heart to the young man at the counter and asked if there would be a shopkeeper nearby who would take my cheque for a small sum and give me cash. He said yes and asked me to write the cheque! I was overwhelmed. And when I asked for his name and address so I could write him a thank you note later, he looked embarrassed and gave me just his name and cell phone number.
The cost of hotel room taken care of, the next morning I located the lone bank in Nako, a UCO Bank branch. Soon the young manager came along and I repeated my tale of woe, let slip that I was a banker once and asked if he would cash a small cheque of mine drawn on SBI. He did and I was overwhelmed the second time in less than 24 hours! There was something in the air at over 10,000 ft that begat trust for a traveller in trouble.
Mine was a modern version of ancient Buddhist travellers who trudged the mountains to find enlightenment and were never turned away when seeking alms. At Tabo, before finding the monastery guest house I located the SBI branch and its ATM and took out a wad of cash. Never did money mean so much in a place where people have been coming for a millennium to give up material things and look for something more valuable.
We went to the Spiti valley to see the cold desert. Once there, we realised the desert has been changing. Over the last three decades it has begun to rain a little, and slightly more and more over the years. Around Tabo monastery the towering hills are still barren but at ground level there is now an orchard of apple, willow and apricot trees. The monastery area itself sports a shiny new meeting hall and stupa. Over the meeting hall is a place for the Dalai Lama to stay on visits. His moral presence looms large over Tabo. I keep thinking how he lays great store by doing small things to make a better world, like switching off the light when you leave a room. The small monastery carries the moral weight of a millennium effortlessly.
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