The Mystery of the Kailash Trail - Chapter 1 - Part 4

Chapter 1 – Part 4: The “strictly vegetarian Hindu cook” at Shiquanhe

Everyone who came in search of him called him “Maharaj”. It was his actual name. His name was Hariram Maharaj. He had explained his name once. It seems that his given name was Hariram while he had been given the title ‘Maharaj’ because of his skill in making very tasty vegetarian Gujarati-Rajasthani style food of Western India. All good cooks in his land were called ‘Maharaj’, he had explained very humbly. He had also added, after a while, that the word ‘Maharaj’ meant ‘the King of Kings’, which of course, he was not.

And then the story of his life began to get more complicated. It was too much for the eatery owner at Shiquanhe to understand. He knew that India was a very large country and that the Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist pilgrims from that land were different from each other. He had also begun to understand over the many years that he had operated this tented eatery outside Shiquanhe, that Indians within the Hindus or the other religions were also very different from each other. He had himself come over from Quinhai, a town at some distance from Shiquanhe. But he knew his fellow Tibetans and the ever migrating Chinese.

Some Indians would come into his eatery in the early years, and would ask for vegetarian food, which he had not known would be an exclusive demand. He began to cook vegetarian food for them. And then other Indians came who demanded that the vegetarian food had to be cooked in separate utensils from the ones where he cooked meat or fish. His wife was from Yushu, and she understood this demand from the monastery near her village. The monks at the monastery were very strict vegetarians and they had demanded that the eateries nearby served vegetarian food cooked from separate utensils. She had convinced him to separate the utensils. It would mean more customers, and these strict vegetarians usually paid much better. Her advice had been correct and he had profited from the separation of utensils.

Later, came the demand from larger pilgrim groups and tour companies from Kathmandu that they would bring clientele on an exclusive basis if he were to employ a Indian cook who knew there demands and tastes and understood the need to employ strict vigilance on bringing forth the ‘strictly vegetarian Hindu’ food. He had understood their need and he did not argue for the pay was good and prompt. There were no credit dealings here and the requirements were growing to such an extent that it would be adequately profitable to accept and adapt. After having employed more than ten different cooks from India, of all types, including ones from Nepal and Bhutan, who claimed they knew ‘strictly vegetarian Hindu’ food, he had discovered the Maharaj.

It was the other way around, for it was the Maharaj who had come in search of Luo Tsering of Quinhai, the owner of the tented eatery that had a very gaudy painted signboard that read “Strictly Vegetarian Hindu Food (cooked separately)”. He had introduced himself in the pidgin Tibetan+Chinese+Hindi+English that he had picked up in his stay in the various cities in Ngari. He wanted to stay on in Shiquanhe, he had explained, and he wanted work. He could cook the ‘strictly vegetarian Hindu food’, he said, and moreoever his name was the best certificate that he could proclaim to all Hindu pilgrims to the Kailash Mountain and the Lake Manasarovar.

Luo Tsering and his wife had planned on running a simple tented eatery out on the pilgrim path from Shiquanhe to Darchen and they had started with the simple local Chiang cuisine, and restricted themselves only to culinary delights at dinner such as cow hoofs or cheese. They had added on Sichuan and Xinjiang cuisine depending upon the season and the movement of Chinese troops and policemen or pilgrims from other parts of Tibet. They had done well but the income was largely being spent on surviving in this harsh climate on the snowy deserts of the Tibetan Himalayas. The pilgrims from India had changed their income and profit margins and the eatery had grown into a parking area and tenting ground.

The demand for very exclusive vegetarian food had surprised him, and he had imagined it to be that of a very small group of pilgrims. What he had not realized was that most pilgrims visiting Kailash Mountain would not even dare to accidentally pollute themselves or their pilgrimage by the proximity of non-vegetarian food. Hariram Maharaj had helped them out enormously, Luo thought, for he had taken over the entire section of cooking, managing and hosting the Hindu pilgrims from India. Maharaj had also searched for and trained three helpers, leftover pilgrims from Nepal and India, to work in the vegetarian section.

Sometimes they would sit to relax, in-between pilgrim groups, and they would chat. It was usually never a discussion, for it was Hariram Maharaj who would talk without a stop. Luo found it very difficult to understand whatever Maharaj would explain about himself. There was very little else that Maharaj would talk about. It was either about him, or nothing. Maharaj explained stuff in a very specific sense of geography, culture, religion and the diversity of India, all of which never seemed to make any sense to Luo. He listened quietly, because it seemed to be useful to pick up some of the phrases and words, and in understanding and respecting the diversity of these strange pilgrims from the lands below the Himalayas.

Maharaj explained that his name meant ‘King of Kings’, but he was not one. He cooked Gujarati-Rajasthani food of Western India, but he was not a Gujarati or a Rajasthani. He had worked in a Gujarati household of a very rich businessman, where he had cooked for more than forty members of a very large family that lived in a single house. They had begun to call him ‘Maharaj’, and he had become known to the neighbourhood by that name. His Master, Seth Walchandbhai Shah, had been a devotee of a holy man from Rajasthan, who had his ashram in some place near a big river called the Narmada. This river did not flow in Rajasthan, but the holy man had established his ‘gompa’, as the Maharaj had described it to Luo, to help him understand. Upon a request from the holy man, his Master had asked him to work at the ashram and cook Rajasthani food. The Seth had continued to pay for his salary, and the title ‘Maharaj’ had followed him there.

Pilgrims would regularly visit the ashram to do the kora, the pilgrimage on foot around the entire length of the Narmada River. They would stay overnight at the ashram, and tell stories about the world outside the kitchen. Maharaj had however begun to attend the sermons and lectures of the holy man and had begun to practice yoga, especially the Hatha Yoga that was taught here. It was taught to a select few, and it was a rare practise, Maharaj explained to Luo. It was about the breath, and about breathing or how not to breathe – Luo was getting confused here and found it all very vague and difficult to keep up – and about meditation and concentration and about inner consciousness and postures and something called asanas, as Maharaj kept explaining.

A group of Hindu monks, or sadhus, from the ashram decided to do the kora around the Narmada River, and Maharaj had sought permission of the holy man to accompany them. He had finally found his calling, he said, for the freedom in walking out along holy shrines and sacred places, with fellow pilgrims, was utter and total bliss. The pilgrimage on foot around the Narmada River had taken several long days, or a couple of months – Luo forgot this detail – and Maharaj realized that he could no longer stay back in the kitchen in the ashram. One of the ashram monks on the Narmada parikrama or kora had explained to Maharaj about the Kailash mountain and the abode of Siva, the eternal.

The ashram sadhu had explained that the Kailash parikrama was the ultimate expression of devotion, and the closest that one could get to reach Siva. It was the most difficult and the toughest. The sadhu was totally certain that Maharaj could never even dream of reaching Kailash or doing the parikrama. He had predicted that it was in Maharaj’s fate-lines on his palm that he would not amount to anything and he would not achieve any form of greatness. This outright rejection had spurred him, and he had complained about it to the holy man.

The holy man had been compassionate and understanding. He had told Maharaj that the Kailash parikrama was not the ultimate test. The final challenge was in completing 108 koras around the Kailash Mountain, or walking 108 times around the sacred peak. If one would achieve this, and if one would practice the strict adherence to meditation and concentration through Hatha Yoga, then one could get admittance to the very secret sect of Nath Yogis within the hidden hill slopes of the Kailash Mountain. He had understood his calling, and he had arrived at Shiquanhe to wait for his time. Each year he completed about five koras, but he would do more the next year, he said.