BEECH

Despite being forty-years old, Beech had boyish habits. Kite fights in the sky over the valley was one of his specialties. He would show the boys how to prepare the string with a mixture of powdered glass and flour paste, meticulously ensuring that every part of the string was covered in glass glittering in the sunlight.

Dog fights took place in the cloudless sky above Kathmandu valley. Most of the time, Larry conquered any challenger, sending neighbourhood kids scurrying after a defeated kite, dancing and bobbing and twirling in the wind like a crazed ballerina. The few times he lost, a look of despondency and resignation clouded is features.

Bows and arrows were a favourite of the boarders, waxed string stretched taut on a length of bamboo and carried like a tribal hunter’s over a shoulder; catapults crafted from forked branches was another addition to the armory; and iron hoops clattering with a steely ring around the courtyard forced on with a clique.

Douglas Beech was the caretaker of Ideal Boarding School in a narrow lane near the Great Stupa at Boudinath with its four sets of eyes scanning the valley, ever-watchful for any wrongdoings amongst the population. He had come from Calcutta 10-years before and being Anglo Indian, spoke Hindi, Bengali, Nepali and English in a gravelly voice, never managing to sound like a native speaker in any of the languages. He also ran the boarding quarters with a strict sense of propriety: but he wasn’t above stretching boundaries at times so that he was often avuncular in his relationships with the boys..

As the caretaker, mentor and handyman of Ideal Boarding school, Beech ran the hostel. and cared for the boys and tutored with a real affection, reading the pupils stories and keeping them entertained with badminton and football as well as making sure they put in an hour or two of study in the early evening before their meal of rice, daal and vegetables.

A chorus of “morning Beech, sir” rang out when he entered the boys’ hostel room in the morning and “goodnight, sir” in the evening when it was time to sleep and the bats circled by in the darkness outside the window, their wings making a dry, flapping sound like a sheet on a clothesline being blown in the wind . Douglas Beech maintained a presence which emanated steadfastness and security: and, undoubtedly, the boarders trusted and revered him.

The boys were a mixed lot but got on well together despite their different backgrounds. Rais from the middle hills and three-Manangis from the far north west; a few indigenous Newars and several sherpas from Solu Kumbu. Beech was revered and respected. His face had an inviting openness that encouraged the boys to tell him their problems. Chiseled features gave him a polished look and his black eyes often looked distant, as if remembering a sadness in his past, a spurned love or a foreboding of the future. At all times, Beech loved the boys and cared for them with the alacrity of both a mother and a father combined.

Resident at the boarding school were two Canadian Crossroad volunteers. Carol and Graham. Both were large in height and breadth, one a blonde-haired girl with a square face and billowing breasts and a cheery disposition, the other a loping shorthaired youth with black rectangular glasses set squarely on the bridge of his nose. Both were qualified paramedics and had signed up for a cultural exchange programme run by Canadian Crossroads International. Every 6-months, Canadians would visit the school, which was the headquarters, and be sent to various placements in the country depending on their experience and preferences.

Along with Beech, Carol and Graham were eager to take a trip to Helambu to the North east of Kathmandu. This required a 4-hour bus journey to an untidy and overpopulated village called Siphaghat at the foot of the road from which point travelers began their journey northwards followed by a one or two-day trek (depending on ability and stamina) up the steep, winding path to Shermatang village at eight and half thousand feet. Douglas traveled with them as a guide and translator.

Getting down from the bus and after a glass of sweet milky tea at a shack, they followed the Melemchi River plain to the iron bridge, then approached the start of the climb, the path ahead tilting at a daunting sixty degree angle. The next two-hours were a lung-busting slog to the top of the first incline. The path then flattens out at intervals into Bhajangs or small plateaus of land relieving the terraced fields on which stand a few houses with grass roofs and the odd tea shop selling basic provisions such as paraffin, mustard oil, cigarettes, sweets and the ubiquitous paan.

From the plain, the path suddenly slopes upwards and for another two-hours there is a steep climb to Konkani one-hour below Shermatang valley. Why they didn’t decide to stay at Konkani, because the hour was late, I don’t know, but just below the valley on an outcrop covered in shingle and scree, Douglas suddenly collapsed against a rock and “his breath just went nuts”, Carol reported. As he sank to the ground, Graham dashed over to him and started respiration, hammering on his chest to get his lungs to take in air. Meanwhile, some of the villagers had come down and stood around. They threw light branches an leaves on to his body, while the Canadians tried desperately to bring him back to life…for two-hours they persevered.

Finally, they covered his corpse with a blanket brought on request by a villager and trudged slowly up to Konkani to spend the night in a lodge.

The next day, my brother-in-law, Kancha, received a telegram informing him of Douglas’s death. I wondered how a telegram had arrived as there was no electricity in those parts so I figured that someone had come to to Melemchi and telegraphed from there. Kancha stood with me on the of the flat roof of the boarding and we looked towards the north at the mountains, wondering what the next step should be. We decided that I should go to collect the body with Dawa, a pupil at the school who knew the area well, having come down from Helambu with his parents several years before. That morning, we set off on the bus to Siphaghat with the hope to locate Douglas’s body and bring it back to Kathmandu.

From Siphaghat, we set off, following the Melemchi River along its course upstream and as we turned into a wide section of the valley, we saw in the distance several people carrying a stretcher and noticed that they had already brought the body down to the plain from Konkani. Where the Canadians had gone I did not know.

To see Beech lying on the stretcher was surprising in that he looked as if he had fallen asleep. He seemed to exude an aura of peace and although he had died more than twenty-four hours before, his body seemed quite fresh. Only a subtle paleness around his cheeks and lips hinted of his passing.

We accompanied the body back along the valley floor to a waiting jeep over the bridge we had crossed two-hours previously, and they placed the stretcher in the back on the floor. I started to enter but a uniformed policeman held me back. “You sit in the front,” he told me.

“It’s ok, I’ll sit in the back” I said, hoping to be close to my friend’s body on the way back to Kathmandu.

“No,” he insisted, “you must sit in the front!”

I squeezed in between the driver and the policeman, bouncing on the seat as we careened over potholes and rocks until we reached the main road.

My memory of arriving in Kathmandu is a blur and how I turned up in the central police headquarters in Darbar Square I cannot remember. I only recall talking to Khansa as we tried to decide on the next move, Beech, being a foreign national, complicated matters considerably as by law someone would have to take responsibility for his funeral and death certificate. Two detectives wandered about the small office. One was stroking his chin, “What to do?” he muttered. “We have Beech’s body but we need someone to identify and claim it..”

For one-hour, he paced up and down while his colleague sat at a desk looking at his pen turning it over and over in his fingers as if he had seen it somewhere but wasn’t quite sure how it had got into his hand. I said nothing and tried hard to appear puzzled, knowing that this was some sort of game and required both patience and an ability to act as if one didn’t really know what to do. The office was hot and a fan turned lazily on the ceiling. Time passed…and passed; and eventually, much to the relief of the policemen, I offered to sign any necessary papers and take care of the disposal of Beech’s corpse. The DSP rushed for the papers and had me sign them. A task left was to get to Bir Hospital, find the body and arrange for the cremation.

But my first stop was the tailor at Chabahil cross, not far from the school, where I ordered a white shroud large enough to wrap Beech’s body in. Then, on to the hospital to identify the corpse.

This was unpleasant, but had to be done. Firstly, I was shown to a room, a small concrete square outside the main hospital building in which some naked bodies were tumbled together in no order, limbs intertwined in a heap. Others still had on items of clothing. Beech was at the top of the pile, naked except for his Nepalese topi, still in place on his head. I wondered how this had come about. Who had taken his clothes and left him in this degrading situation. His eyes were closed and he again looked at peace and relaxed…and fresh, having been up in the cool mountain air for the last two-days his skin had not lost any elasticity or colour.

I proceeded to the autopsy room where the body was to be taken. Having no curtains and the door ajar, I looked inside and there was large Nepalese member of staff leaning over a long, marble table on which a young girl lay naked and under his knife. I didn’t stay too long and wandered around the corridors until I though Beech’s autopsy was about to take place, wondering what had happened to the girl and where her family was.

Returning, I stood in the doorway and watched while the man hacked away at Beech’s cadaver. His skin was cut from throat to abdomen and the skin of his skull and face were peeled away to reveal the musculature and bone, red raw and glistening with moisture. The man was definite and intent on his incisures and solid in his stance, as if a carpenter in the throes of carving out a mahogany figure of my friend, Beech.

I saw him pack a bundle of red, twisted organs in the chest cavity and took this to be the way it was done. He came to the doorway and approached me saying, “He has been badly beaten. His upper ribs are broken and there is severe bruising to his flesh. Had he been in a fight?”

I thought of a few days before he took off on his trek, he had told me of his run in with a few of the local youths and how he had been the worse for drink. He had challenged them and they had attacked him, but he managed to beat them off. I said to the man, “Yes, he told me he had been in a fight a few days ago,” I said.

He frowned, “Ah, I will have to report this as a murder,” he informed me.

Immediately, I saw through his ruse to complicate the situation. He was after ghus, or a bribe.

He stepped outside the autopsy room and spoke to me, “We need thread, to sew up the body.”

I thought of all the organs that had been irreverently poked and stuffed inside the cadaver and asked, “How much will you need for thread?” The policeman from the office in Darbar Square had suddenly joined me, from where I do not know, probably to check whether I was keeping to my task of identifying the body..

“Three hundred rupees.” His eyes were dark and accusing under the dense tangle of his eyebrows. “He’s been murdered. Some ribs are broken and there’s been massive internal bleeding.”

The shock of what he said made me immediately forget the three-hundred rupees he was asking for. I didn’t know what to say. The policeman was craning his neck over my shoulder trying to get into the action. The realisation of his crass ruse left me dazed. The fact that the ribs around the chest cavity had been broken during the attempts to resuscitate him never occurred to me.

“OK,” I said, and handed him three separate one-hundred rupee notes.

“And the taxi fare...?”

The smallest currency I had was another one-hundred rupee note which was spirited away by the policeman who abruptly left with the doctor. Five minutes later he returned.

As I had only a little money left, I asked, “Where’s the change?”

“The doctor took it,” he said, and I knew from his downcast eyes that he was lying. But I was beyond caring, and he looked poor.

Thinking of the next stage, I took an auto rickshaw to Chabahil, and went back to Ideal School and picked up some cash. Carrying the shroud folded and in a plastic bag, I went to the hospital to collect Beech’s body telling Khansa and a neighbour, Prem Dulal, to meet me at the ghat on the Bagmati River.

For 50 rupees I hired the ambulance. Two men came out of the hospital entrance wheeling Beech’s body on a trolley and placed him in the back of the ambulance. I sat in the front with the driver. Winding our way through the narrow streets from the hospital to the ghats, the driver couldn’t help showing off his siren whenever there was a hint of a jam ahead and the cars parted to let him through. This he thought amusing and started to switch the siren on and off like a child with a new toy, even when not needed.. We arrived at the gateway to Pashupatinath, Lord of the Beasts, and the ghats.

At the entrance to the cremation plinths is a storehouse where wood is piled ready for sale. Two-boys leapt forward and removed the body, placing it on the ground in front of the building.

“How much wood do we need?” I asked.

A lad looked skilfully at the corpse and estimated, “Thirty-kilo should be enough,” he said.

At ten-rupees a kilo this came to three-hundred rupees. I gave him the money and they started to load the wood onto a cart.

At the ghats, each set of burial steps along the Bagmati River is allotted to a hierarchy of families. Furthest upstream is the platform for the pyre of the royal family. Travelling downstream you pass the ghats for the brahmins, the chhetris and various lower castes including Christians and untouchables. Beech was taken to the ghat furthest downstream and placed on the pyre by the two boys, lifting him from the cart on which they had previously brought the wood, The body was now wrapped in the shroud and laid carefully on the logs of wood on the raised plinth. Kerosene was spilled around the pyre from a jerry can and the pile was lit with candles around the base.

Just then, Khansa and Prem Dulal arrived and watched as the logs caught fire. The two-boys walked barefoot around the pyre, arranging bit of wood here and there, an air of dignity in their trade and respect for the bereaved exuded from their every movement. After ten-minutes, Khansa bade farewell and left. Prem Dulal and I watched the flames lick around the body, more of which we could see as the shroud kindled and charred, exposing Beech’s body.

As he charred more and more, he still looked fresh; then blood appeared coming out of his side and bubble and sizzle in the heat. “He’s still fresh,” Prem Dulal said.

“It must be cold up in Helambu. The body’s pretty well preserved,” I explained

The fiery tongues reached his skull and it exploded with a loud crack as the air escaped. Flailing at the corpse, pushing it further into the conflagration, the two-boys continued to circle the pyre. Prem Dulal said, “I’ve never been to a cremation before. This is the first one.”

I could hardly believe this. A man in Nepal, forty-years old, never having been to a cremation. He bade farewell and left. I continued to stand there watching the last of flames dance over the ashes and bones of the cadaver. Suddenly, one of the boys thrust a sharpened stick between the blackened ribs and clumsily pull out the heart, seared brown. He then waded to the centre of the river, bent over with his arm in the water and buried the heart in the sand.

I gave them money, I can’t remember how much, and they seemed pleased, immediately returning to the plinth and brushing away the ash and charred remains in to the flowing river, hissing and sizzling its way downstream. A bucket of water was then sloshed over the stone and the remaining sludge brushed away.

And it was all over!

Sadly, and alone, I made my way back to Ideal.

The next day I heard that seven or-eight policemen had arrived at the village of Shermatang from the nearby administrative centre in Sindu Palchowk, demanding accommodation and food from the poor villagers. They partied on local alcohol, chickens and rice: and when they thought the villagers had nothing left to offer, off they went back to their quarters to report on the 'murder' that had taken place.

There really is no end to greed.

GOPAL'S ACCOUNT

25 years ago at this time the schools were on winter holiday and my college was off until February. So I set off from Kathmandu with some supplies and paint to paint the classrooms at the old Pahunaghar where we were running the school.

Two Canadian crossroads volunteers and Mr. Beech who used to teach at Ideal School came with me to help paint the classrooms. The first night we stayed at Ashang Nono's old guest house in Melamchi bazaar. We had a lovely evening. The following day we started off to Dubachour where we had some lunch. Then we stopped for tea at the tea house in Kakani run by the disabled owner.

Then as we set off around 2pm Mr. Beech fell down on the little climb immediately above the tea house. The two volunteers (I think one is called Derek) started giving mouth to mouth breathing. And I ran downhill to Duwachaur to use the 'aawa' service to call an helicopter. But the 'aawa' service was broken. By the time I arrived at the site Mr. Beech had passed away. 

A few villagers had gathered at the scene by the time I got there and with their help I managed to bring the body down to the little temple beside the teahouse. I sent the two volunteers to Sermathang to get some help. And I ran down to Talamarang to inform the Police.

I then came up to Kakani and spent the night guarding the body in that little temple without doors because the police wanted me to make sure that the animals didn't destroy the body. The following morning a team with Aau Jamyang and I think Aau Norchung etc came from Sermathang. The police came from Talamarang and after the inspection the body was sent to Kathmandu for the final rites. Fulmaya Aunty and Albert Uncle provided the final ritual with respect in Kathmandu.

I don't know if you remember this incident. But Aau Jamyang and the tea house owner in Kakani will. 

I was wondering if you could bring or arrange someone to bring a Khada to the site next week (26th Jan) to mark respect to one of our first supporters who passed away on his way to help Yangrima? Perhaps someone in the village can if you are unable to go up yourself.

Thanks,

Gopal