By HARISH CHANDOLA
LHASA – Lama days are coming to an end. Tibet is now left with only 46,000 of them, including nuns, in a population of 2.7 million. They used to be 110,000, or over 11 per cent, when its population was one million, 40 years ago. While its population has more than doubled since, that of Lamas and nuns has dwindled to less than half. This trend will go on, possibly at a faster rate.
Religious fervour too is on the decline. The 1,300 year-old Jokhang Monastery is still the heart of Lhasa, as Lhasa is the heart of Tibet. But pilgrims from all over Tibet and next door provinces of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan, no longer come to it as they used to, prostrating on the ground from afar, to worship the jewel-bedecked life-size statue of the Sakyamuni, at the age of 12, brought with her by the Tang dynasty Chinese Princess Wencheng, when she came as a bride to the first Tibetan king, Songsan Gampo, who united the Tibetan tribes in 633.
The one-kilometer path that goes around the Jokhang monastery, called Pharkhor, or Barkor in its new Chinese spelling, is still the center of Lhasa. But gone are the swarms of pious citizens that circumambulated it mumbling their payers, pretty women that came to show off their newest dresses and flirt a little with the young of the nobility, the cluster of tents that served as semi-permanent residences for those that came from afar and another tent colony for beggars that also housed herdsmen from northern Tibet, Nepali shops and pharmacies run by Han Chinese. Gone also are merchants that sold horses and their gear, weapons, opium, spices, coral, amber, pearls, perfumes and dried fruit from Ladakh, singers, satirical and political balladeers and prostitutes.
I could not locate the Yellow House, where the sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, who wrote poetry, used to come to stay with his beloved, of whom he wrote: Over that mountaintop in the east, Rises a serene moon, The face of the maiden, Appears in my heart.
