INDIA: Haven’t We Met?

The grizzled old Buddhist Wizard of Kalimpong specializes in freeing the struggling spirits of the dying. This he accomplishes by sticking a hollow tube down the dying man’s throat to provide a spiritual exit; at the same time the Wizard toots a horn made of a human thigh bone. The Wizard might be thought eccentric elsewhere, but not in Kalimpong (pop. 8,800), a zany Indian town straddling a 4,000-foot ridge in the Himalayan foothills.

Via Jelep-la. Tibet is only 30 miles away. For that reason, Kalimpong has collected over the years a number of mystical characters who arrived via Jelep-la pass from Tibet, and another bunch who would give their last rupee to travel the other way. Foreign cultists, scholars, artists, adventurers and missionaries plod Kalimpong’s streets, panting to explore Tibet and its particular brand of Buddhism, but lacking permission to get in. Last week, as they have since the Chinese Reds invaded Tibet in October, Kalimpongians waited breathlessly, along with rumormongering newsmen (TIME, Nov. 20), to welcome the Dalai Lama should he flee from Lhasa into their midst, as his predecessor did in 1910. The town had one big worry. If he comes, will the Tibetan God-King bring enough sheets? In 1910 frenzied devotees kept ripping the exalted exile’s linen to bits to preserve as sacred objects, along with the dust from his room and his holy bath water.

A recent Kalimpong acquisition is the Young Men’s Buddhist Association. It was modeled after the Y.M.C.A. by its founder, former British Army Colonel John Ryan, now a Buddhist priest. Ryan, who pinch-hits as American propagandist, giving weekly showings of U.S. Information Service movies in the town hall, embraces the Hinayana or southern variety of Buddhism.

The Tibetan kind is the Mahayana, or northern. In an effort to bring the two schools together, Ryan publishes a monthly magazine called Stepping Stones. This infuriates Greek-English Author Marco Pallis, a Kalimpongian who wants Tibetans to stick with Mahayana. Pallis recently wrote a book warning Tibetans against Christian missionaries and other infidels with strange ideas and has been quietly sending copies across the border.

A Better Birth? Another Kalimpong Buddhist keeps busy driving an obstinate goat around a pile of prayer stones, hoping to assure the ungrateful animal a better birth—perhaps even human—in its next incarnation. The daily grind for U.S. Scholar Joseph Rock, who was chased out of China by the Reds and settled in Kalimpong, consists of work on a new system of spelling Tibet’s tongue-twisting place names. Austrian Baron Rene Nebesky, who helps Rock, is boning up on Tibetan demonology.

Next to a colony of Tibetan beggars, whom he feeds and looks after, lives long-bearded Protestant Missionary Walter Morse. His only assistant is a young Tibetan leper, who lives with him for treatment and serves coffee to visitors. Morse tries to reassure his guests: “I think I’ve got him to the arrested stage where he can’t spread the disease.” Last year anthropologist Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark breezed into Kalimpong with his wife to study a unique form of Tibetan polyandry called za-sum-pa, the sharing of wives between fathers and sons, and (occasionally) between uncles and nephews. Tibet would not admit the prince and princess. She is studying witchcraft and wizards and has collected 500 recipes for brewing love, hate, illness and death potions. While waiting for something better, she seems charmed with Kalimpong.

Kalimpong’s main social center is the Himalayan Hotel, operated by the Mac-Donalds, a jovial Scottish-Tibetan family, who organize Saturday night parties liberally spiced with unusual conversation and hot millet beer. On one recent occasion, in the dining room, a Buddhist Englishwoman thought that she recognized another woman guest. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but haven’t we met in a previous incarnation?” “Yes,” was the reply, “I believe we have. I was Joan of Arc and you were my brother.” The Englishwoman drew herself up haughtily. ‘Certainly not,” she snapped, “I have never been a male in any of my previous incarnations.”