A visa request for Mansarovar

The grand view of Gulra Mandhata, Manasarovar and Ravana Lake hypnotises the onlooker into subliminal aura
While in my mid-twenties, working in 1978-79 for Gammon India Ltd, a construction company renowned for bridge construction in remote areas of India, I was posted for six months to the ADB-funded East-West highway construction project in Nepal, on the portion running from Hetauda to Narayangarh. The complete east-west highway connection was designed to run all the way to Nepalganj, past Lumbini, the birth place of Lord Buddha, across from Gorakhpur district in India. The highway was essentially located along the foothills and plains of Nepal, a simple artillery shot away from the Indian border. For this project, quite a few Chinese bridge and highway contractors secured contracts along various segments of this highway, and some were very close to the Indian border. Though their design standards and construction methods were old-fashioned and traditional (not as high-tech as Gammon’s), and I wondered why the hell was India scared of the Chinese when India possessed the better technology, the troubling feature was their proximity to the Indian border. I saw the Chinese companies first-hand at close quarters; I also witnessed first-hand on a visit to Lumbini how porous the Indo-Nepal border was and how easily the Chinese could slip through into India. I am intuitively quite certain that China infiltrated numerous spies through that route. China found, in a legal way, an opportunity to come close to the Indian border, and has always eyed the Indo-Nepal border for numerous opportunities of intelligence gathering since that time, 30 years ago. I do recall that the Indian government later protested those Chinese camps close to our border, and the Nepalese government responded favorably to our protests. However, the dismantling of those camps took a few years till the Chinese projects were over, because no one could prove the Chinese were doing anything wrong.

I continue to feel today that if there were a full-blown, no-holds barred war between China and India, the Chinese would come through Nepal and Burma, where we are least prepared. Remember, the Chinese wrote the book on the art of war. I might add that in March 1979 (I don't recall that it could be 1978), I rode in on my Java motorcycle into the well-guarded Chinese embassy in Chanakya Puri, where two guards opened the door for me very quickly (with respect) without stopping me. I parked the motorcycle below the stairs to the main entrance, and walked up to the reception asking for a visa to travel to Mansarovar. This I did at a time when China did not grant travel visas for Mansarovar. My father had cautioned me not to do this or anything like even entering the Chinese embassy, trying to emphasize that I would be entering "enemy territory" if I were to go into their embassy compound. Moreover, hardly any Indian nationals ever went into their compound those days, if at all. However, I was adventuresome and somewhat fearless (or foolish) when young, and so I didn’t care much for my father’s advice on this occasion, though I did listen to it and pay heed.
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Dr Amarjit Singh is a professor at the University of Hawaii and Manoa. Expert on Highway Construction Engineering. He also writes on India's national security.
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr Amarjit Singh: Personal webpage

"The Third Eye": Recollection of Bhutan

Dear friends,
No one seems to be talking about Lobsang Rampa now, and "The Third Eye" has long since been forgotten. It was considered a fantasy even when it was a best seller, fifty years ago. I was in Bhutan as a young officer in the early sixties. During that period, I wrote a piece which surfaced recently. A very brief excerpt from that some what long article is attached for those who care for the world of the Lamas.
What appeals to me is the last sentence of the piece. And it makes me chant:

"Buddham sharanam gachhami
Dhammam sharanam gachhami
Sangham sharanam gachhami"
Maj Gen Surjit Singh (Retd)

“THE THIRD EYE” By Lobsang Rampa
I beseech you to forgive me for my jaded memory. I am a senior citizen and no one is willing to hire me for even a worthless job. Here, I seek apology for a very minor offence: I have forgotten whether I read the captioned book before 1964 or after that. And the reason why I seek this concession is that I am not sure whether I read Lobsang’s book before I went to Bhutan or after that.

Be that as it may, there are two events which have left a profound influence on my psyche: reading the above book and my service in Bhutan during 1964-65 where I met a lot of thoroughbred Buddhists in Trashigong Dzongkhag. I was a little more that 22 years old then, and very impressionable. What I saw in that tiny Kingdom has left a lasting memory. I learnt a great deal from their unorthodox social order and it caused me to doubt the propriety of our social system.

Permit me to share something which I observed there. I was told that if a man was caught after having committed a crime in the Buddhist world, he was tried by the appropriate authority and, if found guilty, he was thrown into the prison cell. That is much the same as the rest of the world. The difference is that, in their system the term of the imprisonment was not specified. I was stupefied, and sought to know the reason for this. A learned Lama told me,

“A criminal is like a sick man. In the prison we ‘treat’ him. And as soon as he is ‘cured’ of his malaise, we let him go back to live with his people”

I probed further, and asked, “How do you find that?” and he said,

“Just like how you are able to discharge a patient from a hospital. Do you specify the period for which patients suffering from different ailments must stay in the wards?”

The argument makes a lot of sense to me. We human beings respond differently to treatment: some get cured early, others take time. If that be so, why should the prison term be specified?

I was also told that the condemned men were thrown into ill lit dudgeons and the ‘prisoners’ were made to undergo indignity. But in the evenings, they were allowed to take a stroll on the streets of the town, and breathe fresh air. The people are taught to look at them with a kindly eye, because, the Buddhists believe that, we would all be criminals, had we been caught!
Surjit