From Debutante to the Deities

As a debutante and a Sarah Law rence graduate (in Oriental studies), Hope Cooke had a crush on Central Asia. Her dreams seemed to come ro mantically true last March when she married Sikkim's Crown Prince Palden Thondup Namgyal in a now-legendary ceremony at the capital city of Gangtok (TIME, March 23). Last week, when the crown prince's 70-year-old father, Maharajah Sir Tashi Namgyal, died of cancer in a Calcutta nursing home, Hope and her husband mounted the throne of the mountain-locked Himala yan kingdom. The formal coronation will take place after one year's mourning, the precise date to be calculated by the court astrologers.

Private Mountain. The land where Hope will rule is so small that its 2,748 sq. mi. and 162,000 people could fit comfortably into a U.S. national park like Yellowstone. The new Maharajah personally owns Kanchenjunga which, at 28,146 ft., is the third tallest moun tain in the world and probably the world's most majestic when its snowy peaks are lit by the sunrise and borne aloft on lacy clouds. Sikkim contains every variety of climate and plant, from the subtropical through the temperate to the arctic. Snow leopards prowl the Himalayan slopes, pandas frolic in the forested gorges, clouds of butterflies hover over 3,000 different kinds of rhododendron and 400 types of orchid.

Wedged between Tibet and India, Sikkim usually has been tributary to one or another of its neighbors. When India won its independence from Brit ain in 1947, so did Sikkim. But to the late Maharajah, freedom brought more problems than profit. One day in 1949, several thousand peasants swarmed around the blue and white royal palace (actually a large bungalow) demanding an elected national council and tax reforms. Tashi submitted to the experi ment in democracy for 29 days and then, feeling unable to cope with what was called "threatened disorder," asked India's Nehru for help. Nehru sent in troops and a dewan, or political officer. Ever since, India has handled Sikkim's foreign affairs and defense.

Alarmed Nude. In recent years, Tashi retired into a private life that consisted largely of prayer and painting --he specialized in misty Sikkimese landscapes, and painted one "vision" of the Abominable Snowman, who is pictured as a skinny, jet-black animal with a red face scampering over a snowy summit carrying a nude, pink-skinned lady with an alarmed expression. Tashi conversed with spirits, who are prevalent in Sikkim, looked out at the world through green-tinted glasses, and seemed fashioned of gold, so stiff and heavy were his brocaded robes.

The new Maharajah was educated in India, is fluent in five languages including English, and is said to be a reincarnation of his uncle, who was a revered lama. "Aren't we all reincarnations of a sort?" he asks politely, evidently is more interested in agriculture and atomic energy than in the miraculous. He hopes that Sikkim can earn dollars abroad by adding copper to its current exports of cardamom seeds, oranges, and imitation-Scotch whisky made by a Parsi distiller from Bombay. When he was proclaimed Maharajah last week, Palden Thondup outlined a program worthy of socialist Scandinavia, declaring that "jointly and steadfastly we shall reach our goal of freedom from want, disease and illiteracy, and usher in a welfare state so that Sikkim can enjoy her rightful place under the sun."

The new Maharani Hope, who is called Lhachem Kusho (Consort of the Deities) by her subjects, intends eventually to write a history of Sikkim. In preparation, she is learning two of the nation's most important languages, Bhutia and Nepali. The project is delayed by her duties to the royal household of 20 servants and three aides-decamp. It will undoubtedly be further delayed by-the fact that she expects a baby this spring--one event whose timing will not be controlled by Sikkim's ubiquitous astrologers.

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