“Sungta Lemo so, oh..…
Lhasa norbuling la, norbu mindu mala sung.
So, ya la..
jhosha yeshe norbu …..
norbu mayna ghangla rey….

Sungta lemo so”


I went to an infamous bar in my town, again, with my girlfriends.

I wanted to dance with those men, sing with passion, get a brush of the infectious Tibetan spirit, imagine myself that I am at a bar in Lhasa and most of all I wanted myself in Tibet.

I love dancing like many other Tibetans.

I love hindi, English, Tibetan, Chinese, bollywood, tamil and all kinds of music. Something about music that sets us free and gives us a high. I have not achieved it anywhere else.

So, I went to dance, and dance at a place where Tibetan women don’t go. Excuse me, a place where good Tibetan women don’t go.
Oh fuck, define “good” first please.
Anyway I was in a mood to dance.

We had gone to the bar three nights ago and I had danced for more than 5 hours. I forgot about my backache, which I tend to do usually while dancing. I particularly enjoyed the last two hours so much because all the people in the bar, mostly Tibetan men from Tibet were in a spirit that I wanted to have while dancing to Tibetan songs from Tibet.

Oh.. the spring in their jumps while they danced to their khampa songs, the passion in their voice when they sang their favourite kunga songs and the sheer joy you get when u are living in a moment that is closest to you. Sway, close your eyes and feel the air, grasslands that I could very well be enjoying if I was in Tibet.

See, music elevates and brings you home. It envelops you with your own universe. He he. I saw that in them when they dance to songs from Tibet. I wanted to feel that together.

Despite feeling not so well ( I am cursed and crushed with  sever backpains), I went ahead with my girlfriends who wanted to go to the same bar.

I learned some fantastic dance moves from Tibet. Not the classical traditional dance steps that I have learned in my school since I was nine years old, but a different style- a Chinese influenced movements- that these young Tibetan men had grown up watching or most likely instilled in systematically by the Chinese government.
Oh it was still fun though! Who am I to tell them that the dance steps and movements they were doing were sinicized. Mine could be very well an indianized or even sinicised as TIPA teachers are said to been trained in China long ago.

So we danced to ‘sungta lemo’ and many others.

And I called them out for a dance duel. I wanted to see more passion and an exchange of ideas in dance.

Then a young guy, in his early twenties, played a song from his personal collection. We did a gorshey. OMG! It was  mindblasting!. I could adapt to the steps very well thanks to my dancing years in school and it was such a high, dancing to a  series of Tibetan songs with your fellow Tibetans who love the songs as much as I love my madhuri dixit songs.

So we got more comfortable with one another and then we chatted up.
Eventually we were debating on autonomy vs independence. Ha, which Tibetan does not over a bowl of chang.

It was grand. I could see myself doing that more if I didn’t have to punch one guy that night. (that is another story for a later post)

The compliment that made me feel so good was when a young guy from Tibet, said “Acha, my friends and I were discussing that your foot movements are so good. Have you danced to songs from Tibet before?”

It was the second time in my life that someone from Tibet had enjoyed and agreed that I dance well to Tibetan songs from Tibet. The first time was from a group of old Kongpo women who had recently arrived from Tibet and I did a Kongpo dance for them to get an interview from them. It was a traditional piece.

But what I had danced in the bar were to contemporary songs.
I have received many adulations from people who have seen me dance to hindi bollywood songs, classical songs, live music, bla b la..”
And that kid had studied dance for 5 years in Tibet. I was happy, very happy that I could dance well to songs from Tibet.

And somehow later in the night, we (my gfs)  found ourselves debating with them on autonomy vs independence. Haha. Feisty, honest and loud expressions of your belief and hope in whatever stand you have chosen.
The joy was immense.

I personally think that while doing all that load of research we are doing on Tibet, leading a freedom movement in exile, acting as their spokesperson or claiming to know what is happening inside Tibet and arguing what should be done, we fail to recognize ourselves as armchair intellectuals or misinformed spokesperson if we do not know the ground reality in Tibet.

How can you know the small significant details of living under occupation when you have not lived, not even a day in Tibet, when you choose not to interact with Tibetans from Tibet by mocking them as Sanjors.

It is hypocrisy, phony and patronizing.
Learn, know each other, if you really mean cholka sum punda or getting back to home in Tibet.

To each his own still.

And one day, we will have a magnificent gorshey around Potala. I could very well be an 80 year old single grandmother then. But insha allah, we will do that one day.
Until then, lets embrace all Tibetans and their stories despite which cholka (province), phayul (hometown), or whether you were born/raised in exile or Tibet.

It is beautiful. I experienced the dancing bit and there are shit load others to own up from one another.

Happy losar.

written this more than a year ago when self-immolations started to gain its momentum.

because i am sad and angry

A year ago, I had asked a Tibetan from Tibet how he would describe the situation inside Tibet as. He said "Tibet is like a butter lamp and the oil is running out.”

That line stayed with me and I would wonder what would happen if the lamp dies and how it will die and what would be the last stages of its flickering would be like.

On 16th March this year, a young Tibetan, 20 year old, set himself on fire.

A few months later in August, a monk self immolated.

Last month, the younger brother of the 20 year old allowed himself to be consumed by flames.

And then followed another 6 Tibetans within a span of less than a month who immolated themselves.

Today is 18th October. I dread each passing day about a news of another frustrated soul giving up his or her own life.

According to Tibetan Buddhism, taking your own life is a sin. Suicide is a sin which deprives you of 500 lives in the form of a human being in this realm. Many of the Tibetans who burnt themselves alive by gulping kerosene and lighting their bodies are the more religious bound people, monks and nuns.

This is a cruel joke.

Is this a suicide or a sacrifice?

Is this violence or offering your body as a butter lamp?

Is this madness or the hopelessness of a non violent movement?

will there be more or no one will care?

I could go on. Tibetans might be denied to possess flammable liquid by the chinese authorities in the light of the recent developments. You see, things could be easily made illegal in Tibet. for eg: possession of the Dalai Lama’s picture, listening to songs of “sensitive” lyrics or having more than 2 childern and etc.

My friend’s mother who is from the eastern part of Tibet where China began the invasion, told me ” When the chinese first came into our village. They were very sweet and were building lot of roads. They were very hardworking poeple. We would give them food and offer warm blankets. They said they were in Tibet to help us and develop us. Though we gave them food, we always suspected that their sweet talks were not genuine. But we gave them food.”

She is a fiesty old woman, my friend’s mother, a Khampa. Whenever we meet and have time for a cup of tea, she always asks me about what is happening inside Tibet. She regrets having given food to the ungrateful chinese who soon came with tanks on the roads they had built and robbed her home and made her flee to India.

I told her a few days ago about the self immolations.

These days I avoid her. I can not bring myself to tell her about more Tibetans burning themselves to death. What can i offer her other than hopelessness and despair at her advanced age. Do i want to? No.

Today at a movie screening where i was asked to help the audience to answer their questions, someone said a very interesting thing, “Any movement that gained its goal through violence will always live with the legacy of violence. If you use violence in your revolution, your new goverment will be a violent one as well.”

Someone else said “People will only notice when there is violence. The international community or the world media will pay attention only when there are bombings.”

True. I work for an International news agency. Its business or news of international interest at the end of the day. You need drama. someone torching him/herself is not enough.

So, my question is will the self immolations of these people will become a trend, a boring trend? Many other people die in a freedom movement or in a natural calamity. Whats the scoop here?

But, will non violence and self inflicted deaths or sacrifices will be “BIG” or dire enough for the rest of the world to do something about it?

Seriously, if no sovereign country who respects human rights or all the other corny shit written in the conventions that they are signatory to, give a fart about whats going on inside Tibet or have the balls to do something about it, i want these Tibetans to stop it. I want these Tibetans to come back to their lives.

I love life. I want to be able to love life whether you are under oppression or not. I want the Tibetans to live.

I am again reminded of the line, “Tibet is like a butter lamp and the oil is running out.” Now I know how the lamp will die or how it will be kept alive. I think the oil is running out and the Tibetans are burning themselves to keep the flame alive.

As i go to bed now, I dread the new day cause it might have already born the cost of another self immolation in Tibet. om mani pemay hu.

losing

i have lost many things since i set out on my own. from the first class picnic, to the last hotspring visit day before yesterday.

Countless other pair of socks, spoon, missed opportunities, my crooked castle, songs, a finger, duppata and a life.

I remember the first time i had left a spoon back at the river side picnic I had gone to first as a kid with my classmates. My mother told me " you loose everything, from a spoon to your sleeping bag. One day you will loose your head if that was possible."

I have indeed lost my head.

I like to leave without leaving any traces of my presence. Somehow I tend to leave physical evidences unconciously.

I wonder what has happened to that missing purple woolen cardigan, my turquoise ear rings, those 20 pairs of hairpins I bought a month ago, the spoon, socks etc.

Do they still thrive somewhere rotting, like a living memory of people i have met.

Or have they just disappeared, like i wish some memories to vanish away.

I do not know.

Yesterday, a friend of mine had emailed me asking" Why is love difficult to achieve, why do people take refuge in connections with other people, connections that appears
to be superficial, not honest, based on lies, often referred to as
politeness? why cant we live in solitude? in other words why do we need distractions?"


I was with friends and I had yet to realise I had lost my phone then.
I replied back, "love is not difficult to achieve, we just lack courage to trust"

But something about that email asked and told me things that i have also wondered, found answers and sometimes i purposely made those thoughts disappear, like another pair of hairpins I would loose.

is it painful to loose things?
is it painful to loose something that belongs to you?
is it painful to loose a part of yourself?

Oh, I know.

those hairpins could hold my hair now, those socks will keep me warm, that spoon could still feed someone or i can make it into a catapult.
everything that you loose has an essence, because you owned it once for reasons that you knew were going to accompany you, you welcomed them hoping to make life more beautiful.





I wish him luck and hope he does not loose these questions like i have lost them.


It is going to be a cold winter.

I am a lake
where tress have fallen into, with
sunken ships, weathered stones
and bloated turtles.

I am not a river.
Still, inundated and pregnant
of the stems decaying, the woods chipping
and1000 pebbles.

Where is my leaf boat?
Can it swim here?
I need a breath of wind
to shape some motion.

And in my melancholic stirring, I dream,
there is possibly a shepherd
behind this horizon.
Tending his herd
and drifting further away from me.

Can you tell him a story,
about a story of a lake,
laying behind the black mountains
he turned away from?

And can you tell him this lake’s story,
How the trees fell into my belly,
Ships who challenged the storms,
Stones that people threw at me
And the turtles, my poor turtle
Who carried scorpions on her back
And they stung her.

Friends, can you tell him that
his sheeps could drink from me.
And maybe one of the dead leaves
could turn into a boat.

Ps: the poem or the note feels incomplete in accordance with the lake’s curtailed feelings.

18.5.11


you look like a big chappati,
i want to eat you.
you look ike a big round chappati with desi ghee on it,
oh i want to eat you,
dharamsala full moon.

you look like a big chappati,
i want to eat you.
you look ike a big round chappati with desi ghee on it,
oh i want to eat you,
dharamsala full moon.

Sam wanted to take a picture of you, you know.
I said “ but oh that’s a bindi,”
And I clanged my bangles and kicked my ankle.
You look beautiful, you look beautiful.



15.6.11

where are you,
mr moron,
I am your Juliet
Calling you from the earth.

mr moon, come out I say,
Come out from the clouds.
Come out from the clouds and
Burst into million pieces,
Burst in million pieces and more
Its saka dawa.