Tackling the Thuggish Beijing

Hollywood actor and musician, Johnny Depp, was bullied everyday in school by a big fat boy. "Punch him in the face once and he will not bother you any more!" said his mother one day. Depp did just that and the rest, as he told a group of student at The Actor's Studio, was history.

Things Happen Here

“Oh! You are still here,” said a monk, who I knew from my school days. “So good to see old Dharamshala faces who are still around.” He has come back for a short visit from the US, after twenty years. He fished out a five hundred-rupee note from his wallet, slipped it into my pocket and said, “Thi’i solja choe rog nang.”

This made realize that I am now a pukka-Dharamshala-wallah or the ‘real Dharamsala resident’. Even the garbage can knows me, I fear.

Over the years, I have noticed, this place gets busier, restless and more energetic — hotels get bigger, food more varied, more tourists come and more things happen.

Materially almost everything is available here, including relatively good wine (very expensive though!), top-quality Manchester United soccer jersey and third-class Made in China nylon socks (if you wear these socks for three consecutive days, your feet will stink worse than over-flowing public toilet!) Today, I saw a new comer from Tibet selling yaksha kampo or dried yak meat and tea bricks, which he claims came all the way from Dhartsedo, a Tibetan trading town bordering China.

Under the Grey Veil

Review of The Sun-Beaten Path directed by Sonthar Gyal

Sonthar Gyal’s (a young Tibetan filmmaker in Tibet) film The Sun-Beaten Path — which won 2011 Dragons and Tigers Awards at the Vancouver International Film Festival — is in many ways a trenchant criticism of today’s Tibet, where individual Tibetans battle against not only their tragic personal life but also against the overwhelming encroachment on their collective way of life and the wholesale eradication of their ancient culture. Gyal’s picture reminded me of actor-director Sean Penn’s Hollywood film Into the Wild, which combines two popular genres – the road trip and the struggle of man versus nature. It tells to tell about Chris McCandless, a disillusioned young man who discards his comfortable life so he can make his way into the wilderness of Alaska in search of untamed solitude.

Fight of the Warrior Monks

At around 1 pm on 17 October, 20-year-old nun Tenzin Wangmo has set herself on fire while shouting ‘Free Tibet!” She is from the Mamae Dechen Choekhorling Nunnery in Ngaba in Amdo, North-eastern Tibet. Wangmo, who has died from burns, was the first nun and the latest case of self-immolation.

Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, writes that China’s “security measures designed to curtail the right to free expression, association, and religious belief in Tibetan monasteries are not legitimate.” Additionally, these measures have ratcheted up tensions as we are seeing in Ngaba. To date nine youths have set themselves on fire and more are most likely in line.

To Whom It May Concern:

This is to certify that this man is

A half-backed nut flew off

From a disused frying pen,

A black pebble shot forth

From an un-owned sling,

A broken eggshell

Fallen off from an abandoned nest.

He is equipped with claws

Horns, tails, hoofs and hunger.

He is an anti-anti-social element

Constantly throwing up words

Into the degradable social garbage.

ལྷག་དཀར་ཉིན་ཀློག་རྒྱུའི་སྙན་དེབ་ཁག

Sungchuk Kyi

Sungchuk Kyi was born in Amdo, Northeastern Tibet. She is, perhaps, one of the most accomplished exile Tibetan women poets writing in Tibetan. Her poetry books include Tomb, Corals' Fate  and Cry of the Earth, a collection of short stories.

She escaped from Tibet in 2002 after a renewed crackdown on Tibetan literature and intellectuals by the Chinese authorities. Kyi's new book collection of poems is ready for publication.