White Crane Lend Me Your Wings by Tsewang Y. Pemba
Niyogi Books. Rs.495/
(This review was previously published in the Journal of Indian Literature)
The Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso
(1683-1706), was arguably one of the most inspiring Tibetan poets. His lyrical
songs have found a permanent place in the hearts of Tibetans, and to this day his
words are set to new tunes by Tibetan artistes around the world. Like most
Tibetans Tsewang Yeshi Pemba too was inspired by songs of the poet Dalai Lama,
and in fact the title of Pemba’s posthumous novel White Crane, Lend Me Your Wings is borrowed from a famous quartet Tsangyang
Gyatso composed days before his sudden death at the age of twenty-three. Pemba
was the first Tibetan allopathic doctor and a surgeon, who had authored two
books Young Days in Tibet and Idols on the Path. Dr Pemba died in 2012.
White Crane is set in Nyarong, a valley at the
heart of Kham in Eastern Tibet. With soaring mountains, deep valleys,
undulating rivers, and open grasslands, Nyarong is something of a highland ‘Wild
West’ whose tribes often engaged in blood feuds while at the same time making
generous donations to local monasteries and propitiating deities who never
answered their prayers.
Paul or Paul-o, a central protagonist of Tsewang’s
novel, follows roughly the same path as that of George Patterson or Patterson
of Tibet, a
Scottish missionary, who the present Dalai Lama fondly called Khampa Gyau, ‘the
Bearded Khampa’. At the age of twenty-seven in 1947, Patterson went to Tibet and set up his base in Dartsedo, a
border town between Tibet and China. From there he extensively traveled and spent
time among the militant tribal Khampas learning the language and treating them
medically.
Paul-o, however, is born in Nyarong to a missionary couple from San
Francisco, who come to Tibet with mission to bring the entire high plateau into
the fold of the ‘one true God’. Though the missionary couple manage
to convert only a handful of Tibetans into Christianity, ‘they won the
hearts of Tibetans’.
Paul-o’s oath-bound friend, and the other central character in the novel,
is Tenga or Tenpa Gyurmay Dragotsang, the son of the chieftain of Nyarong.
Paul, Tenga and their gang’s idyllic youthful days spent horse-riding, swimming,
hunting expeditions and frequent sexual escapades are cut short by the advancing
army of the newly-formed Communist China. Tashi Tsering Rithangtsang, Tenga’s ancestral
archenemy, leads the shabbily-dressed but disciplined Red Army troops into
Nyarong. This shrewd double-headed opportunist Khampa in the novel reminds one
of a controversial character in modern Tibetan history, Baba Phunstok Wangyal,
who guided the Eighteenth Army of China’s People’s Liberation Army to Lhasa in
1951 to ‘liberate’ Tibet from foreign reactionaries.
When Tenga, Paul-o and Khampa warriors realize that they were no match
for the battle-hardened and well-equipped Chinese army swarming their beloved
Nyarong, like swarms of locusts usurping a ripe field of barley, they decide to
send Paul-o to British-India to seek assistance for their resistance against
the occupation of their country. Negotiating an uncharted route Paul-o sneaks
out of Tibet only to find that the outside world does not want to be involved in
the thorny issue of Tibet’s invasion.
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| Author Tsewang Yeshi Pemba |
This is a wonderful novel in which Pemba
has penetrated into the unique psyche of Khampas – the people of eastern Tibet
– and manifested his deep understanding of their dispositions into his vivid characters.
This is particularly interesting given the fact that the author was born in
Gyangtse, a town in central Tibet and went to study in British-India at a
tender age of nine, later moving to England to complete his higher education
and medical studies. Much later in his peripatetic life, he met, interacted and
formed a deep friendship with former Khampa guerrilla fighters in Darjeeling
and Kalimpong. This, it seems, had an immense impact on the author, driving him
to set the story in rural Kham with an all Khampa cast with the exception of
the American missionaries.
One of the defining Khampa temperaments
is their courage. When Tenga and his guerrilla group is on the edge of defeat,
he says, ‘I shall fight the Chinese Communists who’ve taken my Nyarong away
from me till the end – no matter how powerful they get, no matter how numerous
their forces.’ As in Pemba’s novel, the youth of today’s Nyarong display the
same audacity and adamant desire to challenge Beijing’s occupying forces. Only
the method has changed. Today youths in Nyarong – as well as youths in other
parts of Tibet – no longer pick up guns or wield swords. Instead they resort to
nonviolent tactics, including self-immolation. Two young men, eighteen-year-old
Tashi Wangdu and twenty-four-year-old Pema Gyaltsen have recently set
themselves on fire in Nyarong within a year. Both demanded freedom for Tibet
and the return of the Dalai Lama from exile.
White
Crane is a fast-paced and
breathtaking tale of love, friendship and vendetta, and above all it is a story
of man’s innate desire for freedom. When the land is lost everything else
becomes inconsequential. This loss forms a tight knot at the pith of one’s heart.
Life is consequently retuned into a singular goal to reclaim ‘the soil beneath
his feet and the sky above his head.’ To be able to accomplish this
repossession is one’s ‘true freedom’ and ‘true liberation’.
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Launch in Dharamsala (above) and in Delhi (below) |
