Tibetan Exile: 3 Poems

Betrayal

My father died
defending our home,
our village, our country.
I too wanted to fight.
But we are Buddhist.
People say we should be
Peaceful and Non-Violent.
So I forgive our enemy.
But sometimes I feel
I betrayed my father.

My Tibetanness

Thirty-nine years in exile.
Yet no nation supports us.
Not a single bloody nation!

We are refugees here.
People of a lost country.
Citizen to no nation.

Tibetans: the world’s sympathy stock.
Serene monks and bubbly traditionalists;
one lakh and several thousand odd,
nicely mixed, steeped
in various assimilating cultural hegemonies.

At every check-post and office,
I am an “Indian-Tibetan”.
My Registration Certificate,
I renew every year, with a salaam.
A foreigner born in India.

I am more of an Indian.
Except for my Chinky Tibetan face.
“Nepali?” “Thai?” “Japanese?”
“Chinese?” “Naga?” “Manipuri?”
but never the question — “Tibetan?”

I am Tibetan.
But I am not from Tibet.
Never been there.
Yet I dream
of dying there.

Somewhere I lost my Losar

Somewhere along the path, I
lost it, don’t know where or when.

It wasn’t a one-fine-day incident.
As I grew up it just got left behind,
very slowly, and I didn’t go back for it.
It was there when as a kid I used to wait
for the annual momo dinner,
when we lined up for gifts that came
wrapped in newspapers in our
refugee school, it was there when
we all gained a year together, before
birthdays were cakes and candles.

Somewhere along the path, I
lost it, don’t know where or when.

When new clothes started to feel
stiff and firecrackers frightening, when
our jailed heroes ate in pig sties there,
or were dead, heads smashed
against the wall as we danced
to Bollywood numbers here,
when the boarding school and uniforms
took care of our daily needs, when
family meant just good friends,
sometime when Losar started to mean
a new year, few sacred routines,
somehow, I lost my Losar.

Somewhere along the path, I
lost it, don’t know where or when.

Colleged in seaside city, when it was
still Bombay, sister’s family on pilgrimage,
uncle in Varanasi, mother grazing cows
in South India, still need to report
to Dharamsala police, couldn’t get train tickets,
too risky to try waiting list, and it’s
three days, including return journey
it’s one week. Even if I go,
other siblings may not find the time. Adjusting
timings, it’s been 20 years without a Losar.

Somewhere along the path, I
lost it, don’t know where or when.

Losar is when we the juveniles and bastards
call home, across the Himalayas and cry
into the wire. Losar is some plastic flowers
and a momo party. And then in 2008
when our people rode horses, shouting “Freedom”
against rattling machine guns, when they
died like flies in the Olympics’ spectacle,
we shaved our heads bald and threatened
to die by fasting, but failed. I
couldn’t die, it’s forbidden by law.

Somewhere along the path, I
lost it, don’t know where or when.
Somewhere, I lost my Losar.