An Activist and a Poet

Tenzin Tsundue, the Tibetan activist, had an afternoon reading with Isabel Hilton. I sensed a nervous shuffle in the audience when he announced that he would read his poetry. Then he began, and his audience was in.

Tsundue, in his own quiet way, knows how to work a crowd. People who don’t know him come to know him quickly, and meetings with skeptics leave them slightly changed. Thirteen months ago, I spent some time with him in Dharamsala, trying to understand more about the famous march to Tibet he had organised earlier that year. Stories and conversations with him suggested they had come within a hundred meters of the border that separates India from what used to be Tibet. If it hadn’t been for a burst tyre and a motel owner ratting them out, the small group of marchers, who had so far avoided arrest and detention, would have crossed over.

The following excerpt is from a journal I had kept in Dharamsala in November 2008. The first few paragraphs describe how he prepared for the march. The last is about what happened on the afternoon the journal entry was made.

“On a frosty December morning in Dharamsala, Tenzin Tsundue gave away his totem pole in preparation of his final journey. Only months from then, he would be among hundreds, if not thousands, to march across India, gathering the like-minded and the inspired. The march would rumble through five northern states and a capital territory, adding to its numbers like a magnet, and eventually a march the size of two regiments would overwhelm (peacefully) border guards and surge across the line into what maps call China, but what Tsundue and his friends in exile call Tibet. That, in effect, was the plan.

So his room was cluttered, as dwellings in transition are. Every object, every scrap of paper, would disappear in due course. Most of these things were dedicated to the study of Tibet and its great oppressor. Tsundue had little else. The clothes on his back, yes, and the red bandana he wore in protest. There were also pictures—little reminders of a life lived. In one of these, he was snapped from below, foreshortened, with his soles and hands and face visible above the ledge he stood on, the wave of the flag in his hands frozen mid-flutter, as uniformed arms reached out to pull him to safety. In another, shot at a similar angle, Tsundue is unfurling a large red banner outside a window at the Oberoi. Once again, he will come in. The picture does not reveal the faces of Chinese diplomats inside the hotel room beneath, from where is not visible. Where they stand, the word ‘Tibet’ is enough, and which Chinese diplomat does not understand what that means?

The totem pole was a gift. Now it is an inconvenience, for all he wants is one thing, a thing he can’t have. In talk and in action, Tsundue conveys his unhappiness. Yes, this is a democracy, a tolerant society (sort of). But what he’d like is incomprehensible to all but the most empathetic outsider.
A year later, a group of students from Woodstock in Mussorie sit one afternoon on a terrace beneath snowcapped peaks. Some giggle before he begins. In a corner, one gnaws at his sugarcane fiercely. Tsundue, seated with school officials, is treated as they would be—with harmless inattention. He starts off by telling them about the Tibet that is oppressed, that is a loosely defined geographic sore point. He tells them about His Holiness’ ideas and the non-violence of his own cause. But to the children, this is editorialising. They cannot relate. They cannot see. So far, Tsundue has given them nothing. Then, as if he realises the precarious position he is in with this audience, he switches from monologue to narrator in a movie. He tells them his own story, in which he left his Dharamsala home for Tibet without telling anyone. He tells them that he imagined living in a migrant community on a vast white plateau, on his own soil, the Tibetan soil. Of course nothing of the sort happened. He was imprisoned. They interrogated him every day, “nine Chinese officers for this chit of a boy”. Every day he told them the same story. Every day his jailers tossed him a newsletter chronicling the regime’s benevolence in Tibet, and shouted ‘learn this’ as they walked by.

Tsundue walks circles in his cell for exercise, uttering prayers he learned long ago, and singing Hindi songs. The kids laugh. One kid has taken off his dark glasses. The boy attacking his sugarcane has kept it on his lap. Tsundue has them now. He always does, at this point.”

Tenzin Tsundue, the Tibetan activist, had an afternoon reading with Isabel Hilton. I sensed a nervous shuffle in the audience when he announced that he would read his poetry. Then he began, and his audience was in.

Tsundue, in his own quiet way, knows how to work a crowd. People who don’t know him come to know him quickly, and meetings with skeptics leave them slightly changed. Thirteen months ago, I spent some time with him in Dharamsala, trying to understand more about the famous march to Tibet he had organised earlier that year. Stories and conversations with him suggested they had come within a hundred meters of the border that separates India from what used to be Tibet. If it hadn’t been for a burst tyre and a motel owner ratting them out, the small group of marchers, who had so far avoided arrest and detention, would have crossed over.

The following excerpt is from a journal I had kept in Dharamsala in November 2008. The first few paragraphs describe how he prepared for the march. The last is about what happened on the afternoon the journal entry was made.

“On a frosty December morning in Dharamsala, Tenzin Tsundue gave away his totem pole in preparation of his final journey. Only months from then, he would be among hundreds, if not thousands, to march across India, gathering the like-minded and the inspired. The march would rumble through five northern states and a capital territory, adding to its numbers like a magnet, and eventually a march the size of two regiments would overwhelm (peacefully) border guards and surge across the line into what maps call China, but what Tsundue and his friends in exile call Tibet. That, in effect, was the plan.

So his room was cluttered, as dwellings in transition are. Every object, every scrap of paper, would disappear in due course. Most of these things were dedicated to the study of Tibet and its great oppressor. Tsundue had little else. The clothes on his back, yes, and the red bandana he wore in protest. There were also pictures—little reminders of a life lived. In one of these, he was snapped from below, foreshortened, with his soles and hands and face visible above the ledge he stood on, the wave of the flag in his hands frozen mid-flutter, as uniformed arms reached out to pull him to safety. In another, shot at a similar angle, Tsundue is unfurling a large red banner outside a window at the Oberoi. Once again, he will come in. The picture does not reveal the faces of Chinese diplomats inside the hotel room beneath, from where is not visible. Where they stand, the word ‘Tibet’ is enough, and which Chinese diplomat does not understand what that means?

The totem pole was a gift. Now it is an inconvenience, for all he wants is one thing, a thing he can’t have. In talk and in action, Tsundue conveys his unhappiness. Yes, this is a democracy, a tolerant society (sort of). But what he’d like is incomprehensible to all but the most empathetic outsider.
A year later, a group of students from Woodstock in Mussorie sit one afternoon on a terrace beneath snowcapped peaks. Some giggle before he begins. In a corner, one gnaws at his sugarcane fiercely. Tsundue, seated with school officials, is treated as they would be—with harmless inattention. He starts off by telling them about the Tibet that is oppressed, that is a loosely defined geographic sore point. He tells them about His Holiness’ ideas and the non-violence of his own cause. But to the children, this is editorialising. They cannot relate. They cannot see. So far, Tsundue has given them nothing. Then, as if he realises the precarious position he is in with this audience, he switches from monologue to narrator in a movie. He tells them his own story, in which he left his Dharamsala home for Tibet without telling anyone. He tells them that he imagined living in a migrant community on a vast white plateau, on his own soil, the Tibetan soil. Of course nothing of the sort happened. He was imprisoned. They interrogated him every day, “nine Chinese officers for this chit of a boy”. Every day he told them the same story. Every day his jailers tossed him a newsletter chronicling the regime’s benevolence in Tibet, and shouted ‘learn this’ as they walked by.

Tsundue walks circles in his cell for exercise, uttering prayers he learned long ago, and singing Hindi songs. The kids laugh. One kid has taken off his dark glasses. The boy attacking his sugarcane has kept it on his lap. Tsundue has them now. He always does, at this point.”

Jaipur Literature Festival 2010Tenzin TsundueTibet