TENZIN TSUNDUE

SOMEWHERE I LOST MY LOSAR^{[1] The term ‘Losar’ translates to “New Year” in the Tibetan language, where ‘Lo’ means year and ‘Sar’ means new.}

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.

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

REMEMBER HOW WE WALKED

99 days of walking,
300 heads in a single line, one behind the other
bearing Gandhi and Dalai Lama photos, talking
but not able to look into each other’s eyes,
one head following the other, telling each other
personal stories and secrets, walking through green fields,
dark valleys, high mountains, over old bridges,
through the busy streets of Moradabad,
attempting to sing like Bob Marley,
singing old Bollywood number ‘suhana safar hai’
clarifying that we are Tibetans, not ‘ching-chong’,
not related to Jackie Chan.
99 days of sleeping by the roadside
dreaming of home, thinking of Chinese bullets
and all that noise in Tibet’s prisons,
99 days of saying namaste to every Indian
we pass by on the way,
in the rains, thunder showers or
scorching heat in Rudrapur,
reading newspapers on the walk and not missing
the fresh cowdung on the path,
mosquitoes and leeches in the jungles on the way to Didihat,
the higher Kumaon mountains, sweating, sweat
that wets your clothes to the skin, blisters that pop
like chewing gum leaving behind sorry red-eyes in the feet,
shoes with worn out soles and still looking nice from the top,
99 days of celibacy and
the guarantee of good behaviour, monks and nuns
and gay people, getting arrested and spending days in jail
with murderers and rapists,
leaving behind parents, family and
close Indian college friends, missing emailing,
and yahoo chat, hi5 and photos on facebook,
marching to Tibet
inch by inch, every day,
worrying what next
the police will do, what will happen
at the border, walking into uncertainty.
99 days of walking, wistfully thinking
believing we are returning home
in a dream and waking to a jolt when
Indian police arrested us
on the 99th day, packed in buses, trucks
and jeeps, and sent back
from the doorsteps of Tibet,
back to Delhi…
remember how we walked for 99 days …

When It Rains in Dharamsala

When it rains in Dharamsala
raindrops wear boxing gloves,
thousands of them
come crashing down
and beat my room.
Under its tin roof
my room cries from inside
and wets my bed, my papers.

Sometimes the clever rain comes
from behind my room,
the treacherous walls lift
their heels and allow
a small flood into my room.

I sit on my island-nation bed
and watch my country in flood,
notes on freedom,
memoirs of my prison days,
letters from college friends,
crumbs of bread
and Maggi noodles
rise sprightly to the surface
like a sudden recovery
of a forgotten memory.

Three months of torture,
monsoon in the needle-leafed pines
Himalaya rinsed clean
glistens in the evening sun.

Until the rain calms down
and stops beating my room
I need to console my tin roof
who has been on duty
from the British Raj.
This room has sheltered
many homeless people.

Now captured by mongooses
and mice, lizards and spiders,
and partly rented by me.
A rented room for home
is a humbling existence.

My Kashmiri landlady
at eighty cannot return home.
We often compete for beauty
Kashmir or Tibet.

Every evening
I return to my rented room.
But I am not going to die this way.
There has got to be
some way out of here.
I cannot cry like my room
I have cried enough
in prisons and
in small moments of despair.

There has got to be
some way out of here.
I cannot cry,
my room is wet enough.