Glad all of you find what I write interesting. Let me know if there are topics you might think would be important to tackle. I will try and write at least two blogs a week. I still find it impossible to just post something quick and short. But I guess in time it will happen.

There is a recurring nightmare, well known in clinical psychiatry, in which the sleeper belabours an enemy, but to absolutely no effect. The more furiously the enemy is beaten, or punched or kicked, the more infuriatingly untouched he remains. All these years living and working in Dharamshala I have felt myself struggling under a burden of unrelieved frustration and ineffectiveness, often even uselessness. I have no doubt other Tibetans in exile as well as inside Tibet have experienced much the same.

Unlike the Gaza Strip or Baghdad, Tibet has only the occasional journalist passing through, and right now there’s no one there. If we want news footage of events in Tibet to reach the world we have to get it ourselves. Lugging around professional equipment or even a camcorder would be asking for trouble but a convenient solution seems to be at hand.

Senator Barack Obama in one of his speeches (quoting Dr. King) speaks of “The Fierce Urgency of Now”. This is absolutely the spirit with which we must deal with our present crisis. Discussions on long-term strategies are vital, but we must think of immediate ways of keeping the Rangzen flames burning

Well, I just released a book titled Shadow Tibet (a collection of my essays from 1989 to 2004) on 8th March in New York City at a Tibetan Youth Congress organized symposium. The roughly 1000 strong Tibetan audience was so surprisingly savvy, contemporary and outspoken, that I realized I had to find a way to maintain some kind of discussion with them, which was when I seriously thought of starting a blog.

In Satyajit Ray’s film, Ganashatru, an adaptation of Ibsen’s play, Enemy of the People, a doctor discovers that leaking sewers are contaminating a water source which is regarded as holy, and which attracts large number of pilgrims. The doctor concerned by the sudden rise of water borne diseases tries to warn the town people of …

Continue reading “Back to the Future”

On a grey morning during the monsoon of 1976, the small town of McLeod Ganj, or at least the Tibetan part of it, experienced a curious upheaval. The event had everyone out in the narrow bus-stand, which is also the surrogate town square, and where every New Year’s day the Toepa (Western Tibetan) men and …

Continue reading “Body-Snatchers”