"the world with tibet"

yesterday i attended a film screening organised by the friends of tibet and presented by tenzin tsundue who i last saw at the jaipur lit fest. i've been finding myself more and more interested in buddhism and wanted to know how a buddhist nation fights for freedom. turns out, it doesn't. it just quietly marches along and keeps repeating its request over and over as loudly as it can. the film, "the sun behind the clouds", was a good primer on the tibetan freedom struggle. first there was tenzin tsundue smiling, with that signature hair. then he was on the screen with a military buzz cut, getting ready to be arrested.

so on one hand is the dalai lama who travels the world, lives in a lovely home in dharamsala, speaks of love and freedom and non violence. and then there are the tibetans who live as oppressed minorities in tibet or as refugees outside it, cry for him to return to tibet and lead the movement and lie prostrate every time they see him on the tv. why is there always such a distance between us and those we worship. isn't it easy to be god when you don't have to live in human reality?

when we went to ladakh, i often saw world maps and globes in cyber cafes and restaurants with tibet drawn onto them with a felt tip pen. yesterday, they gave us these maps with tibet represented as a large white area. it says, "the world with tibet." the map's gone up on this random grid of things on my wall. there, now my world has tibet.