Prayers Answered, From Baltistan to Ladakh

Thoughts on Geleck Palsang's Prayers Answered

I have an offering: http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/1591

A short 29 minute documentary about the journey of a group of small Balti children from Turtuk, the very border of India, Pakistan and Tibet, to a Tibetan school in Ladakh, Prayers Answered is a really charming small film with a very appealing hero. The events surrounding the film are thus: in 2005, His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited Turtuk and suggested that the villagers could send some of their children for an education at the Tibetan Children’s Village school in Ladakh. The villagers then sent 15 children to Ladakh. The documentary begins with His Holiness’s visit and then follows the children.

I was fascinated from the first frame, when the village headmen of Turtuk talk about the history of Turtuk and its people and their culture. The Turtuk people, who are Baltis, speak Balti—which is an amazing stir fry mix of Ladakhi-Tibetan, Urdu/Hindi, Farsi (I assume it’s Farsi: I don’t know it but it sounds like Farsi and it must be Farsi) and… English. For a Tibetan speaker, it’s truly amazing to hear. It sounds like an invented language—the conjugations are mostly Ladakhi, the base vocabulary and the base grammar is Tibetan, with generous helpings of Urdu-Hindi and Farsi, and then the occasional dash of English. Perhaps some of the grammar is Farsi also. This is all coming from a non-linguist. I can only guess.

Here’s the caption that appears at the beginning of the film, to teach viewers a little about this remote region:

“Turtuk is a little known region located in a remote corner of northern India on the border with Pakistan and Tibet. Turtuk was once part of Baltistan, which is now in Pakistan. The village of Turtuk became part of India after the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971. This mountainous village is virtually cut off from rest of the world. Due to its sensitive border location, Turtuk is under the control of Indian army, and access is only possible with a special permit. Very few outsiders have visited Turtuk.”

The Balti people, of Tibetan descent, used to practice Bon (the pre-Buddhist practice of Tibet) before the 8^th century, and when Baltistan fell under Tibetan sovereignty during the rule of the Yarlung kings, the Baltis also became Buddhist for several centuries. In the 14^th century, Muslim scholars from Persia and Kashmir converted the Balti people to Islam, which they still practice today.

One of the village elders explains that the Balti people of Turtuk were a tribe comprising of people from Iran, Tibet, Dard and Mongolia. They certainly look it, and sound it. He talks about Baltistan’s cultural features, its similarity to western Tibet (eating, dressing, living, language etc) and how they used to use Tibetan script but later they switched to Arabic script.

Here’s a rough transcription of how he said this, rendered one and all in Roman alphabet:

“Dheney Baltistan ki daksai mi uney, dukso, langso, khashes ..…jis tare…..khaskar

meney pura language bi daksang original language pe use… ….. magar script khadam zos ki yaley.”

The ….. are Farsi sounds I couldn’t even catch.

See? It’s all like this and more so: Balti, Tibetan, Ladakhi, Hindi, Urdu, Farsi and English. It’s amazing.

Hearing Balti is like listening to a radio that keeps changing its frequency—I”ll understand some snatches of the speech and be able to break it down to its component parts and then there’ll be other long parts that I just don’t understand. There’s snatches and whole long clauses which are in Ladakhi Tibetan and then there’ll be some Urdu-Hindi vocab, some of which I know and some of which I don’t, and then there’ll be phrases that I think I have understood but when I think about it and try to break it down, I haven’t, and they may or may not have been Ladakhi and then there’s other sounds that I just don’t understand but assume must be Farsi, and then there’s the occasional English word thrown in.

For Tibetan speakers, just the sound of Balti is an auditory treat. For non-speakers, however, the film still has its merits. The film is made skillfully, with restraint and mature confidence and deep sympathy for the kids.

It was only about halfway through the film that I realized its hero was the little boy named Ata-ul Rehman, a plucky little chubby cheeked fellow, sweetly shy and passionately intense. It does feel a little bit as if Geleck Palsang himself recognized only halfway into filming that Ataul was his hero—in the latter half of the film, we stay closely with him, to the film’s benefit, and I was really sorry when the film ended.

I would have liked to see more of the children settling in—the film shows the children at Namaz, learning Arabic from their dorm mother and teacher Zenab who came with them, and learning Tibetan and English, and playing with classmates, and then that last scene, of the circle of them at a table singing the popular Phurbu T Namgyal song “Bhoejong ngatsoe phayul, Bhoerig ngayi phunda! / (Tibet is my homeland, the Tibetans are my people)” at the top of their voices. It’s a moving and bittersweet scene to end with. I remembered Ataul’s mother who cried at the thought of sending him away but said that education was important and hoped that he wouldn’t be hungry at the school, and the man who sang a Balti folk song to welcome His Holiness to Turtuk.

These children are bridging a thousand years and the Karakoram mountains and the Himalayas. I know that bridges are important, and there are rewards…but there are also costs.  I just hope that they’ll continue to sing Balti folk songs along with Tibetan pop.

There’s a really funny little scene of Ataul and his classmates in English class. They are reciting a passage in tandem from their textbook, with little gestures and actions that their teacher had taught them to pepper their recitation with. It’s just such an incongruous little scene, and hilariously funny when you watch it, because the little gestures the children make are so cute, and they have so clearly memorized this passage and because they are chanting so seriously and earnestly.

A score of children’s voices, high, with the volume tuned up, and attendant motions:

Everybody says I look like my father!

Everybody says I look like my mother!

Everybody says my nose is like my father’s!

Everybody says my lips are like my mother’s!

Everybody says I am the image of somebody!

But if you really want to know,

I want to look like me!

I want to look like me!

Thank you!

Ataul Rehman hasn’t caught up to the rest of his classmates yet. He says the first two lines and then he moves his mouth to approximate the shapes but it’s clear that he’s lost for now.

Everybody says I am the image of somebody

But if you really want to know

I want to look like me!

Longing for the Deities by Sakyil Tseta: a translation

This is a poem by Sakyil Tseta, one of Tibet’s best young poets. I find that the lines of the original in Tibetan keep echoing in my mind.

Longing for the Deities

By Sakyil Tseta

Translation by Tenzin Dickyi and Dhondup Tashi Rekjong

These days a spring wind is rising under the clouded sky.

In these days when a spring wind is rising, the villagers with bothered and humble eyes are complaining about someone, cursing someone. At the intersection of the city and the street where there are no red mirrors searching with their eyes for the caged birds, the villagers push down their tears of suffering and wish to spit on someone with their laments.

In these days, in these days when a spring wind is rising under the clouded sky,

In every village of Rebkong, arrow bearing hunters multiply, on every street of Rebkong, red traps and black mirrors increase exponentially. The village people, their heads bowed down, are apprehensive of taking a breath. These days if you don’t take care, there are no dharma protectors who can save you.

In these days, in these days when a spring wind is rising under the clouded sky,

In these days when the people of Rebkong stay silently in their homes, where are the deities and dharma protectors that the people have placed in their hearts since the time of their ancestors? Are they disappointed that we can’t take refuge in them? Are they hungry that we can’t make incense offerings? Is this their answer?

Ah, my deities and dharma protectors. Ah.

In these days, in these days when a spring wind is rising under the clouded sky,

The people talk of caterpillar fungus in the day,

And count stars through the window at night.

In these days, in these days when a spring wind is rising under the clouded sky, shoots from the inner depths of the earth give vitality and confidence to someone’s young sun of hope. Now, once more the gorgeous peach blossoms bring to the people’s minds a certain compassionate and youthful face–that face from far far away is brought to mind, is brought to mind.

In these days of fear, in these days of terror,

I long for the deities clad in mourning felt,

I long for Shambala where the people have scattered their hopes. 

A Review of BUTTERFLY’S WINGS, Tenzing Rigdol’s 3rd Collection of Poetry

I was watching the recent Voice of America Kunleng discussion on contemporary Tibetan writing, with guests Tenzing Rigdol (artist, poet) and Dhondup Tashi Rekjong (editor, writer). There was talk about Rigdol’s recent book of poetry and talk about Bhuchung D Sonam’s recent book of criticism, and discussion on the urgent need for criticism and the huge gaping hole there, where our small community is concerned. Of his own book, Rigdol said, “If a book isn’t reviewed, it becomes an orphan.” So this is…not an adoption exactly. I am hardly a real reviewer. This is more like a care package.  

A Review of BUTTERFLY’S WINGS, Tenzing Rigdol’s 3^rd Collection of Poetry

Originally Published on Phayul on August 20, 2012

Tenzing Rigdol follows in the tradition of the sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso, Tibet’s most beloved poet, with this slim volume of love poetry. By devoting an entire collection of poems to romantic love, he elevates this most secular of emotions and assigns it a sacredness usually offered only to the Dharma in our society.

One the whole, I found Butterfly’s Wings to be beautiful and powerful and inventive in some places and clumsy and clunky in others. An imperfect but exciting and noteworthy collection nonetheless, it makes me thrilled to continue to watch Tenzing Rigdol’s evolution as a poet.

The first thing you notice about Butterfly’s Wings is how beautifully it is produced. The cover art, a serene and lovely image of a young Tibetan couple enjoying a quiet moment of intimacy on a moonlit night, is by Tenzin Norbu, an artist from Dolpo. As a physical product of the collaboration between Rigdol, the publisher TibetWrites and the filmmaker Tenzin Tsetan Choklay who did the book design, this is a rebuke to the indifferent book covers churned out by most Tibetan publishers.

The best poems in the collection are the most restrained and the most simple.

One of my favorites is below:

Your body is calligraphy at work-

Smooth, round, blunt and abrupt.

Only my silence befits your adornment.

A single word is now a hindering crowd. (Pg 48)

I savored the beauty and power of the following lines:

I spend my life in an effort

To collect your dances,

Your whispers,

Your shadows and

Smiles.

For you are your own kingdom,

Wherein beggars like me draw out their hands for alms. (Pg 49)

How imaginative and evocative is that last line, a line for schoolboys to echo in their midnight letters: “For you are your own kingdom...”

The best moments in the book occur when the poet is most spare and direct, as when he asks:

What can a statue do

When his master loves him

With hammers and nails. (Pg 58)

And when he says:

I weigh less than

Your single stroke of a smile. (Pg 49)

But unfortunately this restraint and simplicity are not as present throughout the collection. Indeed, rather than restraint, I found an excess—an excess, mainly, of adjectives, particularly Latinate ones. Rigdol doesn’t trust his nouns to do any heavy lifting; where he has a noun, he must use an elaborate adjective.

For example:

Sozzled eyes

Glimmer in briny tears

Before the pungent smell

Of betrayal disguised. (Pg 68)

Why insist on telling us that the tears are “briny” and the smell “pungent”? Presumably, everyone expects tears to be salty and smells to be smelly. Not all nouns need ornamentation. Too many adjectives overload the poem, like too much make-up on a woman. In a poem, real estate is precious. As Rigdol himself tells us in his best poems, a single extra word is a hindering crowd, or simply, a crowd.

Contrast these two lines, both from the first poem in the collection:

Ample yet soft and modest,

Palpable yet fragile and volatile…

Between your eyelashes

I travel the distance between stars. (Pg 15)

How little is said in the first sentence and how much in the second!

I also thought some of the poems could have been refined further.

For example:

As I breathe in the aroma of your soul like a gardener

Without a word,

A cold breeze of purity awakens the rim of my forgotten

Nose.

Through my dark nasal tunnel, streams the waves of your

Aliveness

And my throat collects them like a wineglass receiving the

Imprisoned wine. (Pg 79)

How lovely and apt that image of the throat as a wineglass receiving the captured wine is, but why the tonally off “dark nasal tunnel”? Like a wrong note, it jars my enjoyment of the poem. And dare I ask, how is the nose “forgotten” when it is breathing in the aroma? And don’t the line breaks, as they are, distort the shape of the poem rather than enhance it? A poem is a creature for the ear, of course, but my eye cannot help nosing in.

As with the wineglass image, at his best, Rigdol can create gorgeous lines with bright and sharp metaphors and similes: he says, “I lay shrunk like a frozen shrimp” (Pg 73) and likens love to “a wind-carried pollen looking for its soil-mate.” How inventive and unexpected and fun that “soil-mate” is.

And where the adjective does earn its place (“my decanted mind”!), there is music to be found.

When you lay unwrapped in bed like a strong argument

With your knees starting at your awakened breasts,

I collect my withered thoughts in surrender… (Pg 39)

Rigdol is a very well-known contemporary Tibetan artist whose Soil Project, the site specific installation for which he smuggled soil from Shigatse, Tibet and brought to Dharamsala, the capital of Tibet-in-exile, made international headlines. In some ways, we can see this book as a site specific artwork as well, with the site being the female body, specifically the body of the beloved.

If this book is the result of Tenzing Rigdol’s surrender, I think we can conclude that it was a fruitful surrender.

YAK HORNS LAUNCHES

Sunday, July 15^th, saw the launch of my friend Bhuchung D Sonam’s new book Yak Horns: Notes on Contemporary Tibetan Writing, Music, Film & Politics at Jimmy’s Italian Kitchen in the center of McLeod Ganj. There was a reading also, and a few days before the launch, I got a call from Bhuchung and Tsundue inviting me to read, which I was tremendously joyful about. It was going to be BDS, Tsundue, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa and me—It was a luminous triangle and I didn’t really fit but BDS shoved me in, and I was excited and grateful.

The day of, I was on Facebook and saw a poster for the event—nicely designed with the beautiful book jacket and wait, what’s this—reading and discussion? Whaa? I called BDS and Tsundue in a consuming panic and they were both so casual and calm about it: “It’s a completely informal discussion, nothing to worry about, it’s just talking” and I was thinking, yeah nothing to worry about for you guys because you are constantly on stage and giving interviews and used to talking and thinking on cue but I have to know what I am thinking about beforehand because I don’t know what I am thinking until I am thinking it, privately, not publicly!

But the event, moderated by Dechen Pemba of High Peaks Pure Earth, actually went really well—the organization, seemingly on the fly, fell into place seamlessly (there was even a poppy seed cake to welcome Yak Horns into the world). The sound needed a bit of tweaking in the beginning, but that was eventually fixed. And there was a full house crowd, attesting to Bhuchung’s popularity in this town and possibly also the fact that there’s a ready population of the young and the restless in Dharamsala, supplemented by the seeking tourist, always on the lookout for a new gathering, a new restaurant, a new contact, a new angle, a new relationship.

Photo: Kunsang Kelden                                                                           Bhuchung D Sonam at far right

Bhuchung explained that he called the book Yak Horns because when he was growing up in Tibet (and what does that feel like, starting a sentence with those words-when I was growing up in Tibet…) parents gave their kids cut-off yak horns to suck on as “jibdo”, so a yak horn is something that is a very familiar and intimate reminder of home. He said he wrote this collection for two reasons: to provide the Tibetan voice which is often missing or muted, compared to the other non-Tibetan voices pronouncing judgement; and to have a bridge between the community at home and in the diaspora.

I have been picking at the book but haven’t yet had the time to really sit down with it, but it has got a gorgeous cover and just looks beautiful, and I was hooked with the opening piece “Exile is a Lonely Pen”, an essay on exile and writing.. The book is primarily a collection of criticism-- criticism being the one really important thing that’s been almost entirely lacking in our modern literature. Has anything been created until it’s been reviewed? So the talented Bhuchung D Sonam is doing Tibetans a great service, and as a friend as well as a fan, it’s great to see BDS the critic as well as BDS the writer get official between the covers.

Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama

I have been making stabs at reading this tiny book that I “borrowed” from my father’s bookcase: Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama. It was first printed by the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in 1981. K Dhondup translated. His short biography of the Sixth Dalai Lama is very good. There are 59 poems or songs- and of course I haven’t read all of them, but of the ones I have read, my favorite so far is this:

14

Stong.ldan. ha.lo’i. me.tog.

Mchod.b’i. rjas.la. pheb.na.

gyu.sbrang. gzhon.nu. nga.yang.

lha.khang. nang.la. khrid.dang.*

K Dhondup translates this as:

If the blossoming hollyhock flower is leaving

As an offering to the altar,

Leave not the young turquoise bee behind:

“Take me with you,

To the altar.”

Ok first, the poem is lovely. Second, I think I am really just utterly charmed that the speaker is a bee. It’s unexpected. The speaker begins quite loftily with stong.ldan. ha.lo’i. me.tog. and reaffirms this with the honorific pheb.na. but the last line is almost petulant and definitely pleading. I am just… very taken with this.

Actually I tried my hand at translation because I didn’t think K Dhondup’s translation was entirely faithful and this is my effort, based of course on K Dhondup’s:

If the blossoming hollyhock flower

Follows the offerings to the altar,

Take me also, the young turquoise bee,

Into the chapel.

*This may be a feeble attempt at transliteration. Anyone is welcome to correct me!

A Review: "THE GRASSLANDS" by Pema Tseden

On Saturday I watched a short film: The Grasslands by Pema Tseden. It is Pema Tseden’s student film, and Latse Contemporary Tibetan Library* in the West Village has a copy in their video archives.

Pema Tseden, or Wanma Caidan as the pinyin transliteration has it so awkwardly, is a talented Tibetan film maker who studied at the Beijing Film Academy and has made two feature films in recent years. I have seen both, The Silent Holy Stones and The Search, and they are both amazing and excellent… and I am deeply in love with The Search. So I was curious to see his student film, curious to see how his directorial vision has evolved, curious to see whether his master talent so clearly displayed in every frame of The Search is manifest in this his first creation.

And yes, yes, it is. The Grasslands is short, only about twenty minutes or so. The film opens with a simple frame: an old couple trekking across the empty grassland under a blue sky. They are Aku Tsendruk, a stubborn old man who just can’t bear any wrongs done to him, and his wife Ama Tsomo, an even older woman who is curled into herself with age and resignation, a passive bystander who is swept in the drift of the current churned up by her aggressive husband.

They are headed to the next nomadic settlement over, to confront three young men who have stolen Ama Tsomo’s yak. As they go on, we learn that the yak is a “liberated” yak; which means that Ama Tsomo had released this yak from slaughter and the yak was a free animal until its theft. So the thieves had compounded their crime which had become a wrong not just against morality but against dharma.

When Aku Tsendruk and Ama Tsomo reach their old friend Dorlo’s tent, his grown son Juga, a pipe smoking thick-set type with streaming highlander hair, is dispatched to fetch the three men. An elaborate ceremony of oaths follow and the film wraps with a small twist that manages to convince and satisfy without being either surprising or predictable. The director is talented like that.

After I watched the film, I felt that the film was not about Aku Tsendruk and Ama Tsomo, nor about the other people in the film so much as it is about a way of life- a way of life where you can take a man’s word when he swears, a way of life where people still “liberate” their prized yaks, a way of life where a radio is as close as the outside world gets to you. And it’s about the land that not only sustains but rather reinforces this way of life-the immense rolling plains and mountains that are inseparable from the people who live there.

It’s worth seeing. It’s very worth seeing. Ok it’s worth the trek to Latse. Need I say more?

*www.Latse.org

Ancient Art in a Modern City: An Exhibition of Contemporary Tibetan Art

Ancient Art in a Modern City: An Exhibition of Contemporary Tibetan Art in Manhattan

So I have been meaning to write about the Kyigudo earthquake but I am going to have to do that another time. Because I don’t have the time or energy tonight to write coherently about something so awful and important and I don’t want to reduce it or diminish it, not that anything can of course, by putting up a crap post about it.

 So instead this post is about a small exhibition that was launched in Manhattan on Tuesday, April 20. The exhibition, called Ancient Art in a Modern City: An Exhibition of Contemporary Tibetan Art, is exhibited at the International Center in New York on 23^rd Street near 5^th Avenue as part of New York Immigrant Week. The artists displayed are Rabkar Wangchuk, Tenzin Phakmo, Sodhon, Thupten N Chakrishar, Jamyang Dorjee Chakrishar, Selhatso, Lobsang Choephel, Chungpo Tsering and Tenzin Menzin.

The opening on Tuesday featured a discussion with some of the artists whose works were displayed. A friend was going and so I dragged my feet and went along because sometimes you feel guilty about passing up “culture” and also there might be food. The discussion had just begun when we entered the room and there were two empty seats up front which we took. This was a mistake, as it quickly became clear when Sodhon la, one of the featured artists, said he would like an interpreter and Thupten Nyima’s eyes scanned the audience and homed in on me. I didn’t mind, actually, as long as I didn’t have to translate iffy words like “illusion” or “beauty”. If this meant I now had to pay attention to what the speakers were saying, so much the better. 

Sodhon la, Rabkar Wangchuk and Thupten Nyima spoke about their work. Tenzin Rigdol, a talented and successful artist who helped curate this show (although perhaps this show was not curated so much as …er… heaped together) later joined the conversation. It was actually very interesting and very cool, listening to these contemporary artists talk about their paintings, their background and the influences that shape their work.

It seems to me that, both for the artist and the audience, contemporary Tibetan art is defined not so much by what it is as by what it is not - it is not traditional thangka painting; it is not religious art. So paradoxically this means that thangka art has enormous influence over contemporary Tibetan artists. Whether they are informed and inspired by thangka painting or they are stifled and challenged by it, thangka art’s influence on contemporary Tibetan artists manifests clearly either on the artist’s canvas (such as Rabkar’s Passion or Sodhon’s Frivolity of Life) or in the artist’s conversation (such as Tenzin Rigdol’s remarks).

As far as the exhibits were concerned, Chungpo’s Untitled, the mani khorlo and the bell, is a serene and peaceful painting and Thupten Nyima’s digital art West Side Highway, with the deities cruising in the sky in an open convertible, is striking. 

My favorites were Selhatso’s Behind the Shoeba Mask (pictured to the left) and Tenzin Phakmo’s My Land? #3.