A Home in Tibet

Title: A Home in Tibet

Author: Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Publisher: Penguin – Viking, 2013 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-670-08693-1

Pages: 303

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is an ethnic Tibetan who studied in India and now lives in the U.S. She is a poet and this book is her first full length volume. Her mother left Tibet in 1959 when China invaded and reached India. Tsering was born in India, but she grew up hearing and cherishing her mother’s fond memories of her childhood in Tibet. After her mother’s demise in a road accident, the author located her extended family in Dhompa, Eastern Tibet. This book is the poetic narrative of her travels to her motherland, where she had become sufficiently foreign as to bypass all inhibitions traditionally commanded from native women. She returned to the U.S after the visit and tells the world of the sights, people, animals and Buddhism of Tibet.

The respect and devotion Tibetans express towards lamas, their spiritual masters and advisers, is a recurring theme of the book. The lamas help the common people in their hour of need, by offering astrological recommendations, clearing the laity’s doubts on every issue and even offering medicines and healing tips, when they are too sick to be cured by native Tibetan medicine. People adore them and the more higher they go in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the level of adoration is akin to divinity. When fur caps and other leather articles became fashion in Tibet, it only took a single admonishment from the Dalai Lama for people to give up the habit. Lamas’ status in society may be compared to that of Brahmins in India, but the title is not hereditary as in India. Traditional governments jealously guarded their organization. The five grave offenses defined are matricide, patricide, murder of a holy man, causing hurt to good men, and creating discord between lamas. And the punishment? To gouge out the offender’s eye, to cut his throat, to cut off his hands, to toss him from a high cliff, or to throw him into deep water. People used to encase revered lamas’ finger nails in pendants and wear on their necks. Even with all this adulation, we doubt whether they gave anything to the society in return. Tibetan society was ignorant and illiterate which naturally suited the lamas’ purpose. They didn’t venture to teach their disciples or to offer any of the civic amenities which were in their power to perform. One of the indirect advantages of Chinese occupation is the curtailment of lamas’ privileges. When people get to know things, lamas will find their own natural place. However, Tsering Wangmo does not raise any point against the status of them, rather, she acknowledges them as the Tibetans’ spiritual guides.

The author’s emotional attachment to her late mother is touching. After escaping from Tibet soon after China’s invasion in 1959, Tsering’s mother wandered for three years under great duress, to find a way out of her subjugated country to Nepal and then to India. Being tied up in a marriage that occurred rather early in her adulthood, she didn’t get on well with her husband, who didn’t obtain a place in the mother or the daughter’s hearts. The author calls her father “her mother’s husband”. So complete is the estrangement that the daughter looked forward only to her mother for love, support, guidance and companionship. Descriptions of the duo’s train journeys in which the daughter’s anguished wait for her mother’s return to the train is very moving. And the mother left her only child after she died in vehicle collision. Tsering found herself alone in the world. She reached out to her extended family in Tibet where numerous cousins warmly welcomed her to their fold. There is no separate word in the Tibetan language for cousins, other than brother or sister. The love that existed between the author and her mother is sure to haunt the reader for some time to come.

Hatred towards the Chinese – to their occupation of Tibet, their administration, its leaders and the large scale changes that is being wrought on the land – is clearly evident throughout the text. No wonder the Chinese refused to grand her visa later, when she tried to visit her homeland again. The 1959 invasion was brutal, most of the older generation carries the scars on their bodies and souls, of the inhuman misery meted out to the defenseless Tibetans by the streams of incoming Chinese soldiers. Many were killed, tortured and imprisoned for long prison terms. They incarcerated the lamas as well, in a bid to prevent a rebel leadership from taking place by the efforts of these educated men and also to obliterate Tibetan culture. After the 1980s, the conditions slightly improved. China now adorns Tibet to make her look good to tourists. Mao’s Cultural Revolution was a time of hell to Tibet – but that was true for China as well. Immense improvements in infrastructure has been brought to Tibet by the Chinese. Tibetans were generally lazy and lived an unsanitary way of life. Many of them didn’t even wash themselves for months together, as the author notes! They are naturally prone to violence as many nomads carry knives in their person and not much reluctant to plunge it upon an opponent. This observation contrasts with Tsering’s assertion at a different place that Buddhism and its doctrine of non-violence is holding its people from forming an effective force to fight the Chinese.

The book is rich with fine diction and lyrical text that carries the narrative to the reaches of poetry. Tsering Wangmo’s command of the English language and vocabulary is amazing. Her choice of words and usage is scholarly. She has been downright successful in bringing out the joys of meeting one’s relatives in a country that was home to her ancestors, but from which she has been banned entry. Also, the anguish and impotent rage that characterizes a nation in captivity is so heart-touchingly illustrated.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star