Qu’ils mangent de la brioche (Let them eat cake!)

I realize I am not there yet, ‘there’ being the place where I can write an analytical piece on Feminism. I looked at the previous post and marveled at my own arrogance, to think I was all set to write. However realization being the first step towards eliminating ignorance, I am glad to have come to that conclusion instead of preaching what I don’t fully understand. Speaking of which, sometime last year Samdhong Rinpoche made a sweeping statement; he said (I paraphrase) the main purpose of women’s movement was not to fight for rights but to empower women. Against the few critics were more who defended him basically on grounds that Rinpoche’s knowledge is so deep and wide that many fail to comprehend his greatness and wisdom. I have a few things to say about it.

Rinpoche is an authority figure on some subjects. Yet for the same reason that people don’t seek medical advice from anyone but a medical professional (at least in this day and age) I also think twice about a monk speaking on women’s rights. Besides the lack of relevant educational background, there is also issues regarding association, life and lived experiences. He is not a woman, nor married to a woman or has children / family life. I also doubt that his reflections stemmed from an acute and prolonged observation and study of women’s issues. Moreover, there is no social justice movement in the history of our planet, which has not been won and contested without some form of struggle/protest/fight by the oppressed. I admit that to some extent the struggle to eliminate discrepancies may have become more subtle thus leading many to think it doesn’t exist but we need to only look beneath the surface pretensions and it’s there in all its glory. Both the women’s movement and the Tibetan movement are based on social justice because of the systemic violation of rights and discrimination in social, economic and political spheres. Yet has anyone ever declared the focus of the Tibetan movement as not about fighting for rights but to empower Tibetans. Empowerment cannot happen without rights and there will always be a fight for rights (in practice) as long as discriminations remain.

If Rinpoche has indeed singlehandedly found a way to empower women without raising the issue of women’s rights then feminists and women’s movement proponents around the world should truly honor him. After a long history of burning ‘witches’ and confirming the inferiority of the ‘other’ sex in a thousand ways, lo and behold a representative of the clergy has finally found the route to our empowerment! The irony! The irony of it all should be their last words, a la Kurtz! However, I doubt it is the case. The greats and pseudo greats in our society are used to sharing their philosophical wisdom and advice without so much as by your leave. I call it word play and Rinpoche is a front-runner. His speeches are high on words, low on explanations and the masses are left ever divided on their own interpretation of what the great Rinpoche meant by it all. I find it a rather old school way of intimidation through display of one’s ‘knowledge’; more precisely it’s a word charade and the mating dance of the birds of paradise. For those that say Rinpoche shouldn’t be blamed for his superiority, I argue that while he is not to be blamed for his intellectual prowess the onus is on him (by the very same token of his superiority and responsibility as the prime minister) to speak in a way the audience is able to understand especially on issues that have direct consequences on people’s lives. There is no need for tantric melodrama after all we are talking about contemporary social issues not religious epiphanies.

The tragedy is the lack of Tibetan women and groups responding to his statement and/or demanding explanations on what he meant by such a statement. I am left with Beauvoir’s astute observation in her seminal work “The Second Sex”- we women carry multiple identities all of which seems to come first at the cost of our primary identity as women, when in fact this very identity shapes our social destiny and others perception of us. The Tibetan Women’s Association is such a classic example.

p.s. Conspiracy theorists may believe I am a Rinpoche basher. Yet I maintain I have no affiliations with any such individuals or groups. As a member of the Tibetan public I support some of his reforms in the Tibetan exile government while opposing those that I don’t agree with. My only rule of thumb is not to get blinded by the cult of personality.

WTFness!

I am an avid reader of Amit Varma’s blog India Uncut but he has been MIA for the last couple of months and I sorely miss his posts, especially the WTFness section. WTFness honors the ridiculousness of life and I am grateful to my blog dost Shobhaa De for introducing me to his page. I still haven’t read his debut novel My friend Sancho yet (its been on my list) but if it is anything like his posts, I am sure it will be entertaining at the very least.

It may very well be that I see patterns where there are none. In my observation, increasingly in the last decade or so Indian writers have shed their predecessors’ somewhat whimsical overindulgence in long flowery passages (a colonial hangover?)and embraced a la minimalist trend; although they haven’t reached Palahniuk heights yet. This relatively new found love for economy of words and precision have also brought with it an unapologetic brand of desi humor that is fresh and crass at times. In that sense, White Tiger (for me) was a coming of age Indian writing in English. I loved the book from its opening letter to the Chinese president to its closing line. Last summer, undettered by its plunge in the bathtub I blow-dryed the book and gifted it to a Chinese friend whom I met through Woeser La. I hope he took better care of it than I did. All this is not to say the more classical Anglo-Indian writing style faces extinction. Far from it. Parallel to the new ‘developments’ there will always be a stylized Rushdie writing his/her magnum opus every couple of years.

Going back to Amit Varma, I have been trolling his blog for a new post. All in vain. Nonetheless while browsing his archives I found this post on promoting reading, which I wanted to share http://indiauncut.com/iublog/article/kindle-your-children/ I wonder if you can download Tibetan language books on Kindle. That will be a feat! Amongst contemporary Tibetan language writers, I would love to read Dhondup Gyal’s work. Come to think of it are  there any articles on Tibetan literary movements? I am an ignoramus.

P.S. I have been doing some background reading on feminist theories. So the next post might be an analytical rant. Happy April Fool’s Day!

Losar & the never-ending shows of Tibet

In about a day’s time, on the 15^th day of Tibetan New Year households in Lhasa will put away their Losar derga (new year offering). It will be followed by end of Losar parties. Nangmas and bars will burst at the seams. Conversations for several weeks in the work units will be dominated by how many boxes of beers were consumed that night, followed by who said and did what in a state of utter drunkenness. In retrospect I wonder why there isn’t an Alcoholics Anonymous group in Lhasa! To my knowledge, there are still no NGOs that provide counseling services for addiction issues, yet the number of alcoholics in Lhasa cannot be non significant considering its massive consumption is often cited as one of the main causes of marital rift alongside gambling.

For readers who may not have watched this year’s Losar show, here is the link  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwEBZdczCVg This is a modern day tradition that I have voluntarily adopted from my parents. Others like cleaning the house until your back breaks, allocating a whole day to make buckets of deep-fried Khabsey, paying an exorbitant amount of money for new furniture and “Tampa” chupa are not things that I have faithfully preserved. Even now the memory of walking down Lhasa’s ‘Hollywood’ street during Losar eve with its bizarre plastic mushrooms, toadstools and palm trees en route the big department store brings me more pain than joy. That street is the quintessential symbol of outrageous development that did not consult either the natural environment or the taste of the people it aspired to please. The sad part is everywhere in the city there are obnoxious architectures built in the name of modernity and the countryside is not far behind. The gateways to county and prefecture seats are anomalies that defy financial logic and aesthetics. Every morning when we drove into Dranang, the entrance to the county made me think it was a time machine to medieval Rome. Apt considering the villages inside the grandiose gate lives in pre modern condition.

Along with Losar celebrations, this year also marked Xizang TV’s (Tibet Television) 25^th year anniversary. Click here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvAHDud3GfE&feature=related for their show. Extend a sense of solidarity to the English presenter will you? The poor thing looks nervous (stage fright?) and garbles quite a bit. The theme of the anniversary show was to revisit all the popular TV series and movies that they have produced during their 25 years of existence in Tibet. The motive is simple; to showcase how integral they are to the lives of ordinary Tibetans.  Some will say they are justified; no matter how many times they rerun the same TV show, the stories and the characters’ grasp over popular sentiments do not wither. The old and the young watch it tirelessly because the shows have merged with memories, transcending its plot and evoking melancholia for the past every time it is replayed. Tibetan fans of Hindi cinema will surely understand. I like to play the classic Guru Dutt song “Jaane Woh Kaise Log” just because it evokes memories of family pilgrimage in India. We used Gendun Choephel’s lamyig and literally followed his footsteps but after Amravati (Palden Drepung), courtesy of the Tibetan locals we found it was easier and more time effective to listen to their directions instead. Times have changed; I tried to convince my father on several occasions but I was thirteen and he is the family patriarch.

The TV series and movies are seldom referred by their ‘official’ translated title, instead there are commonly named after popular characters of the show. The Hongkong drama titled “koe peh leh la thar thab kah” in Tibetan is popularly known as ‘Acheh Akhang’ after the two brothers who are the main characters of the show. Similarly the Brazilian drama “Yongmo” is popularly known as “Yizo La” after its female lead character, the long-suffering maid. The Chinese classic “Pawo gya dhang gyed”(Chu Ngog Tam Gyud) is named Woesung after one of the central characters in the show. One of the funniest memories was watching “Yeh Wada Raha” dubbed in Tibetan. Locals call it “su-nyi-tha” after the female protagonist “Sunita” (played by Poonam Dillon and then Tina Munium now Ambani). These are certainly not the only shows that are popular. The list goes on and on.

TV anchors are themselves often the subject of street gossip and humor. At the time when I was living in Lhasa, Rangmoe Jigdak was jokingly called “Baomo Hao Xiang” (the sweetheart of housemaids). For it was said that when he was on air girls in the neighbouring Tolung county and housemaids in the city left their chores untended and glued their eyes to the television screen much to the chagrin of home owners. Kunkyi and Tseyang have a similar effect on men and of course I’m including Taring Yangzom the crème de la crème of them all! Her beauty combined with a great flair for languages makes her undoubtedly the evergreen toast of Xizang TV and her personal life contributed to urban myths. Occasionally during official ceremonies their communist rhetoric and references to “pre-liberation” Tibet may irk the public but they are quickly forgiven because it is thought that they have little freedom of choice as to the content of the broadcast.

During the IATS seminar last year, there was a presentation on contemporary movies on Tibet produced by the Chinese state and their themes. The list of movies compiled was comprehensive but foreign television shows as well as movies not produced by the state although shown in Tibet were not a part of it. I felt that was unfortunate because those are undoubtedly much more popular than majority of the movies on the list; Xizang TV itself seemed to indicate as much in their anniversary show this year. In a group conversation I asked some of the Tibetan scholars from Tibet if they knew about most of the movies mentioned during the presentation. Typical of Lhasa sarcasm, one of them said, “No, but what can you do when these days students appear more knowledgeable than the teacher”. One may argue that it was outside the scope of the research to include those but how & why you select a particular research question over another is not free of value and judgment. Do cultural outsiders sometimes miss the forest for the trees but then to be fair maybe their focus is on trees in which case does the forest really matter? Well that my dear Watson, seems like another chicken and egg question.

P.S. Readers will excuse my Holmes moment. I am ‘light’ reading after a series of non-fiction, the last of which was the admirable but somewhat dense Guns, Germs & Steel.

Happy Tibetan New Year!

Just a short and sweet Tibetan New Year greeting for fellow bloggers and visitors! Have a wonderful  year of the Hare! Will have a post on Losar soon. Happy partying and indulge in chura, mar dhang tsak-sha. I know the original lyrics of the song says”yak-sha” but I think the right term is “tsak sha”. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Random Losar thought of the day: I’d rather be Draupadi than Sita.

The Great Tibetan Novel and Shock Therapy!

In the last couple of months I have had the privilege of knowing a Tibetan woman blogger whose love and appreciation for Tibetan language and poetry sometimes makes me feel like a second-class citizen. She has published a book in Tibetan poetry, is a popular blogger at Khabda, has taught Tibetan Language back in India and is a strong advocate of Tibetan culture. Often when we talk, I am reminded of my dear friend Wangdue la whose alleged role in the 2008 demonstrations has dealt him a life sentence. He too has a great love for Tibetan poetry and literature. There is much to be said and remembered about Wangdue la but let me not talk about it (yet) because those memories deserve a spot in my great Tibetan novel. This is where you are supposed to laugh and I am supposed to say good for me!

In high school, my goal was to come up with a book of poetry so my Maths notebook became the victim of melodramatic Victorian elegies to concepts of life, love and nature. Majority of the poems had a prologue and like the poets who I read religiously; it took me six lines or more to describe the round moon. To his credit, my Maths teacher far from rebuking and delivering a couple of ‘well-intentioned’ slaps (the concept of what constitutes child abuse is relative) simply said “you need to have passing grades in Maths if you want to write poems”.

Contrary to his liberal views, at home when my family realized that I was writing poetry and half formed essays, my mother decided it was time I was introduced to the real world. She made me watch an old black & white Bengali film (with subtitles of course) where the protagonist, an aspiring writer, lives at the brink of starvation and eventually dies bereft of all hope and joy. This was shock therapy and her way of bringing me back to what she saw as the practical realities of life. Unbeknownst to her I still wrote bits and pieces, which felt like acts of treachery…anyone who loves to write knows that it isn’t something you can ever control but her “lesson” made me think that it was foolish to confuse passion with rozi roti (sustenance)! So then and there ended my hopes of a literary career and with it the thought of becoming a writer.

More than a decade and a half later, I feel older and wiser. Things that seemed frighteningly true for a child’s mind don’t hold much ground any more. Yet there are far more ominous thoughts that cripple my urge to write. These are thoughts of what constitute a good book, expectations, and the fear of being assessed; can I write? I am far too critical of others and when I see a woman on the back cover of a book and her first chapter opens with an air of wisdom combined with the smell of earth and sounds of cowbells, I am appalled! There are already too many Alice Munros and here ends my great Tibetan novel.

Drum rolls… fade.