The Last Call: At Least for Personal Revolution

As the counter displays, the found medium to show our concern when a conversation turns on the current hottest elegiac news among us in exile, the precise count of the tragic self-immolation-protests in Tibet against Chinese further tightening grip on personal rights and more grandiose waves of sweeping Tibet’s natural resources under the name of developments but large scale pillages can’t be missed. It shows 117. Being among ordinary Tibetans like myself, I sometimes find pre-empted by the other as a sort of competition and thereafter the expressions of elegy for such losses. And how I can dig deeper to see if it’s a feeling spontaneous sense of loss or a listless way of saying so, even if I am so curious now? I don’t mean to hurt the mass sentiments so complex and unaccountable as I am confident there are a lot Tibetans who have already overtaken my line—at least personal revolution—but I mean to awaken, unveil any remaining veils of abstraction to be more sprightly for shaping into a fellow Tibetan of the time. I mean there is no room for second-rate concern, mouth-following, pettier preoccupations other than one’s means of livelihood but to give a grave ponder over personal responsibility for being a fellow Tibetan that we can brag. I mean other than just taking part in a mass protest, hoisting national flag, putting on Free Tibet head-band, joining a mass prayer congregation, etc. I mean the shaping of oneself from within now on. But I don’t have any novel clue, a magical clue, but the one that we know how to say. And it’s really the time now to act.

No matter how fitting or odd-sounding names of revolution our learned boisterous Tibetan youths take to brand their moving initiatives as meaningful as Lhakar Day to as crude as Tsampa Revolution that just looms on like in a dream to be fabricated into reality. And mine is just like a foundation plan to work out into reality any such goals. I find we lack such on mass scale, among those I interact and express solidarity. I find such moment vibe during a protest even where the closer look gets one into trouble finding the same taken as a chore from the way the short time is handled through various sings of lightness. Can the core cause be of lacking a strong will or intention at least to optimize the time for the benefit of our cause? I couldn’t stop being so moved by truly loving outsiders for our cause behaved in such spontaneous way during the time. What lack in us? Or is ours way profounder than how physical reactions and manners should observe during such grave time?     

Something is seriously missing in us as we can’t get on with as we boast. And I can’t take this trait of glossing over every sign of weakness and exaggerating what we can present in any way. It isn’t the time now as those tossing ones’ so precious lives into cruel blazes with the core altruistic wish for common goodness or freedom for we Tibetans can’t be taken that way. We know how we take it. No matter how desperate or profound their found means of protest so heart-wrenching it has the same implication for the welfare of fellow Tibetans at large. We should jolt ourselves more strongly to feel it closer, deeper. Even if we have done our best, if I allow myself to say so, through various initiatives to draw global attention to our practical plights like repeatedly shaking someone feigning to be asleep with the same repeated calls, how we have really taken the same on personal level as an individual Tibetan: Have we really changed into a brand new fellow Tibetan? We know even a single act of self-immolation could kindle such wave of mass movement that turned out into a revolutionary change. But ours is the spate of such that the world or UNO know but so reluctant to show a sign of concern. We know why, the foul game. Or we aren’t yet lucrative enough to take into account on state level as we don’t know how to strike out with decisive, confident and united way? Are we found as ill-equipped both mentally and intellectually yet?

But before pointing our fingers against the world for reluctance and silence shouldn’t we first question ourselves what minimal changes we had on personal level for the cost of those lives for us? And this is what I am interested in dealing with so far here. I may be stepping into personal domain but I am craze-motivated to awaken our lingering senses that I find so static when it comes to learning more and becoming fuller. We can do such besides our daily chore and work. It’s only up to bringing up a firm will to do so through letting one’s view broaden rather than veiling with the static view of self-deprecation and self-content that shouldn’t be for such. It’s like to be able to cherish at least something as simple as learning a word a day besides one’s daily routine and job. And, as it’s clear, I mean it for the majority young mass who have never taken interest in acquiring such interest to broaden view or left halfway like one ending up in an odd job after passing a degree from a college. For the sheer fact of our being rather backward in awakening our gifted talents and creativities as of this oblivion to learning we have wasted so much as of not reaching up to the line from where one can enjoy rather than endure. I mean for myself and alike, who count up to 80 % or more, who haven’t had such time and privilege to bring forth so. I mean for the same who have had to shape oneself, find one’s own gifted taste somehow and find the concerned luminary outside of one’s family. But it’s up to us only.

Suppose, as an example, how we can have time to watch TV for such long hours, browse internet, toy with a smart phone, etc. But what they add to you to awaken the gifted talent within? How possible we haven’t one. We say we can attain enlightenment within a single lifespan if we work out resolutely. We can strike such high chord but ignore to hit the minor ones taking them as alien or out of reach without giving a try. We have to break this seemingly hereditary trait.

And again I mean for the majority as we are the majority that matters. And I mean for the mass awakening that matters so much for creating a sound community or state. And for us with a far heavier responsibility for being displaced refugees with a common goal. 

We say or know how those in Tibet lay such hope in us. But do we take it closer by finding and doing what one can in the free world outside? If we know it’s almost like betrayal, should we still continue so by scolding self and others in exile? Is such scolding enough? I think we are the strangest of all: such timely sense of unity and forward-moving at such time of our history is like blotted out completely from our practical senses.

Without widening our views to the extent through learning we can never come together in spontaneous way. How we hold just passing sense of one’s identity as a Tibetan: why, as said and it’s, we don’t have unbiased oneness in us and towards our goal? Can it be that we haven’t come up to the stage of such major feeling as we tend to fall sided when it comes to major cases? How possible we can come together, if not now in such abject period in our history? Or we don’t know the profundity of mass movement or unity in true sense that always wins? I answer myself we have to break this hereditary foul trait or sort of chronic sidedness from within only.

And only through widening one’s world view like learning from others how it cost to gain freedom there is hope of our coming together closer. Through which we can prepare better, sense deeper and come out more genuinely. As of my own experiences coming out of a small Tibetan community and serving within it for years I have sensed the real foul odor of our being sided in such backward way. And I have vented my disgusts in soliloquy when I could do my best and with ease. Even as I write this article I have this haunting paranoia how my fellow Tibetans would take it and so should I not publish it on my blog as I think the major site like phayul.com may not take mine as an eligible one to be published on its site. Then it’s again in the same mode that I share what’s burning within me.

And my notion of needy timely personal revolution as to repay their sublime sacrifices for our cause is like, as I hold, not below just joining in a mass to show one’s solidarity. It’s the dual cases of cause and effect: awakening one’s gifted taste and talent from its crudest form as to develop into a possible mature cherishing one and thereby unlocking oneself for wider view; as such learning leads to the firmer sense of oneness rather than foul sidedness and thereby upholding one’s identity  in far better image. Thus we can be eligible seeds for any turn and twist ahead as to shape our future. We can learn from many cases: the narrower view, the more locked up in paranoia or ignorance; the firmer oneness, the tougher to be conquered.

As I care, too, even for a single soul not be tossed thus in cruel blaze further. We can bear and come out in better way instead as for the case of our dwindling number. As I once read an article in Tibetan Review years back by a Tibetan woman from Canada to Xining on one year period assignment to teach English there, it’s so reasonable yet timely to care for our souls inside Tibet: to find means to go there and teach our deprived but bright minds rather than being sufficed by only protests and slogans. So how we can bear souls being destroyed thus? So her concern turns, as the gist of this writing, on every individual Tibetan to fare better rather than being carried away by far pettier preoccupations than one’s means of livelihood. We can do something besides. We can’t say ‘I don’t have time and I can’t.’  It isn’t the time now to say so.

It’s to unlock the very giftedness so far as to represent our true sense of loving to be a Tibetan. It’s to become fuller with wider view to come closer hands-in-hands for our cause. That’s what I take as personal revolution that we have to make real now on. It’s the prime time.

A Tempting Note

It looks almost the same now

The lovely Hayange proper is hemmed in by the low ridges around. The only mega structures here are the old steel plant next by the railway tracks that run through one side of the town, the high flyover bridge connecting the chasm between the two higher ridges on one side as to lessen the traffic flow below, the proper town, by creating this project as the direct fast track for vehicles heading for other major towns like Luxembourg or German parts. The seemingly antique church in the middle of the town bears a façade of serenity as of its dark stone walls and the overlooking tower and the belfry: its deep reverberating tolls can be heard sometimes here off the town below and behind the ridge. Yes, the one that draws my cast towards it once or twice at times from below is the standing Jesus Christ sculpture, almost of 15 to 20 feet height, on the top of the ridge on one side, which must be higher than the opposite one with the flyover. Of a whitish marble or any it stands with the hands outstretched and the loose gown forming like wings. The SOS letters in red paint before the sculpture: does it mean the supplication for his blessings and protection of this sleepy calm town? Whatever, for me, it stands as a sign of peace and common goodness.

I remember those vast fields on either side of the tracks when coming to this part from Paris by TGV train and the accidental privilege of having a seat by the window. I found them rising and falling and the sights beyond like show-hide: the tracks cut through the higher parts and letting them hide our views.

Yes, here at where I stay in this five-stories block with the well-lighted single corridor in the middle on each floor, my temporary quarter, I have had this privilege of hearing the Hindi music coming from the next door one across the corridor. I have been hearing the same over and over again for weeks now and it has been familiarized somehow to me. He tirelessly plays it every day like a part of his daily chore or rite. Its mild blare to stronger as he opens the door has now become a part of my entertainment or a moment of brooding as much as it’s for him. But how he can know about it. We have just exchanged short greetings in French only. As of my own sort of being rather self-secluded it’s hard to get acquainted that soon.

The music has the typical quality of letting one go into a trance like longing for one’s love or lamenting for a missed one… The beautiful higher vocal notes are more seductive as the low ones are tempting to be imitated. The singer must be a great artist with such voice and singing skills. But the song sounds more, as I can’t get the lyrics, like a dirge tempting me into a doleful mood out of nothing. Yes, it has an affect or influence after all. Yes, he must be the one who is familiar with Hindi music: can be from Pakistan but not Indian. But he has it like the only staple means of survival, a cushion against a blow that I can’t figure out yet. And I have happened to share it rather anonymously. And this writing is for this piece of music that I can’t figure out but has prompted me to react in my own way.

A Complement

Now my time here at Hayange, the lovely village, is drawing near to the end that says what we are, to move on… And the advantage is to learn on as well. It’s a complement post as to straighten up something as the correction to what I wrote in the above post about what I saw only from the below, that standing sculpture like of Jesus. But I found it not as I had time to take a long walk around the villages and through the cool refreshing semi-rain forests with someone who knew about here well. At the end of the forest, the top of the ridge, the vast opening stretched before with the knee-high greenery that I was going to find a type of barley in their mature stage of bearing clusters of fresh green grain-buds. The aisle as the footpath led through the field to the whitish standing sculpture overlooking the whole of Hayange and the far surroundings. As we walked along the aisle to cross over to the other side, we found a car parked near or behind the standing sculpture. As we came closer, tramping on the soft grasses and brushing our feet against the longer grasses on either side of the narrow aisle like a single rut, we found there were four of them: two young native girls and two boys. They were by the car and leaning against its bonnet parts and idling their time here or on a sort of private time.

The standing sculpture with its thick round pedestal almost 12 feet high of concrete and stone-paneled stands at the edge of the slope over the field on the dugout and leveled ground spacious enough with the space to walk around and more before it. It is of Virgin Mary almost more than 25 feet off the ground. The hands aren’t wide-stretched as I found so from below but stretched downwards showing both palms like representing love and care as her gentle beautiful face gives the same impression. The snakes swirling around or below her feet that I don’t have any idea what it represents. There is dark-painted electric lamp with square head on pipe-stand on either frontal side as to light the sculpture at night. It’s interesting to study the crescent trestle tablet of white tile-paneled at the far edge before the sculpture: the colorful picture of Hayange and the names of those places around below the picture and their unique banners. The scenes below and surrounding are magnificent from this vantage point, the selected spot. The major road over the bridge leads to the tunnel ahead that can’t be seen from below.  A breathtaking scene after all.

Football can be said as the staple sport from those well maintained grounds and such one even in a small village. As we walked back by another road around, we found a match going on between two teams. We stood on the roadside by the green hedge to observe the match for 10 minutes. This time I had time to have a glimpse of those villages around or hemmed in by those wooded hills. But the price of not knowing the language, my second foreign language, is too costly sometimes letting reprimand myself for nothing as I am only 7 months old here and new yet. The steel plant with tarnished façade like skeletons along the reserved tracks that don’t seem to be in use now can be the most vivid souvenir later on.

As we walked back, I found those boys and girls had got in the car and were having their private time inside. 

No More, Please!

My beloved brothers and sisters,

No more, please!

Nay say, ‘I will burn again and again.’

The falling heart numbed-dazed—

Thy sublime greatness too much for it.

See, the world is cheap-blind,

A yonder rescuer dreamy-blurry.

Toss not a single soul thus, please!

Lets hold on, the fated ones,

No more despair but feel,

Come closer, we can prop up—

This abjectness, this cruelty.

But seed, water, tame

A single soul, that matters…

Every single dark-polished bead

That the busy thumbs pull back;

Every rhythmic movement the busy lips call for:

No despair, no more toss of single soul into cruel blaze!

Please!

Lets hold on, the fated ones,

No more despair but feel,

Come closer, we can prop up—

This abjectness, this cruelty.

Now as I stumble on

Now the signs of the awaited one

To adorn the mother-earth alone—

Disemboweled crippled. Thy Love,

The motherly sacrifice all above…

Lo, the signs, how the numbed ones breathe!

Every pleasantness by thy toils bated breaths,

A period of fun for her children ill-starved ever

How we ones’ weekly fair here piazza-fever—

Fed up with thy heavenly gifts taken granted,

The crisp leaves of glossy colors, melody-notes,

Those clusters of white-pinkish flowers laden,

The awakening sprouts, buds dainty maidens,

The azure speckles blue void, fleecy clouds,

In essence, the warmth all senses to nods…

The diabolical greed to be fed even more:

 Like, Lo, those rolling lines of sight-sores,

The full-body chickens on rods rolling fat-burnt,

Yellowish, in those stationed steel cabins grunt,

Within the showcase-ovens busy rolling greed,

Those mouths to be fed. Oh, innocent lives fated!

To slay, burn, roast, crunch, is this greed,

Insatiable, ungrateful of us, genius-breeds.

Oh, send down the shackles to bind them,

To let see in the other realm pale and burning.

The din can’t be taken more.

The footpath stretches up there,

Across the waistline of the calm wooded ridge.

Better be there alone and vent down the grudge.

They Said

In Tibet: A nomadic pasture land in Amdo Ladrang

“When taken to the stream,

It’s bound for the river agleam;

There to the bastion of vice

Infested with insatiability-lice.

When taken to the tryst,

It’s bound for sound twist;

Up the overlapping steps

Thus mortified, up sweeps.

Pamper it or save yourself.

Pamper thus to the tune,

Ill-inspiration or Love yourself truly.”

Yes, in such sense, there is the other version of Self-Love rather than that as the offshoot of foul selfishness, arrogance, conceit… 

My Prayers

Courtesy: Yahoo news

For the current mishap in Boston, the twin blasts at the finish line of Boston Marathon 2013, and for such incidents at large caused by nefarious blinded hearts.

May the perversity meet the touch of empathy!

May the festering cruelty be subdued by the true beacon,

The exaggerated Love—may it be felt at the juncture

In the form of this feeling that acts at the moment crucial!

May those affected by losses find the path illumine—

Resignation instead of vindictiveness, the true nearness

At his divine feet, under his sublime guidance ever!

May those sinners, may be inundated by blind euphoria,

The moment blindness, find the unbiased sense to see

How foul, ill-motivated, blind their monstrous miss-deeds,

Inflicting such pains upon mere innocent souls, hearts,

Whose wails are wails that can’t be overlooked as victory,

Blind, timid, silly in true sense for the true victory,

As in his preaching, means to be the otherwise,

Resignation, forbearance, Love, empathy, unbiased sense…!

May my prayers be met as driven by such sense!

A Walk

In the roadside natural park, Porcheville, France

The initial a couple of months and half went in a melee of personal straits--the hardship of getting adjusted to the new makeshift sort of dwelling when an acute longing could be felt at every step to go back, but where; when a respite of time, space and distance for doing something was like the possibility of stealing a peek towards the other way during a point blank distance face off--but the later almost a couple of months had in store the cushioning tenderness during when a refueling happened to read and express in some way. But the latest 25 days in the new place was another probation but during when there were in store those intermittent moments for straightening oneself so far... The predominant numbness that veils and distorts is like an iron monolith before and that's what to fight against even with the left over meager strength.

A call yesterday was like a summon, a miracle that let me scan myself wholly and ponder over: to let go so or go there at the lesser familiar lair to put myself at its disposal as it wishes so, thinks that I can play a role there. A sort of savior can it be? Who doesn't need a savior? But the true savior with golden halo, deeply embedded amid the self-created quagmire, is too dim to light over the present darkness.

A thirst to quench,

A moment of respite,

When a feeling despite,

Like a drop out wrenched.

Mouthing a sincere prayer,

Less self, a jumble sleeps,

Glimpse thee in peeps,

A moment yonder.

In those words like the mirrors,

When a self-portrait is set,

When a line fits mind-set,

A swelling joy wave pats the sailor. 

The Oddity

Is 'silence' the best answer? Then, under the aegis of the means known as 'telepathy', can such be felt, confirmed and responded in sequence? No way or yes so seldom. But, yes, the interplay of the minimal dedication--unyielding to this isolating trait--of the sort is practically needed for us rather than counting on such sublime means reserved for ones with introspective clairvoyance of the sort.  And for being so poorly gifted with this quality of ‘opening up’ for more convenience in reaching an end, a decision, rather than locking up for nothing I wonder how I can make such remarks. I find myself who can remain pondering on to the end of one’s life, when the way back is all grey and modest in retrospect. When, as it’s said, only the major events of one’s life, from the best to the worst, can return as the flashbacks that shape the mood of the leaving soul.  I had been absorbed so again in such muse that enabled or made me stand or remain in the same position or place for the moment when I could get back to myself or someone might wake me up accidentally. It was her who hurled this question at me across the glass-topped dining table. I had no idea how long I had been in such trance but felt sorry for leaving her so. I felt this growing self-consciousness, the acute spite for my abnormality but it had soothed me a lot, what she might have thought of me or how she had seen me.

She was in the same tight dark jeans and a pink woolen pullover. The palms of her hands clasped against each other with the one thumb on the other, the tops of the clasped fingers pressed between her thighs nearing knees and she was slightly moving like trying to pull them out. She was looking at me. Her feet in the felt slippers were slapping on the floor like waking me up. She was waiting for my answer. But, as she thought that I hadn't got it, she asked me again.

‘How old are you?’ Her eyes dancing with the sort of conversational jest behind the glasses, her lips parted like about to add something or make way to a friendly grin.

‘Oh, sorry, I am 34,’ I replied tersely and observed her expression.

‘But you look much younger like 24 or 25,’ she said with the same jest in her eyes.

‘What do you think how old I look like?’

‘Like 22 or 23,’ I speculated with a mind not to say higher.

‘You’re right. I am 22,’ she said with her fingers up making the sign of ‘victory’.

I got that I could say the right thing that she looked pleased. Yes, when dealing with a woman, I tended to care not to hurt her out of a gained knowledge that a woman is always so sensitive. Even for her being more open and yielding to what I took as the start of the sentimental torment or joy I found myself holding back with a sort of isolating trait. I just wished everything could be settled by ‘telepathy,’ the damning obstinacy for more complex convergence. I got that it couldn't from my past several encounters. But a faint dawn was almost on, a way to walk ahead to take someone by surprise not by this habitual muse but by another means, to listen attentively…

She was staring at me through the same jest in her eyes and with the same parted lips. Oh, she must be surprised of me, the way I behaved… I couldn't stop thinking so and found myself choked finding nothing to strike up a conversation but getting a sequence of fake telepathy occurring between us. How such could be possible? She seems to be communicating through it but how she could get what the nonsense I hold, I felt sorry for I couldn't stop going into such trance again that the circumstances entailed for me.  Her parted lips, jest in her eyes were there as the backdrop during the moment taken. The whole moment was something for me and something another for her, I sensed.

*

Naked

I wonder why I somehow favored to write in those broken free verses with odd rhymes that tried hard to get fitted at the ends of those lines…!

 

A sort of rustle,

A sort of shudder,

A cry after all,

I found those stripped feeble trees

Around and crowded on those low ridges like odd bosoms

Forced to chaff their own thin multi-twigs one another,

The tormentor, the formless shrilly voice sharp-cool

Blowing sporadically to move them into a groaning cemetery-dance.

The untimely or timely fresh buds like a cub’s claws,

How ill-fated exposed to seasonal cruelty—

May they come out as the whimpering bearers’ wishes

To adorn them and to grow into their own, the posterity!

Can a sincere prayer be responded?

A sort of self-image,

A sort of self-understanding,

A feeling after all.

The saints, the escaped ones, are those grey pigeons

Attached on to the steep ridge-roof of that four storey maison

With steep gables, reddish mud-tiles roof, unpainted chimney stacks,

The two little attic windows capped with the same tawny mud-tiles roof.

Taking a round nearby, they hover over it, land on it and remain there.

Their days seem to be in complete musing pose

Except a random habit, the dark little beaks on the swiveling necks

Poking at an itchy spot on the back…

Real in peace, but where do they return at night?

They draw this stare,

Again today there they’re,

In complete placid pose.

Or the tomb yard overrunning the slope,

The tidy glossy marble panels

Inscribed memories and the flowers…

Are they bound here for those gone ones?

The only clothed one,

The odd cedar with three prime branches

Without any scent but flaunting at the odd time.

The stripped ones and semi-stripped hedges numbed,

The odd fans for its peremptory call.

And oddity as naked as ignorance.

Uprooted

Thrown overcrowded in a familiar white block,

A whiff of uncertainty along the narrow corridor,

A heavy native accent adorns the tried medium,

The tool of survival, the tongue to have wider view.

At every nook and cranny, at every pub trendy,

In grey loose plush track pants or an over-sized jacket branded

With its attached hat thrown back ‘I don’t care’ and

The striped rims accentuating ‘What I wear’ over branded shoes.

The others from narrower backgrounds follow suit so,

The same uprooted ones doing the same gait,

In a sort of hopping, knees bending more with springy effects,

While the head and shoulders plunging more forward

And the hands half-tucked in pockets, the pondering zones

‘Where gonna end up before the other day begins…,’

How mimicking is going to fare for this pale hope

So full but easy-going as this trash I cope with to present.

In bleary yet struggling eyes heaps of insecurities dance

To the tune of how the funky vibe turns on,

The only solace left to flaunt ‘I am no less,’

But the more worth-endowed left to rot this way.

‘You Chinoise?’ A volley of verbal attacks

For a sniffer as I who study their ways amid personal struggles.

I wonder why many hurl at me this silly question…

Despite my being displaced by the same one they think I am!

Whatever merits there’re for being among the uprooted ones,

There are things under one’s nose not to be neglected as well.

For a fit of emotion can be turned inward only—

The less cushioned inmates against any possible blow,

The despairing cries of fated underprivileged ones on loose.

For the granted ledge has to be maintained in swiveling attention

With every means for crueler the world tends to be,

But, the other day, how warm and yielding ones at ease seem to be.