Tenzin Tsundue
SOMEWHERE I LOST MY LOSAR*
Somewhere along the path, I lost it, don't know where or when. It wasn't a one-fine-day incident. As I grew up it just got left behind, very slowly, and I didn't go back for it. It was there when as a kid I used to wait for the annual momo dinner, when we lined up for gifts that came wrapped in newspapers in our refugee school, it was there when we all gained a year together, before birthdays were cakes and candles. Somewhere along the path, I lost it, don't know where or when. When new clothes started to feel stiff and firecrackers frightening, when our jailed heroes ate in pigsties there, or were dead, heads smashed against the wall as we danced to Bollywood numbers here, when the boarding school and uniforms took care of our daily needs, when family meant just good friends, sometime when Losar started to mean just a new year, few sacred routines, somehow, I lost my Losar. Somewhere along the path, I lost it, don't know where or when Colleged in seaside city, when it was still Bombay, sister's family on pilgrimage, uncle in Varanasi, mother grazing cows in South India, still need to report to Dharamsala police, couldn't get train tickets, too risky to try waiting list, and it's three days, including return journey it's one week. Even if I go, other siblings may not find the time. Adjusting timings, it's been 20 years without a Losar. Somewhere along the path, I lost it, don't know where or when. Losar is when we the juveniles and bastards call home, across the Himalayas and cry into the wire. Losar is some plastic flowers and a momo party. And then in 2008 when our people rode horses, shouting 'Freedom' against rattling machine guns, when they died like flies in the Olympics' spectacle, we shaved our heads bald and threatened to die by fasting, but failed. I couldn't die. Somewhere along the path, I lost it, don't know where or when. Somewhere, I lost my Losar. *Losar is the Tibetan New Year in the lunar calendar which generally falls in February or March.
A PROPOSAL
pull your ceiling half-way down and you can create a mezzanine for me your walls open into cupboards is there an empty shelf for me? let me grow in your garden with your roses and prickly pears i'll sleep under your bed and watch TV in the mirror do you have an ear on your balcony? i am singing from your window open your door let me in i am resting at your doorstep call me when you are awake
When It Rains in Dharamsala
When it rains in Dharamsala raindrops wear boxing gloves, thousands of them come crashing down and beat my room. Under its tin roof my room cries from inside and wets my bed, my papers. Sometimes the clever rain comes from behind my room, the treacherous walls lift their heels and allow a small flood into my room. I sit on my island-nation bed and watch my country in flood, notes on freedom, memoirs of my prison days, letters from college friends, crumbs of bread and Maggi noodles rise sprightly to the surface like a sudden recovery of a forgotten memory. Three months of torture, monsoon in the needle-leafed pines Himalaya rinsed clean glistens in the evening sun. Until the rain calms down and stops beating my room I need to console my tin roof who has been on duty from the British Raj. This room has sheltered many homeless people. Now captured by mongooses and mice, lizards and spiders, and partly rented by me. A rented room for home is a humbling existence. My Kashmiri landlady at eighty cannot return home. We often compete for beauty Kashmir or Tibet. Every evening I return to my rented room. But I am not going to die this way. There has got to be some way out of here. I cannot cry like my room. I have cried enough in prisons and in small moments of despair. There has got to be some way out of here. I cannot cry, my room is wet enough.
PEDRO'S FLUTE
Pedro, Pedro What do you have in your flute? Is there a little boy who lost his mother and is running all around the town bare feet slapping the wet cobblestone? Pedro, Pedro Tell me what do you have in your flute? Is that a soft moaning of a young girl, pregnant at 16 thrown out of her house now living in the public park behind the toilets? Wonder how you blow a stump of a plastic pipe and how it comes alive into a flute a flute with no eye or ear or mouth whistling, now crying, now singing whistles that turn into small needle arrows arrows that sting sting even the hearts of the owls owls who have hair in their ears. Pedro, Pedro Tell me what do you have in your flute? Is that whistle in the hinges of the window the cry of the young girl? Or is that the breathing of the little boy who is now tired and sleeping at the police station? Pedro, Pedro Tell me what do you have in your flute?