Writing Exile, Writing Home
Simran Chadha
UNDER THE BLUE SKIES: A TIBETAN READER Bhuchung D. Sonam Blackneck Books, Dharamshala, 2022, 378 pp., Price not stated
THE TIBETAN SUITCASE: A NOVEL Tsering namgyal khortsa Blackneck Books, Dharamshala, 2019, 245 pp., 300
July 2023, volume 47, No 7

The generation of young Tibetans, born and brought up in India amidst the cultural diversity of the land is putting out a rich harvest of creative writing, which speaks to readers across the world telling them of what it means to exist in a state of perpetual exile, the rootlessness and sense of homelessness it entails along with the never-ending threat of cultural dilution and extinction which they face. Under the Blue Skies, an anthology compiled by the poet and Sahitya Akademi awardee Bhuchung D Sonam is one such book, which highlights how exilic sensibility partakes of both—freedom and despair. Tsering namgyal khortsa’s The Tibetan Suitcase, on the other hand, is a fictionalized narrative stemming from the peripatetic reality about the lives of this generation of young Tibetans. This is exemplified through the story of his protagonist Dawa as he shuttles between Hong Kong and Iowa and Tibet, Nepal, France, Bodh Gaya and the mountains of Mcleod which somehow offer the sense of a fixed centre amidst the global flux.

Following the asylum of HH the 14th Dalai Lama in the hamlet of Mcleodganj in the Indian Himalayas in the late fifties, the upper reaches of this mountain range have been home to Tibetan culture and the Buddhist way of life. Over the years this has solidified into a distinct Tibetan identity which we daresay has been forged under the experience of exile and the collective trauma—past and present—which this state of existence entails. Under the Blue Skies has been divided into three complementary and interdependent sections that are titled Fiction, Poetry and Non-Fiction respectively. The fiction section comprises narratives explicating the trials and tribulations of Tibetans across the globe as they negotiate the uncertainty of not-belonging ancestrally but residentially.

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