My Tibetanness

 By Tenzin Tsundue

I am Tibetan.
But I am not from Tibet.
Never been there.
Yet I dream
of dying there.

Thirty-nine years in exile.
Yet no nation supports us.
Not a single bloody nation!

We are refugees here.
People of a lost country/
Citizen to no nation.

Tibetans: the world’s sympathy stock.
Serene monks and bubbly traditionalists;
one lakh and several thousand odd,
nicely mixed, steeped
in various assimilating cultural hegemonies.

At every check-post and office
I am an “Indian-Tibetan”.
My Registration Certificate,
I renew every year, with a salaam.
A foreigner born in India.

I am more of an Indian.
Except for my chinky Tibetan face.
“Nepali?” “Thai?” “Japanese?”
“Chinese?” “Naga?” “Manipuri?”
but never the question – “Tibetan?”

I am Tibetan.
But I am not from Tibet.
Never been there.
Yet I dream
of dying there.

Writer-activist Tenzin Tsundue was born in Himachal Pradesh, India, during the chaotic period of Tibetan refugee resettlement in the early seventies. He did his schooling in Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) school, Pathikuhl and later in Dharmasala. He has a BA in English Literature from Loyola College, Madras and an MA (English Literature) from the University of Mumbai. Some of his poems were published in Indian Literary Panorama and Sunday Observer.

This poem was first published in Meghdutam.com (between 1999 to 2002)

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