Tibetan anthology ‘Under The Blue Skies’ touches the core of identity in exile

Addressing several themes taken up writers across different age groups, Under The Blue Skies doubles as documentation of experiences in exile, touching the core of the exential questions of Tibetan refugees, and their connection to their motherland.
Bhuchung D Sonam, the editor of the Tibetan anthology of fiction and nonfiction works, juggles multiple roles as a poet, translator, and publisher.
Speaking at the launch of his third book at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, Sonam said, “Couple of weeks ago, I was filling out my application for a visit to Japan. I filled out my name, DOB and other details. Then there was a tiny column, ‘nationality’. I scrolled through the drop-down and I did not find my country.” “At the end of the long l, there was a word, ‘stateless’… It is hard to be a refugee but it is even harder to be a stateless person.”
It is the identity of statelessness that serves as a recurring theme in Under The Blue Skies.
Bhuchung D Sonam and Tenzin Tsundue. (TenzinTsundue_Instagram screen grab)
Themes of Under The Blue Skies
Subtitled ‘A Tibetan Reader’, Under The Blue Skies was promoted at the event prominently as an attempt Tibetan writers to own their narrative and present it to the world. The anthology articulates their experiences into stories in the hope of what Sonam said, “helping Tibetans survive more successfully in exile.”
Sonam said it is high time Tibetans step out of the “exotic” and stereotypical narratives created outsiders. “With the exoticisation of Tibetan Buddhism, people assume that I am happy, kind, and full of compassion all the time. But I am not always happy. I can get angry too,” he said.
In this sense, writing has helped him overcome his frustration to an extent. “Writing to me is asserting myself, I don’t know what it does to others. But it helps me to survive. Had I not written, I would have died a long time ago.”
Under The Blue Skies conveys this assertion as it is not a romanticised picture of colourful flags, vast grasslands, monks, and prayer wheels but instead an expression of loneliness and angst while being ripped off from home.
A publishing house of Tibetans, Tibetans, for Tibetans
Also present at the launch was Tibetan writer and activ Tenzin Tsundue, one of the publishers of the anthology, who added more perspective on the publishing process.
Blackneck Books, a homegrown Tibetan effort, has had a story of its own. It all began when Tsundue along with other Tibetan writers created a website aptly titled Tibet Writes as a platform for self-expression for like-minded storytellers. Then, in 2002, the collective decided to launch a publishing wing of their own—the result of their efforts was Blackneck.
Tsundue talked about the struggles behind the publication process and the subsequent promotion. “If we publish Bhuchung’s book, then Bhuchung will arrange for the money however he has to. We have book launches in Dharamshala and we even force our friends to buy the books,” he said.
Despite this pressure, Under The Blue Skies marked its 50th title in publication.
Such publications in English, Tsundue added, are still few in number. The main bulk of Tibetan writing actually happens in the Tibetan language.
Tenzin Tsundue (TenzinTsundue_Instagram screen grab)
‘Tibetan Bhagat Singh’
Tenzin Tsundue—who has spent over six decades in exile—is synonymous with the red band tied to his forehead that he pledges to wear till Tibetans get their country back. Growing up in the Tibetan Children’s Village School—a group of refugee schools built in exile under the special request of the Dalai Lama to retain Tibetan identity—Tsundue said, “As a refugee, one of the first lessons that I learnt was that I was born with the biggest opportunity to become a hero of our nation.”
In the following years, he came to be known as “Tibetan Bhagat Singh”. In the following years, he came to be known as the ‘Tibetan Bhagat Singh’ for his relentless activism for the Tibetan cause. In 2002, when the then-Chinese premier Zhu Rongji met Indian business tycoons at the Oberoi Towers in Mumbai, Tsundue climbed to the 14th floor of the building just to unfurl the Tibetan flag. His ‘one-man protests’ have sent him to jail over 16 times, particularly whenever Chinese leaders and diplomats visit India.
Tsundue recalled the time when he crossed the Himalayas to sneak into his home, the one his parents and grandparents left behind in Tibet. Passing through the extreme heat during the days and freezing nights, standing on the soil of his homeland, the then-22-year-old was lost. “The people I was supposed to meet weren’t there.”
Days later he was arrested Chinese security. Blindfolded, denied food and water, constantly getting beaten. “I was in a Chinese jail.. in Tibet.” He was “thrown” back to India after three months. “I felt that when I came back to India, I had come back home! And then, I wondered, is my home India or Tibet? What I thought was my home (Tibet), has changed so much.”
Through the decades, he has adapted to new languages and has picked up Tamil along the way. In his house in South India, he jokes with his Tibetan mother in Tamil, a language she doesn’t understand; his mother retorts back in Kannada, a language he doesn’t understand.
He has never celebrated his birthday. Born in a makeshift house, three birth records were made at three different offices.
His precarious state of exile identity is explored in his story My Kind Of Exile, one of the pieces in Under the Blue Skies. “Ask me where I’m from and I won’t have an answer. I never really belonged anywhere. Never really had a home.”
From the Dalai Lama to third-generation Tibetan writers
Divided into two parts—fiction and non-fiction—the latter part of the book starts with one of the first Tibetan writings in English, My Land and My People, an acclaimed account the Dalai Lama. “There was nothing dramatic about our crossing of the frontier. The country was equally wild on each side of it, and uninhabited. I saw it in a daze, of sickness and weariness, and unhappiness deeper than I can express,” the Dalai Lama writes.
It has been 63 years since he left Tibet on the broad back of a Dzo, a primitive Tibetan transport, in 1959.
Born in exile, third-generation Tibetan refugee Kaysang writes about losing her sense of identity—her name. In the chapter Untitled, Kaysang writes, “My friends say half of us are called the same first name (Tenzin) and the rest a version of my second.”
This sense of loss of identity in exile also lingers in Tibet, at least when the Tibetan population, nearly outnumbered in their own country, talks in Chinese, a language that has been forced upon them, institutionally and physically.
Stranger In My Native Land, another chapter in the anthology, recalls the time Tenzin Sonam—a filmmaker behind White Crane Films, which specialises in films on Tibetan subjects—went to Kumbum in Tibet’s Amdo province, where his father was born. As Tenzin meets three of his first cousins, only Nyima interprets for them—no one else can speak a word of Tibetan. Downing alcohol, one of the cousins, Dhondup “breaks down and sobs like a child, hugging me, speaking to me in Xining Chinese, shaking his head and groaning as if racked some deep, searing pain”.
Under The Blue Skies is published home-grown, self financed Tibetan publishing, Blackneck Books. (Photo credit- Blackneck Books_ Instagram screen grab)
Language imperialism
Ananya Vajpeyi, an associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, has known Tsundue and Sonam from their initial days of starting out with Blackneck Books.
Vajpeyi, who has written extensively on the intersection of intellectual hory and political theory, said one of the problems of being in “in-between” states is that a refugee’s relationship with the languages they learn is not an equal one. “These languages, in a sense, become imperialic and dominating whether it be Hindi, Chinese, or even in English.”
A case in point is Sonam. He has published three anthologies of Tibetan writings in English. Muses In Exile, Burning The Sun’s Braids, which is a translated anthology of 13 Tibetan poets in Tibet, and the latest Under The Blue Skies. “How wonderful it would be to write in Tibetan, but sadly the only way I can make the world know my story is through English,” said Sonam.
Under The Blue Sky was launched at India Habitat Centre on September 6, 2022. (Blackneck Book/ Instagram screen grab)
A full circle
In fifth grade, Sonam wanted to learn English, more specifically an English poem written a Tibetan. He scrolled through all the shelves in his school library until he found none and decided to go with a random poem written a foreigner.
“Unarmed and unattended, walks Tsar through Moscow…” he recited a poem in a language that he wanted to learn but the words coming from his mouth meant nothing to him. Sitting in that void, he said, “This desire to have a voice of my own, something that I can associate myself with in a language that I was trying to learn, made me do what I do now.”
It has been four decades since Sonam’s father had walked with him into exile, crossing the borders into Nepal and then India. He has become a refugee with a diminishing sense of belongingness over the years.
Years later, Under The Blue Skies will now be taught as a supplementary textbook in all Tibetan Children’s Village Schools throughout India.