#tibetanness

Fifty-one 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.