Turtle Feet

“In order to understand something clearly, one must first give it up.”

I said something similar to one of my best friends in Dharamsala the week before I left. While I knew I would miss India like crazy – and I was right – I experienced so much that I knew I needed to leave to let it all soak in.

I picked up Turtle Feet at a small bookstore in Majnu ka Tilla, the Tibetan colony in Delhi. It jumped out at me because I had been thinking a lot about my monk friend, his life, and the community’s expectations of monks. The front flap of Turtle Feet included a line about demystifying monks’ lives. Perfect food for thought.

Back in Montreal, when I finally sat down to read it, my first impression was that the author, Nikolai Grozni, was a stupid injie (Westerner) who took his vows to become a monk without fully understanding what it meant. His friends were the epitome of the Western tourists I hated in Dharamsala, oblivious to the culture and community around them and disrespectful without even being aware of it.

But as I read, I discovered that the author was slowly learning lessons that gave him a deeper understanding of the community – many lessons I myself had to learn. In one chapter, Grozni writes about meeting Tsar, a Western monk who smoked and was always hanging out with girls. At first he seemed interested in Tsar because he was a fellow Western monk who wasn’t afraid to still act however he wanted. But by the end of the chapter, Grozni realized that he was being judged by the community for hanging out with someone who had such a bad reputation.

Reading about the difficulties Grozni encountered on his spiritual quest for the truth made me think more about my own struggle to understand the Buddhist ideas of emptiness and impermanence. The more I have read about Buddhism, the more I have felt like a stupid Westerner who has been taught to hang on to people and experiences, be miserable missing them when they were gone, and to deeply fear death. In comparison, my Tibetan friends seem to be able to cope much better with life’s changes. I keep trying to override the worldview that is deeply engrained in me, but the process is making me realize how difficult it is to change my fundamental beliefs when they are the basis of my actions and reactions on a daily basis. I have also realized that until now, I have not chosen those fundamental beliefs, I have merely soaked them in from my surroundings. I took some comfort in knowing that I am not alone in my struggle; even as a monk who was studying Buddhist texts with learned teachers, Grozni also seemed to be grappling to understand Buddhism through the worldview from his childhood.

Grozni’s descriptions of Dharamsala are so vivid. He describes the bustle of the town, the packs of dogs and beggars, and being surrounded by the Himalayas so precisely that I felt again what it was like to be there. It made me miss the fresh air and the night sky and the million sounds I could hear from my bed in the morning, and even the damn monkeys.

At a time when I was painfully missing India, Turtle Feet helped me realize that Dharamsala will never be the same as it was during the year I was there. Many of my friends have left, our lives have changed, and our experiences have changed us. At the same time, I know that Dharamsala will always be there and will probably always evoke a sense of awe in those who visit it.

The Case of the Missing Toothbrush

For Sun Chee

Roommates. Most of us have lived with them at some point in our lives. They are strangers with whom we must coexist, whose bizarre habits and foibles we must cope with and who must cope with ours in return. I am currently living with three such creatures. My roommates are an unemployed dancer who unintentionally ate hash brownies from our freezer, a busking musician who likes to rant about politics with me, and (my personal favourite) an out-of-work actress who has taken over the apartment since she moved in a month ago.

We’ve had the usual roommate issues: dirty dishes left everywhere, garbage that doesn’t get taken out, bills not paid, doors left unlocked and shoes being worn in the house. But my ultimate favourite so far has been the case of my missing toothbrush.

I came home late one night and it was just gone.

My initial reaction was to mutter “stupid f***ing roommates” under my breath – an increasingly common curse these days. All I kept thinking was WHY would anyone take a used toothbrush?! I told myself that there had to be a rational explanation. I searched the trashcans, thinking it might have fallen in the toilet or been used to clean shoes, and then discarded. Nothing.

Then my imagination started to wander. Maybe the two annoying cats had learned acrobatics while we were out and taught themselves how to open the perilously high medicine cabinet. I laughed at the mental picture of the two cats standing one on top of the other, stealing my toothbrush as revenge for all the times I sprayed them with water to get them out of my room.

When I was a kid and my mum had lost something, she used to say, “Things don’t just sprout legs and walk off.” But if my roommates were telling the truth, they didn’t touch my toothbrush.

Maybe my Indian-made toothbrush was homesick and just couldn’t take it anymore.

Imagining Peace and Public Engagement

I recently went to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibit about John Lennon and Yoko Ono, entitled “Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko”. Mixing the couple’s music and artwork, the exhibit gave a detailed chronology of John and Yoko’s relationship while encouraging the public to interact with the ideas and values they embodied. There was the nail painting in which members of the public were encouraged to hammer a nail and tie a piece of their hair around it, an all-white chess set, and a room with maps of the world on which people could stamp the words “Imagine Peace”. My favourite was the last room where we wrote our hopes for peace on cards and hung them from one of the dozen trees fluttering with well wishes of thousands of people.

Great exhibits such as this one always reignite my interest in museum curation. “Imagine” was also inspiring in its content. Despite having grown up listening to the Beatles, I was surprised how little I knew about John and Yoko, other than the couple’s famous bed-in at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel and the claim that Yoko broke up the Beatles. I was impressed by the couple’s commitment to issues of social justice and the creative ideas they came up with, from their acorn campaign and the “War is Over! (if you want it)” billboard Christmas present, to the announcement of the country Nutopia and the album “Some Time in New York City”. However, John and Yoko’s impassioned campaigns made me realize that in today’s music and art world, we don’t have the same principled actions. Artists write political lyrics and promote different causes, but I can’t think of a single one who is doing anything nearly as creative or engaging as John and Yoko did.

Standing in a room surrounded by “War is Over!” posters and video footage of protests all over the world, I was saddened by the seeming lack of political awareness or engagement today in comparison to the 60’s and 70’s when John and Yoko were at the height of their activism. I guess it didn’t help that my excitement about activism in the 60’s and 70’s was being fed by “My Revolutions”, a novel by Hari Kunzru that I was reading at the time.

And yet in the last room, thousands of people had taken the time to write messages of hope for peace and tie them onto the branches of trees. I read a lot of the messages. People obviously care about peace and making the world a better place; I think they just need to be inspired to take action. Yoko Ono and this exhibit inspired people to take this small symbolic action.

But we need more.

Fire Under the Snow

At this year’s Montreal Human Rights Film Festival, I went to see “Fire Under the Snow”, a film about Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan Buddhist monk who spent 33 years in Chinese jails. The documentary was simple but well made – it captured the real nature of the monk who drew me into the Tibet movement nine years ago.

I first heard about Palden Gyatso in high school. I was then a member of the Amnesty International club at school and had just learned about the situation in Tibet. A friend of mine, who was a member of Students for a Free Tibet, insisted that I come to see Palden’s public talk.

Just like in his talk nine years ago, in “Fire Under the Snow” Palden tells the story of how he was arrested for protesting against China’s invasion of Tibet in 1959. He shows the tools the Chinese prison guards used to torture him and the other inmates, describing in gory detail how he was tied up, hanged, shocked, and beaten. And yet, despite the horrible pain inflicted on him, Palden la never gave in to his interrogators’ demands that he denounce his teacher as a spy nor did he lie about his motivations for protesting. Whenever questioned, he honestly told the prison guards that Tibet was independent and that he protested for it to be so yet again. After 23 years in several prisons and 10 years in hard labour camps, Palden was released and escaped to Dharamsala, India, where he still lives. Instead of staying in a monastery with fellow monks, Palden chose to live in a small room that I used to pass on my way to temple so that he could continue to work for Tibetan independence.

Nine years ago, Palden’s story moved me more than any other political prisoner’s case had. I was amazed by the small, smiling monk who sat humbly but resolute at the front of the room, with a great sense of humour and deep compassion for the Chinese people and his prison guards, even after so many years of brutal torture. Because of his talk, I joined the local chapter of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) who had helped organize his cross-Canada tour.

Last year, Palden was attending a press conference in Dharamsala that SFT had helped organize for the Spanish lawsuit against the Chinese government, in which he is a main witness of the genocide being carried out in Tibet. A friend, knowing that Palden la had inspired me to join the Tibet movement, took me to meet him after the press conference. When we were introduced, Palden la held my hand, smiled sincerely, and said “good friends!”

It is the strength and dedication of Tibetans like Palden Gyatso who keep me involved in the movement. If they still have hope, then so will I. It’s infectious – as I’m sure the rest of the audience at “Fire Under the Snow” would agree.

Ma nuit blanche à Montréal

"La nuit blanche" (the all-nighter) is an annual festival designed to encourage Montrealers to come out of their hibernation at the end of a long winter. Museums, art galleries and venues all over the city stay open over-night and the metro and buses run to get everyone home safely.

I met up with a childhood friend and her sweet French boyfriend to check out the festivities. They had met while traveling around Europe and like me, returned to Montreal with a lingering desire to be out in the world. After a photo exhibit of flea markets, we fittingly found ourselves at Bain St. André, an old empty swimming pool that is now used as a venue for photo exhibits, music and dance performances. The exhibit that night was a travelogue of a road trip from Canada down to South America. The artists had a slide show playing on the wall with music that could have been the soundtrack of their trip. The photos, hung from the old piping in the building, reminded the three of us what it’s like to be in a completely different environment to what we are used to, with all of its sights, smells and noises. The descriptions accompanying the photos captured the thoughts that go through conscious travellers’ minds as they try to understand the new environment in which they find themselves. The exhibit culminated in a call to do whatever makes you happy, now – striving to bring the emotions, experiences, and sense of adventure of the open road into your everyday life. It was uplifting to know that there are other people in this city who have the same mindset as me, my friend and her boyfriend, and who have been as deeply touched by their travels as we have been.


Stop number three of the night was a party intersected by dance performances that would organically start in the middle of the dance floor, near the bar, or against a wall of the club. Without fail, the audience gathered around the performers who would dissolve back into the crowd at the end of the performance. My friend, who is a dancer herself, filled me in on all the gossip in the modern dance crowd – who was sleeping with who, who wanted to sleep with who, and who was on what drugs. I was completely swept away by how comfortable dancers seem in their bodies, compared to the rest of us.

Our fourth stop was a free concert by an amazing Quebecois DJ, Ghislain Poirier. In the middle of a huge crowd of people dancing like crazy, I wondered why I had never heard his music before. It was an impressive mix of hip-hop, house, and dancehall with an amazing drummer and MC alongside.


A night out in Montreal wouldn’t be complete without a drunken poutine stop – my first in probably 3 years. For non-Montrealers, poutine is a French Canadian "delicacy" of French fries with cheese curds and gravy on top. It has the ability to sober you up and make you feel guilty for not exercising, both at the same time.

And because it was "la nuit blanche", I got to take the metro home at 5am to my new room in Mile End. This was exactly the night I needed to reconcile me with this city that I used to love… and may grow to love again.

The Call for 'No Losar'

During my last weeks in Dharamsala, the community had been preparing for ‘No Losar’. Taking their cue from their brothers and sisters inside Tibet, Tibetans in exile decided that they would not be celebrating their new year this month. Tibetans traditionally do not celebrate Losar when there has been a death in the family. There is no drinking and visiting friends and family, no new clothes or jewels, and for the children, no pocket money. None of these Losar customs will happen this year, in commemoration of the hundreds – if not thousands – of Tibetans who died during the Uprising last year.

My support for this campaign was not immediate. To me, Losar is an event for Tibetans to celebrate their Tibetanness, and to differentiate themselves from their Chinese oppressors. The two cultures have different New Year dates, which are celebrated with different customs. This call for no Losar seemed to be taking away the one time of year Tibetans get to publicly and proudly celebrate their culture.

But Tibetans’ calls are becoming more courageous and resolute. In the last several days, it has been reported that Tibetans in Ngaba County, Amdo (Chinese province of Sichuan), have posted the following message in their towns:

To the Tibetans of the three provinces, monks, nuns, lay men and women,

Let us unite our strength, and let us not surrender to this evasive system of repression. Let us hold our hands across all three provinces, and share our joys and sorrows.

We must never forget that those killed did not die fighting for their own interests. They died fighting for our just and noble cause and for the freedom of the land of snows.

For that matter we must not celebrate Losar this year.

So long as you are Tibetan, you must not celebrate this Losar.

Do you want to be reunited with your guru? Do you want Tibet to be free?
If yes, then you should cancel Losar celebrations as a political act.

Dear brothers and sisters, do not despair.

(Listen to the message on Students for a Free Tibet’s online daily news show, Our Nation.)

With the idea of no Losar spreading in Tibet and in Tibetan communities worldwide, the Chinese government in Tibet has begun scrambling to assure that Losar celebrations will be held as usual. There have been reports that Chinese officials are offering money for Tibetan families to buy firecrackers for New Year celebrations. The Chinese government knows that the cancellation of Losar will go against their propaganda that Tibetans are happy under their rule. But their domineering attempts to control Tibetans’ lives have only led to the increased politicization of the Losar boycott.

In the last three days, there have been as many protests by Tibetans in Lithang County, Kardze (Sichuan Province). At all three protests, the monks and laypeople called for Independence, the return of the Dalai Lama, and no Losar celebrations. These 21 people were severely beaten and are being held in detention. One of the protesters is now missing. (For more details, visit TCHRD’s website.)

With Tibetans inside Tibet risking their lives to call for the political boycott of Losar, they have won my support. This truly is an amazing and inspiring phase of Tibetan resistance. It may be organic, but it is widespread. It is also very difficult for the Chinese government to control without resorting to brute military force. And as it was during the Uprising of last year, Tibetans inside Tibet and around the world stand united in this latest form of resistance.

Here in Montreal, we will be holding a candlelight vigil to commemorate those who have and continue to sacrifice their lives for the freedom of the Tibetan people. Please join us for this ‘No Losar’ vigil, on Wednesday, February 25th at 5:30pm. We will be gathering at the Place des Arts (near the steps on Saint Catherine street).

For more inspiring stories of courageous resistance, see Students for a Free Tibet’s "Profiles in Courage" countdown to March 10th, the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising.