BENGALURU: Tenzin Tsundue owns only two pairs of clothing, and lives off what he makes from his self-published book, Kora – Stories and Poems. The Tibetan poet was in the city for a panel discussion as part of Rangashankara’s biennial fest, Equal. For him, it is not a conscious decision to include activism in his poetry. “I think art and activism started to go together in my personal development. Since childhood, I’ve been truly inspired by the Indian freedom struggle. Considering the Tibetan situation, we needed people who could speak, read, write and inspire the movement, to maintain it and to take physical action,” said the 46-year-old.
Explaining that the Tibetan identity is almost always associated with the struggle for freedom, Tsundue said, “Since childhood, we have always wanted to do something for the movement. Some of my friends from college and university were quietly jealous of the fact that I had such a big cause to live for. But the younger generation is always inspired by the idea of freedom.”
However, it took some time for Tsundue to start writing. “I grew up in a Tibetan refugee school, and our English education was not so great. It had always been a struggle to improve on the language. I started to write only when I was at a university in Bombay,” he said. Here, he was fortunate enough to stumble upon the company of the Bombay Poet. The group would meet on the second Saturday of every month. “Nissim Ezekiel used to grace this meeting of hardly 15 people. There were terrible things happening in the room. Someone would read their poem, and others would shred it. It was almost a bloodbath of poetry, but that was the best lesson of my life,” Tsundue smiled, adding that he was able to share his work only after his second year in the circle. “One of my first lines was articulating my identity as a Tibetan in Bombay. I am more of an Indian except for my Tibetan face. I was trying to articulate the multiplicity of my identity,” he said.
Now, Tsundue has come out with three books – Crossing the Border, Kora, and Semshook. For his work, he was awarded the Outlook-Picador Award for non-fiction in 2001.