"Undercover in Tibet"

I’m outraged. And guilty. I’m outraged that cultural genocide IS happening in Tibet, that Tibet is silently being erased from history, that it quietly disappeared from our maps. I’m guilty that I have given the burden of this fight to a small number, feeling that the fight is being taken care of, that someone is on it, that it’s not so bad.

It IS so bad. It’s terrible. If the things that were happening in Tibet were happening to us in Canada, there would be war. Devastation. Lost trust and psychological damage. If a Tibetan woman has too many children, she either pays a hefty fine that she can’t afford or undergoes forced Sterilization.

Imagine, my female friends, imagine having the right to birthing literally ripped out of you. That which so many of us base our female identity on, torn from your body with no anaesthetic and no choice.

I’m outraged. I just saw a documentary entitled ‘Undercover in Tibet’. Tash Despa fled Tibet 10 years ago and has lived in Exile in Britain since then. He returned to his home for the first time in 10 years to find out why so many people were risking their lives to flee Tibet in India or Nepal, via the Himalayas. One escapee said he would rather risk his life hiking for weeks through the snowy peaks, risking such bad frostbite that amputation is the only answer, running out of food, being shot at by Chinese officers if spotted...he would rather risk this than live under Chinese rule.

This movie brought me back to life. We can’t sit in our comfortable homes and do nothing. We can’t. People are dying, traditional ways of life are disappearing, family members are disappearing, monks are under constant surveillance and are tortured if they have even one speech by the Dalai Lama in their quarters. It’s a silent, methodical genocide.

Get involved. Get involved in whatever issue makes your heart pound hard in your chest. Do something. We’re such privileged, powerful people in Canada. We have such strong voices. We were born into it and are now surrounded by opportunity and comfort. It makes torture and hardship seem like a only a nightmare, not something real human beings are actually enduring.
But real human beings with homes and families ARE suffering. I know you know this, but really KNOW it! People that laughed with their partners under beautiful Tibetan trees and enjoyed the sunshine with their children are torn apart and forced from nomadic lifestyles into police watched concrete ‘communities’, akin to prison.

And why? Because Tibet is one of the richest resources of: water, minerals, oil.

Sound familiar?

Oil. And China now has control of it. They kill and torture, take freedom and install fear, silently wipe a culture out of our minds, in the name of money and global power.

So truly this affects us all.

Read something. Write a letter. Find the time to care. If not about Tibet, something, cuz surely there is some injustice that speaks to your heart.

Remember that Tibet was on the map just a few years ago.

Just remember the pain people live with outside of Canada. And don’t live with guilt or heaviness. But Do Something.

A thrill for my senses, Old Delhi

Living in India is certainly not the easiest thing I've ever done. The pollution of Delhi is horrendously draining, the noise is constant, the language barrier takes extra brain power that and the ‘un-nameable’ (is there a word for that) small differences take endless sorting out. It’s tough, but not impossible, and often the challenges, and those small differences, are what make it so delightful (on a good humoured day!).

I wish I could illustrate this city for you, in a way that would really give an understanding of this place. Old Delhi is the place to describe... or better yet, a huge market, the size of a small town within Old Delhi, called Chandni Chowk.

We went to Chandni Chowk to buy 200 blankets for homeless children the other day...it's still fresh in my mind, so let me try to paint a picture for you....

Old Delhi is the original Delhi. It used to have a wall around it, used to have a river running through it, used to be the center of Mughal rule in the 1600s right up until the British took over in the mid-1700's.

Old Delhi has the feel of years of history all rolled into the present. In every glance my eyes take in the old and the new, the traditional and the western influenced contemporary. They see buildings built on buildings built on old ruins. They see burkhas, salwar kameez, kurta, jeans, leather jackets, lungi, dhoti, turbans, barefeet, richly adorned wrists, glittering gold, torn pants on a child. They see cycle rickshaws, scooters, old bicycles, men pushing long carts stacked to the sky with merchandise of some sort and women in sarees elegantly weaving through the organized chaos.

My nose smells gulab jamun and jalebis, mutton kebab, curried everything, tandoori roti, chai, chai and more chai! Delicious smells mixed with garbage festering in a puddle of water, the stink of which is fighting to overpower the stench of urine from a wall designated as the men’s urinal.

Cars are honking endlessly, busses are ploughing through the crowds, to my right the nearby mosque begins its call to prayer, the 4th of the day, and on the left the Hindu temple bells are ringing to attract attention of the gods to the ceremony. Cycle rickshaws are ringing bells while the drivers call out 'hello hello, side side' giving us pedestrians time to jump out of the way so they don't lose momentum with an unbearably heavy load of cargo or people being hauled behind them.

And I'm trying to walk through this, following Amit, Abhinandan and Irfan as we venture to the blanket district of Chandni Chowk, on a quest to purchase 200 blankets for homeless children who live in this area.
"Hurry Lauren, a little faster, even I don't know my way around this part of the city", says the ship navigator Abhinandan. When he's not at sea, he lives in Delhi and volunteers with Jamghat.

Squeezing between traffic, running to keep up with Amit on a mission, climbing up and over rickshaws because there's simply no other way to cross the road, we finally reach the blanket district, a street with thousands of people filling the street and dozens of blanket shops lining the sides. To get there we passed the tarp district, the car window district, the door district, the stationary district and the tent district.

I was amazed to watch the buying process. We entered the first blanket shop, with stacks of blankets lining the walls, the shelves and spilling onto the road side, and began looking at available items. Before I knew it, 7 different types of blankets were piled on the small counter, all being felt and checked for quality and warmth factor while the shopkeeper kept a constant explanation going about how each was the best possible choice and this was the price, but it could become this lower price if you buy this many etc etc.

After some group debate, we chose a style, and began to barter for 200 of them. The shopkeeper came down to 150 rupees/blanket but Amit wanted 120. He wouldn’t budge so just like that we walked out, leaving a pile of blankets to be sorted.
This is how it’s done! If the price is reasonable, the shopkeeper will usually call you back in saying, “okay possible”, at which point the deal is sealed.

This time however, there was no call back, so we continued the quest, door to door, walking for blocks, touching the stacks on the street, questioning shopkeepers until someone caught our attention with a good deal.

The final shop was tiny, and filled floor to ceiling with army style, woollen blankets. After a flurry of Hindi, we were all beckoned farther into the shop, which led us to a teeny tiny stairwell just wide enough for a large man’s shoulders. Up and up, twisting and turning, the staircase felt like it was built as an afterthought, and movedthrough any available space in the tall building. By the 5th flight we were guided into a large room haphazardly filled with thousands of blankets. The one we wanted was there in the quantity we desired, and so began the bartering.

Before I knew it we were marching down the stairs with Hindi angrily being thrown between the shopkeeper and Amit! No deal I thought, here we go again. We were part was down the stairs when the call-back echoed through the stairwell. Deal....

20 bundles of 10 blankets were thrown from the window down 5 stories to the road where workers quickly moved them out of traffic’s way and neatly stacked them on the side of the road. Soon another man with a long wonder push cart arrived and everyone started loading the bundles on board. For a mere 2dollars, that solo man would walk for an hour, pushing our blankets to their destination storage spot, through the crowds described.

For everyone I was with, this was a normal procedure. For me it was enthralling! I giggled to myself, marvelled at the process, the systems that I only know the surface of.

If I spent a few more days there, it might start to feel more normal. I’m always amazed at how quickly the absurd becomes the norm, like cows on highways or men making living by cleaning ears. But certainly this first visit, with our blanket mission, was a delight and thrill for my senses.