The Noodle Maker Of Kalimpong: The
Untold Story Of My Struggle For Tibet by Gyalo Thondup with Anne F. Thurston (Random House India).
Jeremy Bernstein says in his 1987 New
Yorker article: There is something profoundly moving about the Tibetan way of
life. About its religious essence. One
feels instinctively that if this civilization were crushed and replaced by
something that was yet another imitation of ourselves the world would be poorer
for it.
Indeed, those sentiments hold true for a large part of the world today, too.
Gyalo Thondup, the older brother of
the Dalai Lama, a key figure in Tibet`s struggle for survival and the
noodle-maker of Kalimpong mentioned in the title, gives a gripping account of
the various back and front diplomatic/realpolitik/ economic and even military channels Tibetans, Chinese, Indians, the CIA, the
KGB have deployed and engaged in, over the years.
Thondup
plays the game of international political intrigue in quite a surprisingly deft manner. What makes the
whole process heartbreaking, of course, is the fact that nothing concrete has
emerged from all these parleys. The backdoor manipulations, though, are a real revelation.
Never in five thousand years had
Tibet been a part of China, insists Thondup, and that forms the crux of the book.
Here are two moving excerpts:
·
* We Tibetans are the just the opposite of the
Chinese. They view the world with suspicion; we are endlessly hopeful, believing
that tomorrow will be better.
· * During a recent meeting with His Holiness the Dalai
Lama, when I was feeling ill, he insisted I could not die. ``We have to return
home together,`` he told me.
And thus, hope floats.