Exile
is all about Courage and Struggle. It is the courage to step up when fall-down
many times and struggle for a better tomorrow to go back to our homeland. It’s
hard to switch my rented house from time to time when our house owners asked to
leave the flat vacant for their own interests. I move like a nomad in Tibet,
from building to building, and street to street but I am not a bonafide nomad.
I don’t have animals to rear as a livelihood and grassland territory that I
grant to myself.
Every
year I have to renew my blue refugee passport to get permission to stay a
little longer in this country. This chronic story keeps on repeating in the
last seventy years and I am still left with no permanent home address.
It
hurts and hurts when I fill out my name, DOB and other details for many of my
documents. There was a tiny column, ‘Nationality’. I scrolled through the
drop-down and I did not find my country.” At the end of the long list, there
was a word, ‘stateless’….It is hard to be a refugee, but it is even harder to
be a stateless person, that keeps me in a deep breath over and over again.
I
have a big dream, but my dream turns into a dream. I have a dream to see His
Holiness the Dalai Lama in Tibet at Potala palace. I have a dream to go back to
Tibet and enjoy the reunite Tibetan people from inside Tibet and any other
exile lands. It’s been too long...seventy years to hide the tragedy story of rice and dal behind these
Himalayan mountains. My stomach is still empty, and I must go back to Tibet
before I die.
I
always walk like any other people in the city, but I am not okay for the last
seventy years in exile. I want to do something for my country, but my approach
is very limited even though I try not to keep limitations to myself.
Before
I could wipe my eyes, I missed my country and suddenly did land in another
world in a rented room where everything is old. The story of exile is very
hard, and my pain never ends, until I can go back to my home country.
-Som
🙏🏼🙏🏼👍👍
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