Thread by @Madhura_IITM

This is a long thread. Please bear with me
Reflecting on Bringing Tibet Home by Tenzing Rigdol.
On my first ever solo trips to Majnu Ka Tilla, I happened to meet someone who told me I had to look up Rigdol's work (1/24)

Both his art installation in Dharamshala called Our Land, Our People and his movie detailing the process leading up to the installation. Finally managed to catch the movie and found it to be a very evocative experience (2/24)

The movie opens with a brief account of Rigdol& his family, as context to the narrative. When Rigdol's father was diagnosed with cancer, Rigdol stopped painting and spent months by his father's bedside. In this period, he recalls that his father began to tell him stories (3/24)

About his childhood in Tibet and his family. He wished to return to Tibet at least once before passing away. Rigdol recalls how helpless he felt. He says "He passed away stateless. He lived like a vagabond in Nepal, in India and in the US...there is no permanent place (4/24)

And deep down, they always wanted to go back to their own country". In a bid to bring Tibet to the countless people who could not go back to their country and to honour his father's memory, Rigdol decided to create a site specific art installation in Dharamshala with... (5/24)

20,000 kgs of soil brought from Shigatse through Nepal to Dharamshala so that Tibetan refugees in Dharmashala could once again touch, feel and walk on their soil.
The plot of the movie is filled with intrigue of smuggling something as seemingly innocuous as soil (6/24)

Surveillance and risk are motifs that animate the movie - especially as Rigdol and his team conduct their operations based in Kathmandu, in the shadow of Boudha against the threat of increasing Chinese influence and presence in Nepal (7/24)

In a powerful scene, Rigdol & his Project Manager go to the Nepal-Tibet Friendship bridge along with their fixer. Rigdol takes a few snaps of the scenery from the bridge and is immediately approached by plain-clothes Chinese security who force him to delete all the images (8/24)

This sets Rigdol's project against the backdrop of a situation where even digital representations cannot cross borders and it imbues his project with greater meaning and also a greater sense of urgency (9/24)

The multiple delays and Rigdol's frantic wait for the soil to be brought to Nepal and then to India is perhaps best captured through the metaphor of rain. As one waits impatiently for the incessant rains to let up, so to does Rigdol for the trucks bringing soil (10/24)

A few words about the soil itself: The soil is mined and brought from Shigatse in Tibet. Shigatse houses the Tashilhunpo monastery, which is the seat of the Panchen Lama. The site has deep religious significance. (11/24)

The soil is thus sacred. However the sacrality of the soil rests not only in the realm of religion. It stems from the central importance of home - both seen and imagined, once a material reality but now a specter of yearning and aspiration (12/24)

The soil is transported first in green funny sacks and then in white gunny sacks with no markers. lt is transported in parts through illegal means. Why the attention on this apparently banal process? Because this process of transportation is imbued with significance. (13/24)

As Rigdol notes, the path the soil followed, the dangers it faced, the anxieties the journey produced, the illegalities it was mired in, was very similar to the paths followed by Tibetans, geographically and affectively, as they made their way to India (14/24)

None of this alters the sacred quality of the soil. This sacred quality is reinforced by Tibetan flags, khatags, photos of His Holiness & ritual performances at the installation (15/24)

This is best captured by footage of four older Tibetans, including a person who came to Tibet in his 20s, prostrating in front of the soil and smearing some of it on their foreheads. (16/24)

I watched the movie through the lens of my conversations in different Tibetan settlements and residential communities. In Bylakuppe, a camp leader who was translating for me as we spoke to an 80 year old said in Hindi, "Don't judge him by his age and unsteady gait. (17/24)

Tomorrow, if His Holiness says we are returning, he will be the first in line: ready to make the journey back by foot if needed (18/24)

I was reminded of stories a couple told me of their parents who refused to plant fruit bearing trees and coconut trees because they believed Tibet would be free before the trees bore fruit. (19/24)

Equally, I have been privileged to listen to other narratives, across age groups, locations& other demographic details, who spoke about their desires to return to Tibet but fears of having to uproot themselves from their current spaces and start afresh (20/24)

I have also been fortunate to be privy to a wide set of perspectives on India as home: for eg: India as my country of birth and citizenship and Tibet as the place I am from. (21/24)

Each of these perspectives inform the complex terrain that constitutes practices of home-making in exile - one that is fraught, contested and framed within multiple intersecting bureaucratic, legal&affective processes (22/24)

However, underlying each of these perspectives is a sense of reverence for Tibet and a desire to see the country free from occupation. To me, Rigdol's title 'Bringing Tibet Home' succinctly captured these tensions & contradictions that inform residence in exile (23/24)

A trailer of the movie can be found here:

A review by the inimitable Jamyang Norbu la can be found here: jamyangnorbu.com/blog/2015/01/1… (24/24)

#Tibetinexile #fieldworkstories