President Thein Sein has issued two separate orders to halt offensives against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the most recent of the two coming the day before the regime’s delegation led by Aung Thaung was set to meet with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO). According to Minister of Immigration and Population, Khin Yi, this most recent order covered the entire country. However, the Burma Army continued launching attacks against the KIA, including on the second day of the ceasefire talks between the regime and the KIO, resulting in a premature end of the negotiations. The Burma Army’s ongoing attacks continue to raise serious questions about Thein Sein’s decision-making power within the regime.

During its meeting with the regime’s delegation, the KIO asserted that laying down arms will not be enough and that the regime must also engage in political dialogue to address the underlying issues of ethnic equality and self-determination. The Karen National Union (KNU) similarly stated, “the underlying political conflict must be solved by political means, beginning with earnest dialogue.” While many have reported that the KNU signed a ceasefire on 12 January, the organization’s headquarters assert that they only signed a preliminary agreement to continue working towards a ceasefire. The regime’s delegation, led by Railways Minister Aung Min, did however agree in principle to the eleven points laid out by the KNU.

Both the KIO and the KNU have raised concerns about the transparency of the regime’s current efforts to obtain ceasefire agreements. Locally, there has been little public information about the peace processes, or about the officials involved. Interestingly, it has not been the same regime officials involved in negotiations with all ethnic groups. Railways Minister Aung Min has led the delegation for talks with the KNU, the Chin National Front, and the Shan State Army – South, while USDP leading member Aung Thaung led those with the KIO, the United Wa State Army and the Mongla. The involvement of many different players and the lack of clear mandates have caused a considerable amount of confusion and have further undermined these dialogue processes.

Ahead of his current trip to Burma, US Senator John McCain said, “We should all applaud what has happened in Burma, but there are many cases in history where we got a little bit too optimistic and found out that it isn’t quite what we hoped it would be.” This is precisely such a case. The US, the EU and the international community must be cautious not to get too optimistic, especially in regards to the upcoming by-elections. The regime has no reason to manipulate the April polls since even if the NLD wins all of the 48 open seats, the regime will still maintain its majority in Parliament. While many will likely congratulate the regime for allowing opposition members into the Parliament, it will have in effect succeeded in gagging their opponents. Therefore, the by-elections must not be seen as a meaningful benchmark for the lifting of sanctions or other rewards.

Ethnic nationality leaders, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and numerous recently released political prisoners are among those who have unequivocally stated that the most important issue now for Burma are sustained peace and political dialogue to address the root causes of the conflicts with all of the country’s ethnic nationalities.

The US, the EU and the international community must maintain pressure on the regime to undertake more transparent and meaningful ceasefire negotiations and political dialogue, backed up by actual ceasing of attacks and withdrawal of troops from ethnic areas. Because of Thein Sein’s eagerness to have sanctions lifted, they are the most powerful remaining incentive for his government to take the next crucial steps in Burma’s democratic transition. They must not be lifted until the regime has properly addressed the political concerns of Burma’s ethnic nationalities and stopped human rights abuses committed by Burma Army troops, thereby paving the way for peace and national reconciliation.

See this post on the Burma Partnership website.

While there has been a lack of transparency around the recent meetings between Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the regime, the two sides appear to be on unequal playing fields. It seems probable that the two sides have been negotiating next steps, with the regime using the release of remaining political prisoners as a bargaining chip for the re-registration of the NLD.

This is problematic because the regime on one hand continues to deny the existence of political prisoners, and on the other, officials often refer to a severely shortened list of “prisoners of conscience” that doesn’t include many who were arrested under trumped-up criminal charges despite clearly political motives. Officials close to the regime, including Presidential Advisor Ko Ko Hlaing, have said that there were only 600 “prisoners of conscience” in the country, half of whom were released in last month’s amnesty. And yet, the regime refuses to share its list of current detainees, a step that would show that it is sincere about its claimed intentions of achieving democracy and national reconciliation, said the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners – Burma (AAPP) in a press release and briefer this week. AAPP called for “all bodies and organizations that have been compiling information on political prisoners… to work together in a spirit of mutual respect with the aim of bridging the deep divide on political prisoner numbers.” The organization further highlighted that “the emphasis should be on eradicating the repressive policy that violates fundamental civil, political, and human rights” rather than solely on the numbers.

Another release of political prisoners does seem to be on the horizon though. In a letter published on 12 November in the state-run newspaper, the New Light of Myanmar, the Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) appealed to President Thein Sein to release more “Prisoners of Conscience… as a reflection of his magnanimity.” It must be noted that the regime’s previous amnesty, which included the release of 230 political prisoners, came one day after a similar letter from the NHRC. An official from the interior ministry said that the regime was planning to do exactly as the NHRC appealed in its letter, and that the release would be “very soon.” The striking similarity of the two officials’ comments reveals further grounds for serious concerns about the independence and autonomy of the NHRC.

Many expected that the next release of prisoners would be today but there has not yet been any confirmation from inside Burma. “The authorities have not contacted us but we heard that another round of amnesty is coming soon. Our hopes are high again but nothing is certain here,” said one of 88 Generation leader Min Ko Naing’s sisters.

With President Thein Sein preparing to depart for the ASEAN Summit in Bali, Indonesia, it is expected that the regime will release another round of political prisoners in a last-ditch effort to secure Burma’s chairmanship of the bloc in 2014. Civil society organizations from Burma and the ASEAN region have repeatedly called on the regional bloc not to reward the regime for its superficial reforms, including the release of political prisoners, while armed conflict rages in the country’s ethnic nationality areas.

In a press release today, the President of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus drew further attention again to crimes against humanity and war crimes being committed in Burma’s ethnic areas. “Gross human rights violations against the ordinary people in the ethnic areas continue despite lip service towards reform from Naypyidaw,” said Ms. Eva Kusuma Sundari. “If anything, life under this regime is worse for many ethnic minorities and vulnerable people than it was before.”

If the regime were genuinely striving for democracy and national reconciliation in Burma, it would not be using the release of political prisoners as a bargaining chip with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or a last card to play for the ASEAN chairmanship. Nor would it be waging war against ethnic nationalities and committing human rights abuses against its own people. The regime can no longer bluff its way out of this hand.

See this post on the Burma Partnership website.

~ J 

But the people of Burma have waited even longer. The last elections were 20 years ago, when Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won in a landslide but were never allowed to take power. My bosses and their colleagues were students in 1988 who helped organize the national uprising on 8 August that eventually led to the last elections. When the military cracked down, killing as many as 10,000 people, my bosses and their colleagues fled to the borders of Burma. They have spent the last 20 years fighting for democracy and human rights in their country, unable to return as long as the military regime stays in power.

I received the news yesterday morning in a text message from my boss when I was at the border market on a rare day off. The anticipation I had been feeling evaporated immediately. I looked across the river at Burma and imagined how the news was being received on the other side of the border. I jumped on my motorbike and rushed to the office to get the news out.

Conversations in this town frequently turn to the elections. Most of my Burmese colleagues will not be able to return home to cast their ballots, but of those who can, many have expressed excitement at the idea of the first elections in their lifetime. They have asked me how many elections I have voted in, and how I felt. I told them that I felt a sense of pride, knowing I was doing something good for my country – a feeling that has only grown in intensity the longer I work here. Analyzing Burma’s 2008 Constitution and the junta’s election laws, I keep going back to Canadian laws on elections, using them as my own benchmarks for what free elections should look like. But my pride in Canadian elections fuels my disgust at how the military regime is manipulating the process in Burma.

Some of my friends may be personally eager to participate in these elections, but most of us work for political organizations that oppose them. As activists, we know that these elections are being carried out by the military regime to gain international legitimacy, giving a civilian façade to ongoing military rule. We continually point to the loopholes in the election laws that will allow for manipulation, and the electioneering of junta-supported political parties while independent parties are facing crippling restrictions. These elections will not be free, fair or democratic. But does that mean that people shouldn’t try to exercise their right to vote?

As of yet, none of the parties inside (including the now-politically-defunct NLD) nor the political alliances on the border have called for a boycott of the polls. Aung San Suu Kyi has said that people have the right to vote, but also have the right to not vote – a comment that has been picked up by a youth activist group called Generation Wave of which some of my friends are members. In a recent workshop on election monitoring, we learned about possible ways that voting could be manipulated and how vote counting could be rigged. But are those prohibitive enough? Or should one’s commitment to the principle of democracy be strong enough justification to refuse to participate under such circumstances?

As a foreigner here, I will support whatever decision is taken by the leadership of the political organizations in Burma and those here in exile that I work with. But as an individual who has tasted democracy, I understand the desire to participate in these elections. My friends, colleagues and the people of Burma each have an important, historical, and very personal decision to make in the next three months.

Starting to draft plans about what will happen here on election day, I can feel the anticipation coming back. But it’s anticipation of a different kind than I felt before. It’s that of an adrenaline junkie, eager for the rush, but at the same time conscious of all the work that will come with it. It’s that of the realist in me trying to silence the optimist’s hopes that these elections will bring some positive outcome. Unfortunately, the people of Burma know that under the current military regime, the worst possible scenario is not outside the realm of possibility.

As I was sweeping up my yard one day, a skinny old woman with a machete opened my front gate. When I looked up, she inquisitively smiled and pointed at my back yard. It was overgrown when I moved in, but over the course of my first few months at the house, it had grown into an unruly jungle. Speaking Thai and gesturing with the machete, she seemed to want to cut it down for me. I thought she was offering her services. I could see her house through my back fence and know that she’s pretty poor, so in my broken Thai I asked her how much. She smiled and shook her hand, which I took to mean “nothing”, and immediately went to work. She threw all the cuttings over the fence into her yard and left me with a clean garden, space for a washing line, and a huge patch of mint. The cuttings disappeared after a couple of days, but I was never sure what she did with all of it – until the garden started to grow back and I recognized the morning glory. She had probably cooked it and the other edible plants for her family and burned the rest.

A man rode past on a tri-shaw loaded up with crappy aluminum pots piled 4 meters high. I had no idea how he can see where he was going.

The day I bought a fridge, I put the box beside the neighbourhood garbage bin. As soon as I returned to my house and closed the gate, the woman two houses down stealthily snuck out of her house and took the box back to her yard, where it now stands with a pile of other cardboard boxes on her front porch.

Two lizards used to live in the trees of my front yard. Tan in colour, one looks like his front half was dipped in blue and the other in terracotta. They bob their heads up and down to some inaudible music or sit warming themselves in the sun. After the storm knocked down the teak tree, I worried about the fate of my lizard friends. But once in a while, Blue makes an appearance, posing on my back fence or the front wall of my yard.

A dark man with an orange shirt, probably from Arakan State in western Burma, walked past my house singing a Hindi song. When he saw me through the fence watching and smiling, he stopped long enough to ask, “How are you?” I gave him a thumbs up and he continued on his way, picking up the song right where he left off.

One of my neighbours sounds like a Burmese version of Mr. T, his voice echoing all down the street. When I finally saw him after months of living at my house, I was surprised to see that he was a small skinny man wearing only a longyi riding around on a child’s bicycle.

A calm morning spent reading on my porch was shattered by a Thai army helicopter flying low overhead. I was instantly reminded that the Burmese border is less than 7 kilometres away. The nearby jungles shelter armed ethnic groups fighting for basic rights in their own homeland in what is the longest running civil war in the world.

I was at work when the wind picked up all of a sudden, slamming the front door of the office shut. I went to stand in the doorway with some of my colleagues, revelling in the refreshing change of temperature—a monumental difference from the extreme temperatures here recently. Our relief quickly turned to worry as the gusts of wind became so strong it was a struggle to hold the door open. Leaves and branches were whipped down the street. When a kid ran out to play in the street, one of my Burmese colleagues screamed at him to get into his house and then burst into tears. She had been in Rangoon two years ago during Cyclone Nargis—the worst storm to ever hit Burma in which an estimated 138,000 people were killed and 2.4 million were affected.

As we tried to console our colleague, we watched in awe as the roofing on the construction site across from us lifted slightly and then was blown off piece by piece. The construction workers—notably lacking the steel-toed boots and hard hats of their colleagues in the West—huddled together under what was left of the roof. We called for them to join us, but they resisted until the very last minute when all the roofing was blown off. One worker carried with him a bunch of power tools, bundled together in a plastic rice sack, too valuable to leave behind. Another was nearly hit with flying roofing as he dodged the fallen power lines and branches on the street. There was a young boy with them who arrived in our compound shivering in soaking wet boxer shorts. We dried him off and put him in a dry shirt from the recent 10^th anniversary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners that fit him like a dress. He sat shaking and looking terrified until it was over, answering our questions unsurely and munching slowly on a banana.

When we finally emerged from the office, power lines were down all along the street, gutters had overflowed submerging the neighborhood in nearly a foot of water. We all decided to go home as there was little work to be done without electricity and internet.

I took the office motorbike to drop a colleague off at her house. As we drove through the town, it became clear by the chaos just how big the storm had been. The electricity was out everywhere. Police were directing traffic, already slowed by trees, branches, pieces of roofs and other debris in the street. I dreaded going home. I had left all my windows open and was sure my entire house would be a mess.

I could see from a distance that the main road to my house was blocked off, right about where my street entered it, so I took a back way. Even before turning onto my street, I could tell something bad had happened. Motorbikes were lined up with their passengers taking photos of the street—and specifically, my house. The giant teak tree that had stood in my front yard had come down, bringing with it the wall of my compound, the iron gate, another tree and the power lines to the whole street.

I approached in awe of the gaping mess. My young Thai neighbour paused from her sweeping to smile at what must have been shock on my face. After phone calls to my landlord and my friend to get the story from my neighbour, there was little left to do. So I started taking photos. I wandered down to the main road where I could now see that the blockage was because 20 power poles had fallen across the street. There was no way anyone could pass.

Before the sun went down, I hauled 15 buckets of water from the reservoir in my backyard to fill the cement tank in the bathroom. I have always complained that the water tank in Thai bathrooms made no sense. In a malaria and dengue zone such as Thailand, the still water is a perfect breeding zone for mosquitoes. But now I wished I had used it.

The sun set, I lit candles and finally sat down to rest. It was then that I realized how lucky I was. I still had a solid house and roof over my head, I had food to eat and I hadn’t been injured. The head of the construction site across from my office lost 20,000 baht worth of building supplies, the office of one organization had its windows smashed by flying branches, and many of the small wooden huts on the rice fields surrounding the town had been completely levelled. Nine people were killed from falling trees and power lines. But within a couple days, the electricity was back on and life had pretty much gone back to normal. In Burma, its been two years since Cyclone Nargis, and people still haven’t fully recovered their livelihoods and homes. The junta continues to harass and imprison aid workers and restricts the assistance trying to make its way into the country.

With the daytime temperature well over 40 degrees Celsius, I missed the fan that has been my constant companion for months. But remembering that people here and in Burma are much worse off, I was resolved to live without it for a couple nights without complaining. I settled down in the relaxing candlelight, grateful that it hadn’t been worse. The entire neighbourhood was dark, quiet, and uncharacteristically calm.

I had a photo of Yangkey printed, bought flowers and placed them on the makeshift alter I put together in my house, beside the photo of the Dalai Lama and a postcard of a thangka of Avalokitesvara. I said the only prayer I knew and sat in front of the alter, crying while Tibetan incense swirled around me and sweat poured down my face from the candle burning in the oppressive heat of April in Thailand. I felt a million miles away from Yangkey and from all our friends who were mourning for her.

After I heard that friend of ours in New York had monks there pray for Yangkey, I wondered if I could do the same thing here as Burmese have a similar tradition.

I had seen the ceremony a few months earlier when my boss’ mother had passed away in Rangoon. She had been sick for quite some time and my boss had shared her regrets that she could not return home to see her mum one last time.

My boss was younger than me during the student uprising in 1988 in Burma. She was a beautiful chemistry student who was interested in fashion rather than politics. However, with her brother’s encouragement, she became more and more involved as the protests grew, eventually becoming one of the main leaders—ironically to the disapproval of her brother and family who were worried for their safety. When the military cracked down on the protests, my boss fled into the jungles of eastern Burma with those who made it out alive, never to return again. Even though she now holds a foreign passport, she would definitely be arrested on arrival, as her friend Nyi Nyi Aung was this past year.

When my boss’ mother died, all she could do from a distance was to give offerings for the monks in our town to pray for her mother. Her closest friends stayed up all night cooking a lavish meal for the monks. My boss seldom cooks, but for the occasion, she had made a delicious tomato curry just as her mother had made at home. Dozens of my boss’ friends and colleagues gathered for the prayer ceremony, after which we enjoyed the food left over from the monks who had eaten earlier that morning.

The day after Yangkey died, I called my Burmese friend to ask if it would be possible to do the same ceremony for her. My friend said of course, and picked me up to following day after work. We rode to her house, where we changed our shorts for longyis and our tank tops for more respectable longer sleeved shirts. The Burmese longyi is a rectangular piece of fabric sewn into a tube. Women pull the excess fabric to one side, fold it over across the front and tuck in the corner at the waist. I am amazed at how elegant Burmese women can look in them. I felt like I was wearing an unflattering sheet that could fall off at any moment.

As people stared and a couple of guys even pointed, we walked through the crowded market to buy the offering for the monks. My friend suggested that I offer a package of goods rather than food, as it was late in the day and Burmese monks don’t eat after noon. I giggled to myself at the thought of them eating my cooking, and how strange they would have found it—and was glad for another option.

At the recommendation of my friend, I bought a silver offering bowl with flowers, packed full of toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, toothbrush and other items that felt strange to give to a monk as an offering. So I also bought a large pack of incense that felt more appropriate.

When we got to the temple, all the buildings were closed up. Around back, we found a single monk watering plants. My Burmese friend told him that my friend in India had died and I wanted to say prayers for her. The short shirtless monk looked at us quizzically and asked how we would do it if I didn’t speak Burmese. My friend said that she would recite the prayers for me. He agreed, but then as he turned to enter the temple he turned around again with a worried look on his face and asked if I was Christian. My friend told him no, and that my friend who had passed away was Buddhist from Tibet. He nodded and gestured for us to follow him inside as he wrapped another piece of his robe around his torso.

The little room where we recited the prayers was off the main temple. A fan whirred above us as we sat on the rotting wooden floorboards amidst piles of offerings. The monk asked for Yangkey’s name and began chanting prayers, remarkably pronouncing it correctly every time. As he prayed, I thought of Yangkey and tried to recall the Tibetan offering prayer our friend had posted on Facebook. He occasionally stopped for my Burmese friend to explain to me the meaning of the ceremony. The monk told us that the karma from the offering I made would go to Yangkey if her spirit was still lost in this world and unable to leave it peacefully. If her spirit had already gone on, the karma would help others.

My friend then explained to me the next step: as she said the prayer on my behalf, I slowly poured a glass of water into a small bowl, which we later emptied onto the ground under a tree outside. Then I had to ring a bell three times as they prayed together. I was a bit uncertain about it, but the monk made gestures so that I had the correct timing. As my friend was reciting one of the final prayers, she forgot a word. Without hardly skipping a beat, the monk jumped in to offer the next word. The next few times she took a breath, the monk spoke the next words, thinking that my friend had forgotten the words again. She muffled giggles after she was done, and with tears in my eyes, I gave her a sheepish smile to show it was okay.

Afterwards, we sat in the courtyard together. I tearfully told my friend about Yangkey, and we laughed about the strange mingling of cultures in the ceremony. I’m sure it was the weirdest offering ceremony the monk had ever performed, but I was grateful for his and my friend’s help. Even though I had understood very little, I felt a sense of peace afterwards.

Yangkey la – You were an amazingly caring and generous friend. I love you and will always miss you.

Tsering Yangkey
March 3, 1977 to April 2, 2010

“From the Himalayas to the Chao Praya: Festival of Tibetan Spirituality, Arts and Culture”

As the event was being organized, the Chinese Embassy was putting pressure on the Thai government to stop it. Organizers were told they could not include photos of Tibetan refugees or anything political. Days before the event began, Thailand denied a visa to the Dalai Lama’s sister, Jetsun Pema la, who was meant to give the keynote speech.

The first day of the festival saw a protest by Chinese people outside the Art Center. One of the volunteers recognized her aunty in the protest and went to ask her why she was there. The aunty replied that someone at the Chinese Embassy had asked them to be there.

The situation reminded me of the protest against China’s Olympic Torch as it passed through Bangkok in April 2008. Under pressure from China, the Thai government had threatened to deport any foreigners participating in the protest. And of course, a confrontational mob of Chinese showed up at the exact location of the Tibet protest, bent on overpowering us.

Despite China’s efforts, the festival was a huge success. Several hundred people attended each day to learn about Tibetan history and culture through photo exhibits, thangka painting demonstrations, and daily performances of songs and dances from different regions of the country by the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA). A group of monks made sand mandalas and butter sculptures, occasionally glancing up to look back at the impressed crowds watching them. There were lectures by Thai scholars on Tibetan culture and religion, as well as by Geshe Damdul Namgyal, His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s translator, on the similarities between science and Buddhism. The Men-tsee-khang—the Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute—brought displays of Tibetan medicine and had doctors on hand for those interested in trying it out for themselves.

Even without having an overtly political goal, one cannot separate politics from cultural and religious events such as this one. People wore their “Free Tibet” t-shirts and pins of the national flag proudly, and during the intermission at TIPA’s performances, Students for a Free Tibet’s poster commemorating 50 years of resistance was projected above the stage. In a recorded message presented at the beginning of each performance, His Holiness the Dalai Lama referred to the “bad situation” in Tibet and spoke of how he hoped this festival would bring together Tibetans and Thais, “Buddhist brothers and sisters” as he called them. In a political climate such as Thailand’s, protesting is not common unless it has to do with ousted Prime Minister Thaksin or the King. A festival such as this was the perfect first step to raising awareness in a country where China obviously holds a lot of weight. As any of us foreigners involved with the Tibet movement can attest, building familiarity with Tibetan culture invariably sows the seeds of support for the political struggle.

“In order to understand something clearly, one must first give it up.”

I said something similar to one of my best friends in Dharamsala the week before I left. While I knew I would miss India like crazy – and I was right – I experienced so much that I knew I needed to leave to let it all soak in.

I picked up Turtle Feet at a small bookstore in Majnu ka Tilla, the Tibetan colony in Delhi. It jumped out at me because I had been thinking a lot about my monk friend, his life, and the community’s expectations of monks. The front flap of Turtle Feet included a line about demystifying monks’ lives. Perfect food for thought.

Back in Montreal, when I finally sat down to read it, my first impression was that the author, Nikolai Grozni, was a stupid injie (Westerner) who took his vows to become a monk without fully understanding what it meant. His friends were the epitome of the Western tourists I hated in Dharamsala, oblivious to the culture and community around them and disrespectful without even being aware of it.

But as I read, I discovered that the author was slowly learning lessons that gave him a deeper understanding of the community – many lessons I myself had to learn. In one chapter, Grozni writes about meeting Tsar, a Western monk who smoked and was always hanging out with girls. At first he seemed interested in Tsar because he was a fellow Western monk who wasn’t afraid to still act however he wanted. But by the end of the chapter, Grozni realized that he was being judged by the community for hanging out with someone who had such a bad reputation.

Reading about the difficulties Grozni encountered on his spiritual quest for the truth made me think more about my own struggle to understand the Buddhist ideas of emptiness and impermanence. The more I have read about Buddhism, the more I have felt like a stupid Westerner who has been taught to hang on to people and experiences, be miserable missing them when they were gone, and to deeply fear death. In comparison, my Tibetan friends seem to be able to cope much better with life’s changes. I keep trying to override the worldview that is deeply engrained in me, but the process is making me realize how difficult it is to change my fundamental beliefs when they are the basis of my actions and reactions on a daily basis. I have also realized that until now, I have not chosen those fundamental beliefs, I have merely soaked them in from my surroundings. I took some comfort in knowing that I am not alone in my struggle; even as a monk who was studying Buddhist texts with learned teachers, Grozni also seemed to be grappling to understand Buddhism through the worldview from his childhood.

Grozni’s descriptions of Dharamsala are so vivid. He describes the bustle of the town, the packs of dogs and beggars, and being surrounded by the Himalayas so precisely that I felt again what it was like to be there. It made me miss the fresh air and the night sky and the million sounds I could hear from my bed in the morning, and even the damn monkeys.

At a time when I was painfully missing India, Turtle Feet helped me realize that Dharamsala will never be the same as it was during the year I was there. Many of my friends have left, our lives have changed, and our experiences have changed us. At the same time, I know that Dharamsala will always be there and will probably always evoke a sense of awe in those who visit it.

For Sun Chee

Roommates. Most of us have lived with them at some point in our lives. They are strangers with whom we must coexist, whose bizarre habits and foibles we must cope with and who must cope with ours in return. I am currently living with three such creatures. My roommates are an unemployed dancer who unintentionally ate hash brownies from our freezer, a busking musician who likes to rant about politics with me, and (my personal favourite) an out-of-work actress who has taken over the apartment since she moved in a month ago.

We’ve had the usual roommate issues: dirty dishes left everywhere, garbage that doesn’t get taken out, bills not paid, doors left unlocked and shoes being worn in the house. But my ultimate favourite so far has been the case of my missing toothbrush.

I came home late one night and it was just gone.

My initial reaction was to mutter “stupid f***ing roommates” under my breath – an increasingly common curse these days. All I kept thinking was WHY would anyone take a used toothbrush?! I told myself that there had to be a rational explanation. I searched the trashcans, thinking it might have fallen in the toilet or been used to clean shoes, and then discarded. Nothing.

Then my imagination started to wander. Maybe the two annoying cats had learned acrobatics while we were out and taught themselves how to open the perilously high medicine cabinet. I laughed at the mental picture of the two cats standing one on top of the other, stealing my toothbrush as revenge for all the times I sprayed them with water to get them out of my room.

When I was a kid and my mum had lost something, she used to say, “Things don’t just sprout legs and walk off.” But if my roommates were telling the truth, they didn’t touch my toothbrush.

Maybe my Indian-made toothbrush was homesick and just couldn’t take it anymore.