8 by 10*

Eight by ten

In any unit

Big or small

Is a rectangle.

Eight by ten

With four walls

And a roof

Is a room.

Eight by ten

Measured in feet

In any country

Is a small room.

Eight by ten

For a refugee

Is quite often

The only room.

Eight by ten

With a bed

And a stove

Is not just a room.

Eight by ten

With a mother

And an alter

Is a home.

With birth and death

Joy and tears

Like any home

Anywhere.

A place to share

A place to Love

Though only

Eight by ten.

* In memory of a small room below the Tibetan temple in Happy Valley, Mussoorie, where, through the end of the 1960s, my mother spent the last years of her life and was ‘home’ to us three brothers, a step-father and two infant half-brothers.

It was also a similar room at the Tibetan Handicraft Centre in McLeod Ganj which was ‘home’ to me, my wife and two children during my years as the President of the Tibetan Youth congress (1986-90) and for most of my years as one of the four Founding Directors of the Amnye Machen Institute (1992-99).

Born in Exile

Born an alien in exile, I feel like –

A kite cut loose in mid-air,

A boat adrift without sails,

A seed sown on rocky soil,

A sparrow over an ocean.

Born in a foreign land, I feel like –

A flower fallen by the wayside

A bird without wings,

A fish thrown out of the river

A lamb lost in a trackless desert.

Born a stateless refugee, I am –

A child with no place to call home,

A woman with no name,

A man with no nationality,

A human with no rights.

Born without any rights, I am –

A forlorn, betrayed hope,

An unheard, unanswered prayer,

A broken, unfulfilled promise,

An empty, shattered dream.