BOOK: Tsering Namgyal Khortsa’s Tibet & Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis
Reading a sprawling colonial saga (Sea of Poppies) and an intimate Tibetan memoir brings me specific lenses to see the world by. This is why my soulmate is a book.
I usually like to read 3-4 books at the same time. Like different elements of a meal for my hungry mind. When I finish a ‘set’, it’s a big decision to figure out how I want the next few weeks of my life to go.
This choice isn’t blind but isn’t entirely linear logic. It’s a combination of book club deadlines, the desire for something different from my last set, a chance for novelty of a brand new book and sometimes curiosity about what it says about the person who gave it to me. So the end result is often a nice surprise for me. I can only figure out themes retroactively. Or to be American about it, connect the dots looking back.
This current choice brings me questions of identity through political machinations & colonialism. Both books call up ideas of how people not from the Indian Subcontinent see us and label us.
The Ibis trilogy presents multiple languages & shifting perspectives from rural Bihar’s opium factories to English dockyards. It’s a sweeping saga but never feels exclusionary. It’s masterful writing but the world of readers already knew that about the author. Maybe it’s because I’m squarely Indian and am trained to respond to narratives of colonialism.
Within Tsering Namgyal Khortsa’ suitcase, we find curiously naive/wise reflections on the way skin colour claims labels & mental spaces. It’s quietly intimate, in contrast to Amitav Ghosh’s work. And it feels friendly even as it is foreign to me. An unusual state of being.
Both books originate in the same part of the world (sort of). Tsering Namgyal Khortsa speaks often about the Buddhist identity. The birthplace of the Buddha was in the very place where Amitav Ghosh begins his saga. It makes me wonder how much the generational history embedded in a land, we carry with us when we eat of its produce and breathe its air. I can only find myself grateful for the gift of sight, access to language and books and a rainy day from which I can escape into these pages.
Books featured:
1. Tibetan Suitcase by Tsering Namgyal Khortsa: I bought this from Book Garden and the author is reachable here (Instagram, X)
2. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh: I received this as a birthday gift from SandMaxPrime (Instagram, X, Substack). I am reading it for Mumbai Literary Club’s Ibis Trilogy challenge.
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Update on 19 Aug: I’ve completed both these books and here are my reviews of each.
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Tibetan Suitcase by Tsering Namgyal Khortsa
This was a very unusual read for me. I really enjoy the epistolary format, in which this book is written – a collection of letters, documents and diary accounts. As with Memoirs of a Geisha, I initially mistook this for being an actual memoir, rather than a story told in the form of a memoir. But the warm, first person account of a person’s world was a good choice to bring out the complexity of a several generations displaced Tibetan people.
I picked up this book because I’m consciously trying to read beyond what automatically comes my way – English books written by and about white British & American people. Asia and even more so The Indian Subcontinent are rich with hidden treasures of storytelling techniques, erased histories and deeper thinking models than what popular media has homogenised for us. Asian cultures navigate relationships very differently and this includes our relationships with land, community and belief as much as with other people. What happens when a person finds no recognition of their existence even in the nuanced, multi-faith diversity of Asia?
One might expect such a story to be full of anguish but it read like a book version of the smile you see on the faces of child monks in the media narratives about Tibetan Buddhism. Full of joy and delicate wit.
Alternately, the title may also make it sound like a dry treatise on a religion. The characters in the story are informed by the study of Tibetan Buddhism and their lives revolve around how they pursue it. But for me, traumatised by the violence of organised religion in the world today, this still felt like a gentle introduction. Living in India which has been home to many linguistic, geographic and religious cultures which are all now in ruinous conflict, this book felt like an additional dimension. I was surprised at how easy it was to read. It still took me several weeks longer than I usually wood because I wanted to ponder the ideas that came written between the lines.
What does the idea of a country really mean? When a group of people self-identify as one thing, what is the morality of larger, more powerful groups claiming them as property? And how is this justified by spiritual ethics, the foundation of this self-identified group?
This book is an eye-opener for anyone who assumed that Buddhism was just quietly meditating under a Bodhi tree like Prince Sidharth. There’s nothing quiet or meditative about the territory dispute being waged over the land, its people or the history of this religion. As this book brings out, this drama is now being enacted on an international stage, with religious leaders in hiding or being arrested on entry to where they identify as homeland and Western governments and universities getting involved.
I have complicated feelings about the role of the West in this. Historically white Europeans caused the most damage across continents in the past few centuries. We can think of this quest to highlight intellect and spiritual contributions across the world as a form of reparations. Or we can recognise that there is a capitalist/power motive to each of these moves. Would the US be quite as interested in Tibet, had it not been able to cast China as the opponent?
And while we’re thinking on this macro global level, it becomes easy to slot people of religion as sexless (Christian construct), vegetarian (Brahimin thought) and otherwise templatised founts of wisdom. It becomes harder to think of them as human beings who experience rage, desire, jealousy, pride, disappointment, vindication or disillusionment. We watch Dawa Tashi amble through all of these along with his friend Brent, his sometimes girlfriend Iris, his romantic/spiritual rival Pema and his mentor Khenchen Sangpo. Is he still a good student if he thinks uncharitably of his respected teacher in his mind? Is he being true to his faith if he dislikes a man for being more attractive to women? Is he being a better or worse Buddhist when his achievements seem paltry and his ambition low? And through it all, Dawa Tashi feels human in the most likeable of ways. Just like one of us.
This is a book that I will want to read again at a different point in my life because it serves as such a good mirror of my own views on faith, people, ownership and home.
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Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
This book inspired a lot of feelings so I’ll finish off the complaints first and be done with it.
Terrible cover quality. I read the paperback very carefully, seated on a dry desk and put it away in a cloth bag when I wasn’t reading. And even so it looks dogeared. I even went looking for a plastic cover but couldn’t find one of this size. It looks like the publishers in a bid to bring this 512 page volume to paperback, also skimped on the quality of the cover pages. They’re as flimsy as the print pages and perhaps even more fragile as they bear beautiful artwork of poppy flowers on ocean waves
Books also appear to be doing away with table of contents. I know this book has one because I’ve seen the ebook version but my paperback copy is missing it. This is a terrible miss because this book is a saga that spans many cultures and storylines. A simple bookmark does not suffice to keep you anchored to the story when one has to keep going back and forth to keep track of character names, plotlines and timelines.
Sources online suggest that the book contains a glossary of terms which would be mighty meaningful. Not only is this a story that uses words unfamiliar to international audiences, it also employs multiple dialects and languages ranging from Cantonese to Bhojpuri.
And because it is a seafaring tale, it is crossed over with multicultural perceptions ranging from illegitimate sons of Parsis in China (already immigrants to India from Iran) to biracial Americans passing as white in India. Finally, this is a tale of India, of its Eastern port that doesn’t get the same national attention as does the North West border. It is a story in the early 1800s when the East India company had sunk its talons into India while losing its grip on the slave trade of America and trying to latch onto China. The glossary of terms is missing in the paperback and you really feel the pinch.
My complaints contain my awe and wonder at this book too. Despite all its complexity, the book is easy to read, the characters often conflicting perspectives feel relatable and the story moves smoothly even through the turbulence of capitalist racism. There are suggestions of magical realism without it ever becoming a demons-and-fairytales thing, which feels like a master work in a story of India. Because that is how life in India is – fluid without the rigid European/Christian binaries of technology & faith or good & evil.
There is deep pathos in the early parts of the stories of every character from Deeti to Zachary and even Nob Kissen. It could easily have gone the way of the misery-fest that characterises award-winning books today. But every character finds hope, disappointment, unexpected help, shocking turns and their ways to keep going. Just like life itself.
I am so excited that this is just book 1 of a trilogy. Maybe because it was published before the drive to triple profits by stretching stories on page & celluloid, it feels like a tangible two more courses are waiting for me.