Monsoonic Islands of Exile: Tsundue's Other Indias

Abstract

Although better known as an activist, Tenzin Tsundue (1970) is also a prominent Tibetan English poet. As part of a generation of Tibetans born in the exile chosen by their parents, Tsundue considers Tibetan his mother tongue but feels most comfortable writing in English. Hybrid in many ways, his poetry returns constantly to a journey of return to the ancestral homeland, which is sometimes literal and sometimes literary. Closely associated with the many shapes this journey takes are the utopian and imaginary destination and the dystopian and more realistic point of origin. In other words, the imaginary Tibet of the second-generation Tibetan, nurtured by familiar memories but rarely (if at all) seen, stands in stark contrast with the day to day reality of India, which comparatively appears in a dystopian fashion.