Tibetan Uprising Day

Yesterday one of the students mentioned offhandedly that today was Tibetan Uprising Day. When I asked the school staff about it, they confirmed the fact but didn't seem to attach much importance to it. That was the same attitude among the staff at the Shechen Guest House. (Which is perhaps one reason why Tibet is still under Chinese rule.)

I went to school this morning only to find that between yesterday afternoon, when I asked about Tibetan Uprising Day, and this morning, a holdiay was declared. I wasn't the only one who wasn't informed and a few of us who showed up for class decided to stick around and put in a few hours of practice. But as the teachers weren't around and as it was a holiday, some of the resident students made themselves comfortable in our classroom, which has the only functioning television in the building. And so our daily drawing and painting was accompanied by Hindi music videos, at least until the one girl who seemed most interested in watching them left to do something else. Then a young monk came in and took control of the remote after which it was time for classic rock videos, which I thought afterwards was quite an amusing collection of circumstances: the 45-year old American practicing Tibetan Buddhist art in a classroom in Kathmandu with a 24-year old monk from Bhutan with Bruce Springsteen singing about Glory Days.

I finally packed up and left around noon (after videos from Led Zeppelin, Mark Knopfler, Toto, and The Police, among others), did a little more painting in my room at the guest house, finished up Indestructible Truth, then headed out to the internet cafe, where along the way I snapped the following.


Free Tibet Campaign


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