I had never heard of Ama Adhe. But ever since we set foot in or actually rode into Himachal Pradesh, Sushmit couldn’t stop telling us how important it was for us to meet her.
So we made our way to the Tibetan Reception Centre for the newly arrived refugees. I was expecting a bent, frail, haggard 70/80 something year old woman.
After all 27 years spent as a political prisoner in a Chinese prison must take its toll. 27 years is what Nelson Mandela spent in prison. I hope Aung Sang Suu Kyi doesn’t have to spent 27 years before the junta disperses in Burma and democracy is restored.
Wow 27 years, that’s perspective. Come to think of it political prisoners are such a great minority group to make films and television documentaries, not to mention transsexuals, animal activists, Muslims, prostitutes, underworld dons, Bengalis.
[See footnote 1]So accompanied with a translator-friend, we sat outside her room on the top floor of the building. Ama Adhe came out, greeted us and sat down. She was old, but anything but bent or haggard. I don’t remember if she had a rosary or knitting needles.
I take my qualification seriously. And television journalists hardly miss a chance to showcase their intellect, even if they don’t really have anything to say or show. I decided to ask her questions, which were 'off-beat' aspects, missed by the foreign correspondent and the stringer alike. How was your childhood? Tell us a bit about your family. What happened?
In the middle of another such stupid question of mine, she got up, went to her room, leaving us baffled, only to return with a copy of her biography - Ama Adhe: The Voice that Remembers: The Heroic Story of a Woman's Fight to Free Tibet by Joy Blakeslee.
She handed it to me, asked us to read it, and sat down. (That Hurt!)
Well, since it was the last copy we had to return it, and haven’t been able to find another. We continued talking albeit, without having to play the roles of interviewer/viewee (I think it was in my head). We asked her about the young people she mentors especially the ones who escape from Tibet. We asked her if she agreed with the Dalai Lama’s Middle Path approach.
Today Ama Adhe is 76/77 years old. Her Kham dialect (If my notes can be trusted) is hard for even present day Tibetans to understand. It seemed to me as if 27 years in prison have only freed her.
Ama’s a spokesperson for the Tibetan cause, a cause célèbre. I still don’t know how much I know about her but these should help- Articles that we came across preparing for the meeting.
www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19980501-000025.htmlwww.rangzen.com/archive/98/06_india/adhe/index.htmlShe beamed at us when it time to leave. Her only regret, her biography has been translated into many languages, but not in Hindi. So if you know someone who can translate from English- Hindi this is your chance.
So we decided to take some photographs of her. I was wondering if I should keep my arm around her for the picture. And then suddenly Ama put her arms around us, and held us tight.
Post Scriptum
I have never really given Freedom, a thought. Unless I thinking from another point of view. I don’t know what suppression feels like. As an Indian male, things are more or less easy for me. I wonder if I could ever stay even a week in prison. 27 years seems eternity. I’m not even 25. I can’t even give up a meal; hunger strikes are so out of the question.
What is to be free? Political Freedom emanates from the idea of being free within. I wonder if that’s true. Seems to me at this point of time.
For me, three weeks later Ama’s more than just a Tibetan activist. She’s an example of what it could possibly mean to be free. The battle to be free inside is probably the hardest, the games the Chinese play after probably just whispers.
Ama’s journey makes for an incredible experience. What do I take from that experience and How? I don’t know
Yeah the Kids expression’s really misleading. He was quite happy to be in the picture with me contrary to popular belief.
[Footnote 1] A chance meeting of two film-makers revealed to one of them how film-makers/television reporters fall into the trap of looking at human beings as subjects to be filmed, life in camera angles. This is true as an experience when I saw a funeral some years ago as a great photo-op, full of colours of the flowers, the green sheets covering the body and only after the procession had passed I saw in it the grief of death. It was colourless.
Photo credits: Tenzin Choeying & Sushmit Ghosh
Dec 2006-07
