The dream come true..Chandragiri!!

I was planning to visit Chandragiri since 2010, as the history of Indo-Tibetan and the Tibetan refugees have always ignited my mind. Finally after a long wait I could make it to the refugee camps in Chandragiri in 2015. It was long journey by bus, train and car from Rourkela-Bhubaneswar-Bharampur-Mohana-Chandragiri. One of my senior Ph.D. colleague joined along with me to the place.

Both of us were excited for the trip and carried all necessary things that we would require for two days stay in the camp.  It was breath taking experience traveling to the place and seeing the colorful Tibetan flags in their entrance to the camps. Finally after a tiresome journey both of us reached the place. We stayed in a guest house called the 'Ripa house' which was clean and tidy. There was one small eatery where we used to take our food. On our post arrival we quickly visited the Rigon Monastery which was quite popular lately as Dalai lama had inaugurated it in 2010. The beauty of the monastery was scintillating. Each and every part of it was depicting the tradition and culture. The wall painting of the god were trying to say many things which was tough for both of us to decode it. The usual evening prayer had already started in the monastery, there were around eight young boys who were offering prayer to their lord. They were sitting in two lanes and two of them were beating the drums, one was playing the instrument called khanjani and another one offering some sort of holy water during the entire prayer session. We were asked not to click any photos or videos during the prayer session although we were allowed to see it. The camps were looking deserted due to business season for the primary occupation of selling woolen sweaters and shawl in the cities. The secondary occupation for them was selling sweet corn, other small business or jobs.

In our stay at monastery we try to gather information from the lamas about the teachings and the library. Surprisingly the young boys were from Nepal and not the Tibetan refugees. It was little strange to know that the monastery and the library was taken care by the Nepalese. We were latter not allowed to visit the library, as the higher authority were at Nepal. None of the boys were ready to spare more time with us. We assumed that that it would be the higher authority instruction not to share any information with the visitors. As we were walking around, we also found another  interesting place for the meditation called the 'mind doodling'. The beautifully revolving doodlers which has some prayer engraved on  it. We spend little time to observe the men and women meditating there. There are total five camps out there and we were living in camp-4. While walking down to the camp number three to talk to the female scholars in the monastery. We saw beautiful corn field on our way. We also crossed the lane that covers with colourful flags with some alphabets on it. Upon enquiry we found that the Tibetan believe on evil eye. To protect themselves from evil eye they use the flags with written prayers on it. The prayers were written in Sanskrit which was not read by all the young Tibetan. We found another small monastery in camp 3 where the female scholars were staying . We talked to them and found that they joined the monastery out of their own interest. Most of the scholars were from Nepal.

Question keep coming to my mind that how a 3 year old girl would find interest to join the monastery? There must be some political interest to bring these small kids into such teaching. As many of them would continue to stay in the monastery after the teaching is completed or they will be shifted to some other monastery to teach other fresh scholars. It was quite strange to know that the Nepali scholars are majority in number in the monastery than the Tibetan. What really strike my mind that the Tibetan refugees in the camps do not share any kind of information to the visitors. The refugees do take the advantage of doing government job especially in the Indian army which was again a political question of why joining Indian army? We also came to know from the local that they have a Tibetan PM for all the Tibetan refugees in India. They would collect vote from each destination to the head quarter at Dharamsala to decide the next PM. The only big social gathering for the Tibetan refugees is the new year in February. Most of the weddings are also conducted during that time of the year. It became a opportunity for the Tibetan refugees to integrate with other refugees living in different location in India. One of the fascinating thing that I noticed was the well preserve tradition and culture, nationalism and having that sense of belonging among themselves. I also felt that there are many other things I need to explore. But may be with frequent visit and interacting more with the Tibetan about their entire journey from Tibet to Chandragiri, political movement, economic migration, structural changes etc. Perhaps I can wait till February to go on their new year eve.