Whose campaign is it, anyway?

Silent observers when a ghastly crime occurs and 25,000 supporters for the victims once it becomes news. What does this tell us? Citizens’ awakening is an important aspect of civil society, but are individual cases of ‘no tolerance’ enough?

The news: At Amboli in Mumbai on October 20 after a night out a group of youngsters were in the street having their post-dinner paan. Some goons tried to molest one of the girls. After a verbal tiff, they returned with more men wielding sticks and knives. Keenan Santos and Reuben Fernandes, the men in the group, were assaulted in the most horrendous manner. Keenan died soon after reaching the hospital; Reuben survived a little longer. These two young men are dead. Their friends had tried getting through to 100, but no cops turned up. And no one helped them – restaurant staff, hawkers, passersby.

This news has been reported from the day after the incident. The campaign group is doing its best. However, I do hope they stay away from the ‘conscience-pricking’ lot. Let it not turn into a media event, although it is in danger of becoming one now that it has gone ‘viral’ on social networking sites. I understand the reach, but the idea being pushed is to have a “Jessica-like fast-track justice”. The Jessica Lall case dragged on for years because the culprit was influential and the people protecting him were too. There are still unresolved cases, including that of Aarushi and many unknown numbers.

To what extent is citizen journalism a viable alternative? Can it ensure that cops are on duty, that the emergency helplines are available, that goons don’t stalk the streets for prey, and most important of all that people who are around assist those who are being assaulted?

Think about it. It is easy for us sitting at our keyboards to talk about how the hawkers and those in the restaurant should have come forward, but how many of us would have done so when you see a bunch of guys molest a girl who is with her male friends and there is an argument, after which they have the gumption to return with weapons? It is not just fear of the consequences of intervention, but of having to give statements to the cops, attend court hearings, always be on tenterhooks that the criminals or their friends could trace us and make life miserable.

Would we, who are now talking about a campaign and candlelight vigil, ever go and help a female hawker?

What those who are fighting the case – and do not call it a cause because it will immediately become just another ‘rally’ing point  – should ensure the safety of the friends. Then, get the police to act. The culprits have been identified and confessed. There is talk of stricter laws. Of course. But can a law prevent people from indulging in such acts?

Indeed, as they say, this could happen to anyone. It is not a question of ‘could’. It has.

Posters and support groups need to push for access to emergency numbers besides 100, and the presence of police chowkies or at least cops at night every few kilometres where there is social activity going on. These culprits do not have clout, fortunately.

That is the reason I say: avoid the Jessica Lall reference. Her killer, who is now serving life imprisonment, has sought parole from the Delhi High Court to attend his brother’s wedding. What is shocking is that on earlier occasions when he was granted parole he would visit discotheques and violate the other conditions. Apparently, only a one-year conduct of the convict is taken into account for granting him leave. I do not see how convicts, unless they are dreaded criminals, would get away with misbehaviour inside the jail premises. Their conduct would out of necessity be quite unremarkable, and harmless within the confines of prison walls.

Should a person serving a life term be granted parole at all for anything, except perhaps a tragedy in the family? Can you picture this guy dancing at his brother’s wedding? I would imagine that his friends, or even onlookers, would take photographs on their cellphones and post them on some networking site, which will immediately be grabbed by the media to show us the ugly face of justice. Why do they not say anything before? After all, the Jessica Lall case was touted as a media victory.

- - -

Just the other day, there was a protest against the immolation of Tibetans and the brutal Chinese regime on the eve of the G20 Summit to pressurise various government heads to raise the issue. It is a subject that gets mileage, but no concrete action is taken.

Before the rally, an email was circulated. It said, among other things:

We, the Delhi Chapter of Students for a Free Tibet, with a bulk number of members and Indian supporters are organizing a protest action tomorrow. The action will involve street theater, flash mob, and photo opportunity. If you're interested in covering it, please get in touch with the organizers directly. They can fill you in on more details.

"Photo opportunity"? This is what always worries me.

Citizens, however concerned they are, play into the hands of some establishment or the other. It could be the government, the police, the courts, the media and the ‘watchdogs’, who just wait and watch.

RIP Keenan, Reuben, Jessica, Aarushi, Shivani,Tibetans, and the thousands that go unreported and unsupported.

News meeows

Gujarat

The verdict on the Godhra case will be pronounced on Tuesday. 10,000 cops will guard Ahmedabad and 2000 will be posted at Godhra. This is a telling indicator that it is the big city that decides how the tide will swing.

Godhra collector Milind Torawane has banned all TV channels from showing images of the Godhra carnage or the riots that followed, for 12 hours beginning noon of February 22. Joint commissioner Satish Sharma told mediapersons on Saturday that they should refrain from showing or publishing images of Godhra and post-Godhra riots on the verdict day so as not to fuel public emotions. The police have given security cover for families of all the 92 accused booked in the case.

I understand it, but why did the Gujarat government use images of the burning train in its own election campaign? Was it not to fuel public emotions? How selective are these emotions? The locals go on a rampage, the police with the connivance of the government kills over 1200 people – their own people – because of a burnt train coach with 59 passengers they did not know the identities of?

94 accused were rounded up and are in the Sabarmati prison since 2002, whereas Narendra Modi remains the chief minister. Have these accused been given security cover because the verdict will go against some of them or because it won’t? Then the public emotions will again be divided. The post-Godhra riots took place without any photographic evidence. It spread through hate-inducing pamphlets and posters. So, images won’t cause any such reaction unless they are engineered to.

However, I’d agree that they should not be aired because TV channels will sensationalise it for no reason other than to grab attention for themselves. And anyway, the media people do not decide the fate of criminal or civil cases, although they’d like to believe they do.

Orissa

The Orissa government on Saturday seemed to be working to a hush-hush plan to swap abducted Malkangiri collector R Vineel Krishna and junior engineer Pabitra Majhi with a clutch of jailed Maoist leaders. This could be the first such exchange deal since the 1999 IC-814 Kandahar incident in which militant Masood Azhar and others were freed for 190-odd Indian Airlines passengers.

There is a huge difference. The plane was hijacked by Harkat ul Mujahideen, a Pakistani militant outfit, and demanded the release of its members. The lives of 190 people were at stake. In Orissa, the kidnapping is against the Indian establishment. It is an indigenous hostage situation.

From reports one gathers that the cops helped in putting up the bail pleas for the Maoists, but the lawyer says it has to be done the proper judicial way. Apparently, the reasons for the arrests are flimsy. The government may well go the quiet way because it can be questioned regarding its policies. I do wonder, though, why the Maoists have not kidnapped policemen or politicians.

Mumbai/Dharamshala

The Dalai Lama gave a lecture in Mumbai on “Ancient Wisdom and Modern Thoughts”, but he did sneak in politics:

“Now in China, genuine socialism is no longer there; a communist party without communist ideology. Capitalist communism: this is new. I heard that the life of some Indian communists and a few leaders of the Indian communist party is more bourgeois than socialist.”

True. Just as the life of some spiritual leaders who check into five-star hotels while their people sit for hours in protest. The Dalai Lama has consistently played a dog and the bone game with China. The problem is this tussle on his part takes place in India. And he does it so subtly, so 'spiritually', that we don’t even realise what is happening”

“I describe Indians as the guru, we (Tibetans) are chelas (students) of Indian guru. Essentially we learn from you.”

And then he said:

“Caste, dowry, discrimination, these may be a part of your tradition but they are outdated, and must change. The youth must change some of these…. From your chela, this is constructive criticism. Sometimes, you are a little bit lazy. You must be more hardworking; work with full self-confidence.”

Did anyone object? Of course, these are evils but where was the BJP that starts getting all hot and bothered everytime someone talks about our ‘tradition’?

Forget Indians, may we know in what manner the Tibetan youth can be self-confident and hardworking when they don’t even have their own land? How many of them have access to the huge amount of donated money from overseas by foreign supporters? Does the Indian government not have limits on this?

He made a rather curious comment:

"Modern education system does not pay attention to wholeheartedness. Teaching ethics without touching the religious space is important."

Is he conceding that ethics is antithetical to religion? And if it is important and 'wholehearted', then why must it not infringe into the religious space?

Arunachal

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev got a taste of politics on Saturday at his yoga camp in Arunachal’s Pasighat where he was allegedly called a “bloody Indian dog” by Congress MP Ninong Ering. Taking exception to the insult, the yoga guru’s spokesperson S K Tijarawala threatened that Ering wouldn’t be allowed to come to Delhi to attend Parliament. Ering, who has denied the charge, has been asked by the Congress to explain his conduct.

1. This should tell the Congress that, if true, its own party is completely removed from Arunachal. 
2. Who is Swami Ramdev to disallow an elected MP from attending Parliament? File a case against such libellous language. Simple.

The Dalai Lama's Subtle Politics

Why was such a noise made about the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh?

He is in exile. But from his utterances it does not appear so. He first fled to Tawang from Tibet in 1959; his attachment to the place is understandable. However, he ought to understand that he should not speak about Indian politics:

“My stand that Tawang is an integral part of India has not changed.”

The report has called it his defence of the host country. In all likelihood this will work as mocking China, not because of the Tibetan issue but the Maoist one. It probably suits the central government’s purpose.

His statement:

“It’s usual for China to oppose my visit. It’s baseless to say my trip is anti-China. My visit is not political at all”

reeks of politics. Right from the start a statement is being made.

Even more surprising is his stand on Tibetans in India:

“The other reason why I am happy is that the people here take genuine interest in Tibetan Buddhism and Buddhist culture. Right from Ladakh to Tawang, Tibetan Buddhism is practised traditionally.”

Buddhism, yes. But Tibetan Buddhism? The Dalai Lama was given a place to set up home with his followers; it is only natural that they will go out for work opportunities. Hasn’t it struck anyone as rather naïve of us to let the Tibetan version spread?

The Tibetan right to a homeland is valid, but the Dalai Lama’s idea of being a travelling salesman to “promote human values, and promote harmony” needs a rain check.

- - -

There’s more here on India and the Dalai Lama’s Middling Path

News meeows - 20

Are the attacks in various cities of Pakistan a holocaust?

Pakistan Human Rights Commission chairperson Asma Jehangir said the government failed to get its act together despite an intelligence report about an impending terror strike. “People of Pakistan are going through a holocaust. They are suffering high levels of trauma and stress due to sheer helplessness. Deep down they know they are in for a long haul,” Jehangir said.

What are these intelligence reports? Our subcontinent is known for intelligence reports that are either vague or come out in the open after such attacks. Media reports are careless, to say the least:

The Frankenstein’s monster unleashed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence struck back at its creator as suspected Taliban terrorists detonated a car bomb near the ISI office in Lahore, and gunmen opened fire at the guards.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the authorities said it was in retaliation to the anti-Taliban offensive in the country’s northwest. “This is a reprisal from the Taliban after their defeat in Swat,’’ interior minister Rehman Malik said. “Baitullah Mehsud (Pakistani Taliban chief) had threatened to attack major cities after the Swat operation.’’ He said the militants were on the run and had no option but to lay down arms.

Does Mr. Malik not realise that if militants are on the run and so scared of the government, how could they target a part of its own organisation? The Taliban is the creation of the ISI? If this is a certainty, then the government can disband it, right? And nothing will happen? I do not understand how the current regime is managing to get away with so much credit for its “anti-Taliban offensive” when it has destabilised the country.

Voluntary agencies have a propensity for playing along when the powers involved are so-called democratic forces.

Now, we are told that media reports think it was probably an attempt to free Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed, who is under house arrest after the 26/11 carnage in Mumbai and was to be produced before a local court not far from the attack site.

Do you see how completely confusing these messages are? The Taliban was not involved in the Mumbai attacks. These are just tactics to deflect from the main issue – the Pakistan government had created this monster and is answerable to its masters elsewhere.

- - -

The Slumdog Millionaire actors are getting on my nerves. Every other day there is some story. One thing is for sure. The film will remain in the public eye for longer than it deserves to be. No one ever bothered about what happened to the kids who acted in Salaam Bombay. The producers had also started a trust but its main actor got nothing and is now, I believe, an autorickshaw driver.

Mohammed Azharuddin and Rubina Qureshi have been endorsing products, are being feted by political leaders, the state government has given them some property, and a voluntary organisation is giving them Rs. 6,500 for monthly expenses. And what happened to that Qatar businessman who came to sponsor Rubina’s education?

What is going on? If at all, the film’s producers should have paid the kids a proper amount and been done with it. Why the tamasha of a trust, homes? What happened to the tale about Rubina’s father willing to ‘sell off’ his daughter? I think that was a plant to get sympathy and maybe prop up the film. You think Danny Boyle has returned to Mumbai to save these kids? From what?

And then our government and people will feel all so sad. Damn. Has anyone realised that when the Garib Nagar slums were bulldozed there were other families there too? Did anyone read the report of the Sanjay Gandhi Nagar slumdwellers who were given housing and sold those flats? That was a huge racket and it is fairly common. What is actor Gerard Butler doing visiting them? If Hollywood is so concerned, someone can just take them there. They are the business of their employers, not of the Government of India or the state or NGOs.

If the establishment wants to help them then they will have to help all slumdwellers. The GOI has not produced the film. The GOI has not benefitted from it. The GOI is not in the business of selective choices. There are no reservations yet for those who star in international films. The GOI has responsibilities towards all citizens.

- - -

The Dalai Lama has offered $100,000 and his help fundraising to prevent the planned closure of an imperilled religion department at a Florida university after receiving an emailed plea for a letter of support from a longtime acquaintance on the faculty.

Great. One more international personality that makes the headlines always. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual head of a community based in a specific location. His people have been fighting for the right to a homeland. They are refugees in India. He has got his own shop set up in Dharamsala and until recently pretty much decided how much bhai-bhai we could do with China.
He is pretty cut off from many of his own as this piece I wrote shows.

Why is he trying to save a department of religion? What is so great about it? Obviously, no one cares enough for it. So what are they trying to prevent from folding up? What is the source of the Dalai Lama’s funds? Is it his job to help in fund-raising drives when Tibetans have to go on strike and suffer huge losses whenever they need to protest against something or the other by the Chinese authorities?

Where are all those Hollywood followers who embraced Buddhism? They are closer to Florida or is the clinch only for convenience when they can show off their robes and their beatific expressions and make those mandatory gestures to claim His Holiness as their superstar?

Dis n Dat

Hah…

The political wing of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency which used to spy on politicians and rig elections has been disbanded and will now focus only on internal security issues.

Someone please tell those who are getting all excited about this bit of news that internal security issues often have to do with the activities of politicians. Has any foreign power been responsible for the killing of its leaders?

Oh…

Ramosana, a small village in Gujarat’s Mehsana district. Since the last 15 days, 3,000 priests have been chanting hymns to invoke divine intervention to tackle the global financial crisis.

The globe does not know about Mehsana, Mehsana does not know about the globe, much less its financial crisis.

Now comes the fun part: This yagna will continue for the next two years (gosh, these priests sure know about market trends) and will cost approximately Rs 150 crore.

Who is paying for it? Don’t tell me some poor traders in Mehsana have been roped into believing that all this stock diving is going to affect their daily lives and they must cough up money? This is utter nonsense.

What is the point of going to the moon when we are still trying to appease god and goddesses for various crises? With this money, they could construct houses for the poor, or small industries and employ people.

What is Narendra Modi doing? Is this his idea of going global?

Aah…

You can rise in Australia. Join The Australian Sex Party. This is a political party and its slogan is “We are serious about sex”. The target voters will be its four million citizens who access pornography.

Its policies will include a national sex education curriculum, reducing censorship, abolishing government’s proposed Internet filter and supporting gay marriage.

These are honourable motives. Am wondering though whether being serious about sex means no laughing, no tickling, no flippant acts of feather caresses or popping bubbles…no kangaroo jumps…

Aha…

The Dalai Lama could be a good model for the Fevicol ad. Says he:

“There is no point or question of retirement. It is my moral responsibility to lead the Tibetans till my death. My whole body and flesh is Tibetan.”

So were those who were killed a few months ago.

And he is now even willing to give up the Dalai Lama position after he is gone!

“There are various ways of doing it (having a successor). The point is whether to continue with the institution of the Dalai Lama or not. After my death, Tibetan religious leaders can debate whether to have a Dalai Lama or not. I may be the last Dalai Lama…My successor can be a young boy or a girl. Girls show more compassion. Also, women are dominating things all over the world.”

I think spiritual leaders should make up their minds whether they want to be politicians or god’s middlemen/women. He clearly has no idea what he is talking about.

Ouch…

John Lennon has been forgiven by the Vatican for his remark about the Beatles being “more popular than Jesus”.

What is the use? It has been 40 years. The Church is still around, so is the memory of the Beatles.

The Vatican’s official newspaper said:

“After so many years it sounds merely like the boasting of an English working-class lad struggling to cope with unexpected success”.

It should have hit them on the head way back then. It does not have to be success going to his head, just refusal to believe in institutionalised religion or wanting to create a new world through music. That the Church even objected is puerile.

All Lennon said was:

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink We’re more popular than Jesus now — I don’t know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity.”

Why did the Church want Jesus to be ‘popular’? And this sudden forgiveness business is a bit silly. Instead of regurgitating 40 year-old comments, they should have gone and stopped that Michael Jackson from converting to Islam. There is still time for them to take him back.

They will save two religions for the price of one.

India and the Dalai Lama’s Middling Path

The Dalai Lama's famous 'middle path' is the biggest cop-out. It works only at the level of Hollywood art-house cinema and to make sure that Richard Gere remains the certified American gigolo of the movement.

India and the Dalai Lama’s Middling Path
by Farzana Versey
State of Nature

India is trapped. “This will be a ‘Tom and Jerry’ show. The cat may have powerful fangs but the mouse will ultimately win,” said Tibetan leader Tensin Tsunde.

- - -

The Tibetan Refugee Camp in Delhi was quiet. The stalls where they sold carvings, trinkets, and shawls and woolens in winter, were empty. They stood like cages, iron meshes separating one from the other.

Some monks were sitting on the wooden platforms. Young people in trendy clothes were walking about aimlessly. I spotted two young men in their late teens. For a month in March all shops were closed in protest. Wangchuk stayed here. The lodgings are very basic, but certainly better constructed than the hovels of the poor. Both these boys were attending college. One lived here; the other in a mainstream locality. The latter was far more forthcoming. What was Wangchuk afraid of?

“Not afraid. I just don’t want too much prominence. We are going through conflict.”

“With the Chinese?”

“Yes, but also amongst ourselves.”

At the centre of the discord is the Dalai Lama. At the time I was there last month he was sitting in an air-conditioned suite of a five-star hotel. The protesters had been shouting slogans. These two teenagers are tired. “For four days we sat there, it won’t achieve anything. People are going on and on about boycotting the Olympics. We don’t care about all that. We want complete independence.”

The Dalai Lama’s famous ‘middle path’ is the biggest cop-out.

It works only at the level of Hollywood art-house cinema and to make sure that Richard Gere remains the certified American gigolo of the movement. The Dalai Lama says that the recent aggression and riots that took place did not involve Tibetan monks at all. “They (Chinese soldiers) dressed like monks. So, for a lay person, they will look like monks. But the swords they had were not Tibetan, they were Chinese swords.”

Yet, he does not want a separate state but autonomy within China. It is time for him to visit his people as a political leader and drop the His Holiness garb. But that won’t sell. He has got a nice little resort to himself in India, a horde of celebrity endorsements and a typical Occidental support system. Steve Tsang, a China politics expert at Oxford University rightly asked, “How many people watching these images in the West will buy China's story? Instead, what you see are these heroic monks who are risking a lot for their cause. That is something your average Westerner is very sympathetic with.”

The average Westerner makes Chicken Soup for the Soul a bestseller. Monks are cute, and the Dalai Lama really enchants everyone. An Indian editor just could not rein in his excitement when the Tibetan leader slapped his wrist after every joke. Here is one such ‘joke’: “The Chinese accuse me of orchestrating the protests. I call for a thorough investigation. Let them investigate if I am responsible. Let them investigate any and everything—except my lungs, my stomach, my urine and my stool.”

I had once attended one of his lectures at an auditorium in Mumbai. Standing in the queue to enter the hall was quite a lesson. There were foreigners with backpacks, the usual activist brigade, a few chic ladies in summer wear, some were into the holistic healing fad, and there were the Tibetans in their orange-maroon robes.

When the gates opened there was a predictable rush. You could have been to a rock concert, but there was a silence punctuated by laughter that was echoing the Dalai Lama’s giggles. He laughed because he goofed up on his English and everyone laughed because he did. Charming, but that’s about it. He said India was their guru; he was only stating the obvious. He was barely audible let alone intelligible.

Besides, when the West is busy bashing up ‘Islamists’ for making a hue and cry about faith, why is their poster boy publicly airing his religious views?

He vacillates between international intervention and then insisting that “the real solution to the Tibet issue can only be found between the Han Chinese and the Tibetans and no one else”. Almost immediately he avers, “I appeal to the world to save the Tibetan nation, which has a unique cultural heritage and is facing extinction as a result of the cultural genocide taking place in Tibet.”

In one of those supremely confusing moments, he has said that culturally Tibetans were closer to India and politically to China.

To start with, the problem is political. Tibet was established over 2100 years ago by Raja Nathi Chenpo, the first king. Around the middle of the 20th century, October 1949 to be precise, Chinese aggression began. With the advent of Communism, the attempts became bolder, resulting in forcible entry into Tibet, the butchering and massacre of 1959 which finally made the Dalai Lama and millions of others seek refuge in India.

Very soon the refugees realised they shared many similarities with the people of the Himalayan regions. What the Indian government does not realise is that joining forces with Tibet is detrimental to India because China has laid claims to Arunachal Pradesh, did not recognize Sikkim as a part of India and has supported many separatist movements in the North East and continues to occupy Aksai Chin in Ladakh.

Some of us who are considered ‘concerned citizens’ got an invitation to join in the parallel torch relay two days before the Olympics torch arrived; it was sent by some Indian Opposition leaders. That we are still struggling with our own separatist issues does not seem to drive home a discordant note. Also, since the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama have been crying themselves hoarse that they do not have a problem with China hosting the Olympics, why is India falling into the rat-trap?

People like Wangchuk have begun to question the concept of the very culture they are fighting to save. “We are not blaming the older generation but how long can we wait? We believe in democracy that is the reason we quietly protest. It is unfortunately mistaken for being soft. So far we have not thought of arming ourselves because that would not be good for us either. Yet when people keep telling us that we are Buddhist and must therefore follow the path of peaceful appeals, we find it a little unnerving. Recent experience has shown us quite clearly that the sound of bombs resonates very loudly but not our voices.”

An elderly administrator, Teng Pasang, is worried about this call for complete independence. “That is why the Chinese should speak to the Dalai Lama. After he is gone it will be difficult. If the Tibetans want they can become terrorists overnight. They could have become like Kashmir.”

Did it not strike him as a bit unusual that for a people who live in refugee camps they have given up their means of livelihood for a month? “This is a small price to pay for the sacrifice of the Tibetans. Besides, most have made enough money and saved up.”

He is happy with how the international community is responding. “It is good, UK, France, America, all coming and supporting.”

They have never shown such support for Kashmir, Afghanistan or Iraq, I tell him. “See, I told you Tibetans are non-violent. They are not terrorists.”

The Dalai Lama’s own position regarding terrorism is rather interesting. He had told the Daily Telegraph some years ago that terrorists must be treated humanely or terrorism will spread, “If there is one Bin Laden killed today, soon there will be 10 Bin Ladens…The new terrorism has been brewing for many years. Much of it is caused by jealousy and frustration at the West because it looks so highly developed and successful on television.”

Clearly he watches a lot of television. Perhaps he is unaware that it was the West that made the Gulf war into the first reality soap opera. It is rather surprising that for someone who fled because of atrocities he does not understand the depth of dissent. Osama bin Laden was a highly successful ‘Harry’, much admired in the teakwood-paneled clubs of London. No terrorist movement is even remotely trying to ape the West or showing any evidence of materialistic aspirations.

Today, the walls at the camp are plastered more with announcements of music programmes rather than political slogans. What do they want? Their voices are asking to support the proposal to demilitarize and denuclearize Tibet and put a stop to Chinese aggression. They want India to raise the issue of Tibet’s independence. And finally they cannot see why His Holiness cannot be accorded the status of Head of State-in-exile. That will be a truly political statement.

As Wangchuk says, “We will not compromise.”

How long are they willing to wait? “Till the end, till we get what is our right. We have seen many difficulties in the past, so it is time for looking towards a good future.”

I am given a “Free Tibet” badge with some diffidence. I put it away in my bag. One of these should reach the Dalai Lama.