I just came across this book review and find it very interesting.
It must be very hard to be away from one's family and back then there was no internet This also shows the deep pain Dorje Shugden practitioners who have or had to live as they had to leave loved ones in Tibet but even in Dharamsala they were persecuted and not part of the community.
Dharamshala — If you are an avid reader of anything that is Tibetan, then, you might be interested in buying a newly released Tibetan memoir book: Two More Years.
"Two More Years is my memoir and my way of looking at my life but in many ways, it is also the story of many Tibetans who have been in my shoes," says Tendar Tsering, author of the book.
Tendar explains, "When I was twelve, I decided to leave my family and cross Mt. Everest to study in India. This is the story of my life thereafter."
The story is told from the point of view of a twelve-year-old boy and the images of events unfolding in the story are very vivid and raw in nature.
The story is fraught with tension— the boy leaves his family behind and embarks on an arduous and dangerous journey in order to study at a boarding school in India.
On the way to India, the boy who is accompanied by some forty strangers often looks up in the sky and desires to return back but he has reached a point of no return; there's no way he can get back on his own. During the journey, the group often sleeps during the day and travels at night in order to not be caught by the Chinese border patrol.
Once the group arrives in India, Tendar finds out that India is not what he heard of and dreamed about when he was in Tibet. Even after being enrolled in the Tibetan Children's Village School, Tendar's tragedy doesn't end. He is homesick. He wants to go back to his hometown in Tibet but he also knows that there is no way that he can go back. The lump in his throat only grows bigger.
Tendar says Two More Years is a melancholic reference to the promise that he had made to his family when his mother begged to see him again—one he is yet to achieve even after twenty years of living in exile.
After twenty years of exile, Tendar looks back at his life and adds, [b]"I can't really say if I was lucky to study under the blessing of His Holiness the Dalai Lama or unlucky to be away from my family for last over twenty years."[/b]
"There is no black and white answer. It is very gray in nature," Tendar adds.
Leaving readers teary eyed and in awe, the story ends with Tendar's flight to the United States, thousands of miles away from his homeland and in contradiction to his promise to return home.
The book is available on Amazon and can also be ordered from Barnes and Noble.
