Description
Book SynopsisWritten in the 1990s after retirement from his services as a doctor and discovered by his daughter in the loft of their house in Darjeeling in India in 2017, this memoir of Dr. Tsewang Yishey Pemba provides an intricate portrayal of early twentieth-century Tibet. With his finger on the pulse of the Tibetan ethos, Pemba offers glimpses into the traditional sociology of Tibet and occasionally its snail-paced reforms, as well as the British Raj in India, while recollecting his young days in his native country. Pemba also draws information from prized sources like his father´s diaries and his conversations with Tibetan and British officials as well as people at the grassroots. His own metamorphosis, as he leaves Tibet in 1949 for higher education abroad, foreshadows the metamorphosis of Tibet and its inescapable fate in the decade that followed.
Table of ContentsForeword, Dalai Lama
Chapter 1: Historical Background
Chapter 2: Family Background
Chapter 3: Early Glimmerings in Gyantse and Yatung, Tibet
Chapter 4: Journey to Lhasa
Chapter 5: Forbidden Baston or Open City: A Portrait of Lhasa
Chapter 6: Three Years in Lhasa
Chapter 7: The Dalai Lama and Reincarnation
Chapter 8: Tibetans and Sex
Chapter 9: Lhasa to India: A Journey to School
Chapter 10: A Tibetan Schoolboy During the British Raj: Metamorphosis
Chapter 11: Back Home to Tibet
Chapter 12: Another Metamorphosis and Another Winter in Yatung
Chapter 13: Farewell Tibet
Epilogue I: Return to Tibet in 2007
Epilogue II: Return from Tibet
Bibliography
About the Author
