Memory avenue

With China's Wen Jiabao visiting our country, the Tibetan activist Tenzin Tsundue has an open letter to him in the Hindustan Times today. Take a look.

(Don't miss the irony of the banner across the top of that page, "THEWENVISIT", yes without spaces).

Reading Tenzin's letter, I thought it would be a good time to wander down memory avenue (for that's what it is, an avenue) and remember why I think he's an example to us all in India.

* One of the first times I wrote about Tenzin is here: Climb Every Crane. I wrote it soon after he climbed the Oberoi hotel at Nariman Point to unfurl a FREE TIBET flag. Most of it, and especially the last few lines, could have been written today for THEWENVISIT.

* This essay was written a week after Tenzin climbed a building at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore to make much the same point as at the Oberoi: His kind of exile.

* Cry freedom was a response to what the police did to Tenzin just before Hu Jintao came to visit in 2006.

* The contortions of "realpolitik" aficionados always intrigues me. There was the time they contorted over China. (And the torch and games). Yet the aficionados lose no chance to hail Tenzin as well, today's HT letter no exception.

* Tenzin's profile on the Friends of Tibet site is here. It's a source of pride for me that it starts with some lines I wrote.

* Finally, here's a conversation between two people I am not permitted to identify, on the occasion of that 2006 visit of Hu Jintao: Who's coming tomorrow.