The Compassion of a Scavenger
Tuesday, 1 August 2006, 11:30 a.m.
Kelsang Tsering Khangsar |
Dharamshala: While it is one thing to profess compassion, living it might be quite another. The message comes home with The Joy of Living, an hour-long documentary film by Kelsang Tsering Khangsar, which premiered here Sunday last, before an exclusive crowd of guests, press, friends and family.
Also present was the star of the show, Ani Sonam Tsering, on whose life the documentary is based. Despite her dire poverty, the septuagenarian nun, popular as “Khyi Ani” (Dog’s Ani) has nursed in her fold, over 100 stray dogs for the last thirty years, mainly by scavenging for food.
Even when the wretched animals died, Ani never missed to give them a descent burial, with prayers for their speedy rebirth, perhaps in the form of more fortuitous beings “like humans”.
“Although much has been covered on celluloid, when it comes to political or religious aspects of Tibetan living, their social milieu has been left almost untouched,” laments Kelsang, who had worked in five major film projects, including Tibetan feature films like, We Are No Monks and Dreaming Lhasa.
Moreover, born and brought up in Dharamshala, Kelsang has witnessed first hand, Ani’s love and compassion for the street dogs, and the consequent great hardships she suffered.
In the absence of “any financial or concrete help”, it took Kesang three years to shoot the entire documentary with a simple handy cam. His sheer passion and will to tell Ani’s story to the world kept him going when going got tough on “a shoe string budget”.
When your reporter reached the Community Centre at McLeod, power went out just as the show was to start, with Kesang Tsering, gasping and hurtling around, phoning for an electrician and generator.
Later, power again played spoilsport, just as the film was into its final denouement, when your reporter had to make his exit, deeply moved and swayed by the simplicity of the message, conveyed so artistically in the film.
(www.tibet.net is the official website of the Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.)