The Dalai Lama Foundation-Canada

Sachin Kalbag
DNA
9 February 2007

The Tibetans have several names for him – Holy Lord, Gentle Glory, Compassionate, Defender of the Faith, Ocean of Wisdom, The Wish Fulfilling Gem, or just The Presence. The rest of the world describes him in the way it sees him – a Nobel laureate, the head of state of a government-in-exile, a monk, an exotic man from an exotic land or even a mystic. Who, then, is the real Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama?

Next month, a 46-year-old Chicago-based Indian journalist’s book will attempt to answer that question. Mayank Chhaya’s authorised biography of the exiled Tibetan leader titled Dalai Lama – Man, Mystic, Monk will be in bookstores around the world.

“Here was this exotic man the world had come to know about,” says Chhaya of his first
interaction with the Dalai Lama in 1997, “but there was no biography of his that would make him accessible to the uninitiated reader. I wanted to know the man behind the persona.”

What followed was two years of extensive interviewing. “We talked just about everything – from the Tibetan problem to his Nobel Prize to his views on celibacy and sexuality,” says Chhaya.

“The Dalai Lama approaches all subjects with a great deal of equanimity. He answered all questions with refreshing openness and completely free from dogma. He discussed sexuality in response to my questions and explained how early in his life he had to overcome it as an ordained monk.”

Perhaps the greatest aspect of the Dalai Lama’s personality, Chhaya says, is his ability to
reach out to everyone.

“What is most striking about him is his sense of familiarity in any surrounding and his ability to reach out to anyone without any intermediary. If I had to describe him in one sentence, I
would say he is deceptively profound with a charming sense of humour.”

More than anything, Chhaya wanted to discover the man behind the image. “He has a quiet
and a subtle determination,” he says about the Dalai Lama’s struggle for an autonomous
Tibetan region, something he has been fighting for more than four decades.

“You’d think of him as a charming, avuncular philosopher you can open up to. But he knows he has to persist, there is just no other way to regain all that they lost.”

Chhaya also discovered the other side of the Dalai Lama, which the world rarely, if ever, get
to see – his fascination with technology. “If he were not the Dalai Lama,” says Chhaya, “he
would have been an inventive engineer. He has a childlike inquisitiveness about him.”

What Chhaya was impressed by most during his several meetings was that certain
something that separates the Dalai Lama from the rest of the world. “Call it charisma, call it a glow, but the man stands out. One can see why people are so taken up with him.”

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