In the Himalayan village of Dolpa, it snows for 6 months and the remaining 6 months are dry. Dunai Bazar is the headquarter of the government offices and the local commercial center. Although there will be some traffic because there is an airport in Jufal, most of the villages in Dolpa district are remote.
Both Bazar and Jufal is considered remote in terms of services, facilities and development. Like many other villages in Dolpa, where there is no transport facility and a shortage of grain in Tinje village. The only thing that is produced in that remote village is Uwa (a kind of grain) and potatoes. People grow up eating that. Until a few years ago, there used to be a shortage of salt in various villages of Dolpa. As it is close to the Tibetan border, people used to walk for several days to carry salt in caravans of yaks. There was always a celebration when they came back.
Tenji Norbu was born in the decade of 1970 in Tinje village, which is so remote and unknown to the rest of the world. In those days, there were no schools in that area. In Tinje village and in that area once a year after the harvest, roaming Lama used to visit the village. After the lama came to the village, the villagers would gather in a particular spot to listen to the lama.
Those itinerant lamas used to tell the stories and knowledge of their visit to the villages. The villagers used to be very emotional and shed tears when they heard such knowledge. The villagers used to be surprised to hear the various incidents of the country and abroad narrated by the lamas.Tinje village can be reached in 7 days by walking from Dunai Bazar, the headquarters of Dolpa district. For the people there, Kathmandu is a distant place, like a hazy dream.
When Tenzing was young, his father used to tell him that he once reached Kathmandu after spending months. After the expenses and food needed to go to Kathmandu ran out on the way, his father along with other friends worked in a village and collected money and reached Kathmandu. When his father told him about Kathmandu travel and Kathmandu, Tenzing also imagined going to Kathmandu one day.Tenzing’s father, who worked as a lama in the village, used to make thangka from time to time. While his father was making thangkas, Tenzing would sit beside him and watch his father painting. While watching and helping his father a little, he also became interested in painting. He started learning. As a child, he used to draw pictures in clay with his fingers, just like his father had done. His father used to give education to his son in the village.Once the lamas who came to the village were telling the villagers about knowledge, but it was difficult to explain some science subjects to the villagers. After this, the lamas asked little Tenzing Norbu Gurung, who was listening, to explain it by making paintings to the villagers. The people of the village liked Tenzing’s art even though he was still young. Even the Thangka made by him used to be exchanged with rice or any other grain found there from that time. They would even commission him for making arts. He used to explain the theories to the villagers in a simple language as well.
Once in the village, while teaching the villagers about moral education, the lamas asked Tenzing to draw a picture. Those lamas liked the pictures made by Tenzing because they were suitable for the lifestyle of the people there. In this way, he used to make pictures every year. He also used to draw pictures of lamas who came there.
By and by, when Tenzing was 20 years old and had long hair and was tall and was making pictures that way, some new people came to the village. They asked permission to take pictures of his work. Tenzing didn’t understand anything they said. But a Sherpa who came with those new people translated it to him. The man who accompanied the Sherpa took many photographs of the paintings Tenzing had made. The Sherpa told me that the foreigner’s name was Eric. Sherpa asked, ‘Will you go to Kathmandu with us?’ Tenzing wanted to go to Kathmandu, but as his father told him when he was young, he wanted to go there the same way that his father had gone. So he didn’t say anything at that time. Again the Sherpa translated Eric’s words and said, ‘After exactly three months from now we will come back to this village and then we will take you to Kathmandu. ‘Exactly three months later, Eric came to his village with the same Sherpa.
Tenzing left the village with those men for the first time. For the first time he walked to Jumla. He was surprised to see trees for the first time, having only seen shrubs and small bushes in his village. He looked at the trees for a long time. He had seen airplanes in the sky, but it was at the Sinja Airport in Jumla that he saw an airplane for the first time. When he saw the airplane, he felt like a dragon from the dragon story that the lamas used to tell him when he was a child. What a wonderful creature that can make a loud noise, move on the ground and fly in the sky! He wondered what it would eat!
From Jumla, the airplane reached Tenzing Nepalgunj. After alighting there, he saw many flowers blooming for the first time. For the first time he saw so many and beautiful flowers blooming for the first time, who had only seen flowers in pictures, and felt that this is heaven. He was mesmerized and moved by the beauty of flowers. After getting down there, auto drivers were calling people laughing. Seeing that scene, the artist Tenzing thought, ‘How kind the people living in this heaven-like place are. They are smiling like this and calling people to come here.’ Only after reaching the hotel, he realized that those people were calling people like this for money.Every scene, every event was new to Tenzing. From Nepalgunj, some members of Eric’s team went to Kathmandu by plane, while Tenzing and Eric’s other friends arrived in Kathmandu for the first time by bus.
Eric’s room in Kathmandu was in Bishalnagar. Everyone sat there. The next day, along with a guide, Tenzing and some of his friends went for a walk on the palace road. People were walking in shorts and pants, while Tenzing and his friends from Dolpa were wearing village clothes. The guide bought t-shirts and jeans pants for Tenzings. The first time she wore such clothes, she had a lot of fun. Wearing that cloth, they walked around Durbarmarg many times. Eric went to France.Eric, who had gone to France to raise money to make a documentary called Caravan, called one day happily and told him that Caravan would not be a documentary but a movie. Some time after that, Tenzing went to his village Dolpa and started working on making a movie. He has a sweet experience that they had to wait for some time to capture the scene of the snow.After coming to Kathmandu, he was tormented by his village life and illiteracy.
One is that the behavior is new, it has to be learned everywhere, and even if you go everywhere, the signboards are either written in Nepali or English language. Once his friend fell ill and had to be admitted to the hospital. When the doctors and nurses told him to go to this number of rooms, one of them could not speak Nepali well and the other could not even read. At that time, he thought that by opening a school in the village, if he could give the light of education to many people in the village, the backward people could also be greatly saved.
After spending a long time like this, Eric made the movie Caravan. Caravan movie was very successful. The paintings made by Tenzing are also included in it. This movie helped to bring Tenzing’s name and skill to the country and abroad. His name was gradually spreading in the country and abroad.One day one of the directors of the same movie came to Tenzing’s camp looking for him. He requested Tenzing to make paintings in his country house. In this way, Tenzing traveled abroad with the director for the first time on an international flight.
His first International flight was to France. Tenzing looked out of the window as the plane flew into the sky. He could see yet another plane flying parallel. While gossiping about how big the plane was, he found out that about 300 people could fit in that plane. There are 200 people on the plane where he is staying. He was surprised that his entire village of Dolpa would fit inside that airplane.
He then began to ponder on the human ego. In the entire cosmos, the humans are just like a little dust particles, and yet they boast that they are big! During his stay abroad, his three friends thought of publishing the things they experienced during their Dolpa experience in the form of a book. For that, Tenzing started drawing pictures. That book was also very popular abroad and was also translated into many languages. In this way, the book not only made his name known but also made him a source of income.
While traveling to different countries, Tenzing enjoyed drawing pictures comparing the living conditions there with his own village. After seeing the Statue of Liberty while in America, he thought how much fun it would be if he could show Gautama Buddha, the guru of his religion, walking there with a torch. Therefore, he made a standing statue of Buddha in a picture and also placed a Dolpali house with the skyscrapers there. Similarly, in another picture, he saw the scene of the ice cream in his village spinning like a mandala, taking out the ice cream and eating it, so he made a picture with the title Ice- Cream Mandala. Tenzing, who could see the village environment and the urban environment through the eyes of an artist, always remembered his own village wherever he lived abroad.
Even so, he never felt like living abroad. One of his creations in the year 2008 was selected in Rubin Museum’s Himalayan Art. Along with his work, the work of another Nepali Ang Tshering Sherpa’s work was also selected. Artist Tenzing also says that these two artists had a good friendship during their stay in America. After participating in that exhibition, Tenzing returned to Nepal again.
After coming to Nepal, a Swiss woman contacted him from Switzerland. His desire was to serve the poor. After Tenzing told her that the future of the children would be bright if she helped her poor village in Dolpa, the woman decided to visit Dolpa once and came to Nepal. While visiting Dolpa, she saw the suffering there and decided to help the villagers by building a school there. More than 300 students are currently studying in the school which started with 8 students. It used to be very difficult for people to go out and come home when it snowed there. Therefore, during the snowfall, those students were brought to Kathmandu to be taught. Tenzing is proud of the fact that one of the students from that school is currently the ward president, while others have received good education. At the time of his arrival in Kathmandu, he had exhibited his work at Windhorse Gallery, Pulchowk, and in the winter, he is planning to continue his painting work by making better creations in his village.
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