“Everyone here has iPhones! My driver’s iPhone is a newer version than mine!” exclaimed a visiting French lady to her friend. This observation continued as I led the two French ladies through the atelier. During work hours all phones are locked in a little box, but the visitor’s arrival had coincided with break time. The two French ladies gasped at the group of men and women, dressed traditionally and sitting in the sun scanning through their phones for messages during the short 15 minutes of personal time. One of them even snickered disapprovingly, “What do they need phones for anyway?” and then, “Can they really afford iPhones?” For some reason it seemed to disturb the visitors to see nomads with cellphones, as if they were breaching some kind of traditional vow.

About twenty years ago, TVs and radios began to creep their way onto the plateau. Towns that had been designated as prefecture capitals in the 60s began to sprout a few straggly high rises and Hans seeped in to open convenience stores, clothes shops and construction units. Occasionally nomads would arrive in town on a horse drawn cart and gape at the few clusters of four or five story buildings. An enterprising Han quickly opened up a photo stand in the middle of town.

“Picture! Picture!” he learned to shout in Tibetan. For a few yuans, a Tibetan could stand in front of the small cluster of buildings. Snap! They returned on the appointed day to pick up their picture and there they were frozen in time and posing triumphant, proof to all the world that they had visited the great wonder of a building that really did exist. This was something to show fellow nomads! TV soon revealed that this wasn’t a wonder at all. There were far taller and far more buildings in far greater cities. The older generation clung to their prayer beads, skeptical of these far off wonders and content with having a full stomach and a roof over their heads, no matter how shattered that roof might be. After all the persecution and death that they had lived through, not having to continually fear for one’s life was enough to be thankful for. However, for those born during the mid seventies and there on, this was old people’s talk. What was a life spent with animals (even with a full stomach) when there was a whole world out there to be conquered. They desperately wanted to be a part of this exciting world of cars and buildings and technology.

Smart phones were first popular among the young as it was their means of entering the modern world. A whole social world opened up and you heard new voices and saw new faces that were not so different from your own. Suddenly, what you said mattered as your own voice was heard, liked and shared. A regular smart phone would allow you to enter the same social forums, but it is only iPhones that can decipher Tibetan. Even for illiterate nomads, the familiar letters are a source of comfort if they spent a couple of hours in deep concentration, they may be able to decipher a paragraph or two. In any case, ‘Wechat’ offers voice messages, which for the first time means that one doesn’t need to be literate to join the cyber world. Soon the older generation too began to see practical uses for smart phones. In an area like Ritoma, the village is divided into six sub-villages and every family belongs to a fellowship within the sub-villages. Every year, families from the same fellowship go on religions pilgrimages together, hold feasts on special occasions and move their nomadic camps together. Often one’s best friends are people from the same fellowship. This is a social system that has existed for centuries so families can help each other in times of need or celebration. The older generation started forming Wechat groups between their fellowships allowing for more efficient communication. Help can now arrive instantly and announcements on moving and re-union dates are easily and swiftly communicated. Siblings and cousins too began connecting in groups over wechat. The generation in their forties and fifties, having had large families were often separated by marriage over several villages. Wechat helped to connect families across villages and even across borders. As long as one doesn’t use wechat as a political tool, the social possibilities are boundless.

Once we were backed in traffic for two hours on the outskirts of the famous Labrang monastery. I was annoyed by the delay, but the reason behind the back up was amusing and note worthy. Earlier that morning, an official’s expensive SUV had run over a baby yak. It was a hit and run incident that would have gone unpunished, but for a passing nomad who had snapped a picture of the incident and posted it on Wechat as evidence. The picture was quickly shared and soon the entire village was out on the street blocking the traffic. Finally the police had no choice but to make the owner of the SUV compensate the family for their baby yak. Such justice is rare and would never have happened but for the viral effect the incident had produced.

Another incident involved a parent posting the swollen behind of their child on Wechat. A teacher had whipped the child till he was black and blue with a butt that looked twice it’s size. I grimaced when I opened my Wechat wall and the picture stared at me, but it had the effect that was intended. The teacher was fired and other teachers across the plateau now think twice before using abusive tactics. Aside from that there is a renaissance of the Tibetan language. People can use Tibetan in medians that weren’t possible until IPhones came about. Poets and writers are emerging out of the woodwork and various forums that bring together hundreds of young intellectuals are sprouting every day. Tibetans across borders debate on topics such as ‘What does it mean to be educated?’, ‘how should a modern monk behave and how do they behave?’ and more philosophical topics such as ‘The nature of impermanence’. So much so that the constant ‘diling’ of messages forced me to make phones during working hours part of the nature of impermanence. The final straw had been when this particular message of ‘hey hey hey! Anyone seen my sheep, a mamo – two-year-old female- with a brown head, disappeared yesterday evening. Please let so and so at so and so number know if you have seen it” kept flying through everyone’s Wechat messages. Phones during work hours would have to go in a box.

With Wechat, nomads have a voice, a voice that is loud enough to flow across the plateau and into the hearts and minds of fellow Tibetans who wouldn’t otherwise have crossed paths with them. It is a certain security, convenience and a sense of identity that iPhones have brought to the plateau. With a phone, nomads and young Tibetans are a part of a world that would otherwise fly past without them, leaving them swirling and confused in the dust that has been kicked up.

And how can I explain all this to the visitors in a few words? Maybe they are too consumed by a feeling of being cheated. Cheated in that a nomad holding a modern device has robbed them off their experience of the traditional? How very superficial of the nomad! How dare they participate in globalism? Excuse us visitors. Please bear with our nomads and excuse them for carrying phones. They know not that they are disappointing you, nor do they know that they are meant to please you.

“Oh my god, you don’t have Internet in the guest house?!” This was the same visitor who shunned the nomads for carrying iPhones.

I was tempted to blurt out, “What do you need internet for, isn’t this your escape from the modern world?” but instead I smiled and answered,

“I really apologize for the inconvenience. The office across the road has wireless”

Share this: Facebook

Twitter

Email

