I am a Tibetan Buddhist monk, Lama Yeshe Tsongyal and a typical day in my life consists of prayers, deep study, meditation

and debating on how to lead a satisfied and content life. We monks lead simple lives and are attached to no material pleasures. We are quite content with what we have and derive happiness through prayer and serving others. But the most wonderful thing is that we all have chosen and accepted this life, and do not feel forced to do anything in particular. But today seems to be a little different, a little out of place maybe. I feel a little restless. So many thoughts are clouding up in my head. I decide to go for a little trek up the Himalayas to clear my head out and take in some fresh gush of air. As I start my little climb up the hill, my mind drifts back to the days when I was a caveman and lived in the glacier in the Tyrolean Alps. Though It was 10000 years ago, but every memory is as vivid as if it happened yesterday. My name was Otzi and as a child I was very fascinated with its uniqueness. My mother told me it meant the most powerful person. Our tribe mostly consisted of families- men, young women and their children. As the boys came to age, they were expected to join the main force in the tribe which was responsible for collecting food for the people. I joined the tribe when I was 11 and I remember many occasions when we went to hunt for food and meat. I always loved to play with stones, rocks or any other sharp objects as available. I recall one time when on a hunt, we found a lone, woolly mammoth that was straggling behind the rest of its group. Meanwhile the force was busy to make it fall into the deadly trap they had set, I was not really interested that day. I went and sat in the corner of a big rock and picked up two stones and started playing with them. Suddenly while rubbing them together I noticed a spark and hurriedly threw them on the dried grass next to me. The next moment was the most amazing moment of my life and I called over to my friend Neandre. He came and sat across me. I could see in his eyes the bright glistening orange flame of the thing I had just discovered. I was excited and touched it but it burnt my hand. Ouch! It really did burn a lot of things. It soon settled and he asked me how did I create it. I told him how magically by rubbing two rocks together it had happened and he was elated. I went on to find a cure for my burnt hand and wandered all day into the forest, while the force had already taken leave with their new kill. But to my strange amazement, when I reached the cave, in the evening, it was all brightly decorated. The days kill was being prepared for dinner. But what struck my eyes the most was that people were surrounding Neandre in huge circles. No, rather they were worshipping him! My mother rushed over to me and told me to go and take blessings from him. For he had given them fire and was considered a God now. I sulked and told my mother that I would never take a bow at his feet, because he was the one who stole the idea! I discovered fire and he was a thief!

But how could I make the whole tribe believe me, when my own mother despised me as being jealous. Dejected I fled into the forest again and what I saw took my breath away. Man! It was a day of miracles, I thought to myself. There was a young deer transforming into an angel, so beautiful that it was hard to take my eyes off it. Suddenly she saw me and sighed and said, Oh! Now you have seen me. I do not want anybody to know about me lest they should come and kill me. I will give you one boon and you can ask what you want. I scratched my head a little and told her about my lifes little story. How Neandre had cheated on me and I felt like burning in that fire now, which I myself had created. She laughed a little and said, Well so you humans have finally discovered it. Had to happen some day. I give you a boon that you will be immortal. When I began giving her confused looks, she looked me in the eye and said, This means you can never die. And even if you face an accidental death, your soul will be free and you can choose another body to live. And most of all, you will have an excellent memory and will clearly remember all things that happened to you in all your lives, so that you can gain experience from it and not commit mistakes again. I was shocked, I closed my eyes and pinched myself to make sure I was not dreaming. The angel had disappeared when I opened them and I was elated, shocked and feeling content at the same time. Eager to test whether it was true or not, I climbed the highest mountain and jumped from it. Well, I died. But I could feel my soul leaving my body and wandering, finding a new one! Oh yes! So what she had said was true indeed! I came back into the present, opened my eyes and took a deep breath of fresh mountain air.So thats how it all began, I thought to myself. I again closed them and my mind wandered to the various roles I had played over those 10,000 years. Sometimes an iceman, cavemen in so many different territories, a Harrapan man, an Egyptian pyramid worker, an ally of Chenghez Khan, an Indian king, a Persian poet, a Chinese grandmother, a black American civil worker and so many more. But in the flashback going through my brain like a camera reel, me thinking which one to ponder upon, the reel stopped and what caught my attention was my own horrifying face in one of the Nazi concentration camps. The tormented face of a 10 year old Jewish boy, deprived of a childhood, a family just because he was of a different race. I was a born in Berlin in the year 1934 in a jewish family and was proudly named Elijah, after a famous prophet. I was the youngest of three kids. By then Hitler had gained enough power over Germany and the surrounding nations. The Nazi Party had been declared as the only legal party in Germany and also the Nazis had passed laws to strip Jewish immigrants from Poland of their

Jewish citizenship. Soon Jews were prohibited from owning lands, being newspaper editors, from getting legal qualifications, werent allowed health insurance and banned from the German Labor Front. My father worked for the national daily at that time. I remember him coming home one day, anxious, tired and sick. He said, "Tough times are ahead", but we did not know they were going to be this tough. And that was probably the last memory I have of him. There existed a strong network of underground resources where you could inquire about hiding Jews and my father had found a place for my brother and sister to go. And he found this another place, a childrens home for me to go. I lived inside this house for two years. Occasionally, I was allowed to go out in the back yard. I was never allowed to go out front. I was never mistreated. Ever! But I was never loved. I lost a great part of my childhood simply because I was a Jew. My life as a hidden child was...how can I say it...I had no toys. The only fresh air I got was when I was allowed to go in the backyard. I made up imaginary friends because I had no one to play with. I do not remember being hugged and kissed. That was my life for two years. One morning at 5:00 o'clock the Gestapo went through the neighbor's house, jumped over the brick wall and pounded on the room where my parents were sleeping. They broke down the door. The Gestapo took my father and threw him in the truck. They wanted to take my mother, but she wouldn't go.Once my sister was hidden, my mother went to hide in a pre-arranged location. It was a nursing home out in the country. There was a stereotype about Jews, that they had dark hair and hooked noses. My mother was blonde and blue-eyed. She did not fit the picture that they were looking for, so she was safe working as a practical nurse in the country. Few years passed and we kept waiting for my father. But he never came back. A week later we heard he was gassed in Auschwitz. In late October 1943, I was 8 by that time, German soldiers invaded our colony and deported the inhabitants (primarily children) to Auschwitz. They believed in cleaning garbage from the roots. Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other killing centers, the camp authorities sent the majority of children directly to the gas chambers. SS and police forces in German-occupied Poland and the occupied Soviet Union shot thousands of children at the edge of mass graves. In the ghettos, Jewish children died from starvation and exposure as well as lack of adequate clothing and shelter.The German authorities also incarcerated a number of children in concentration camps and transit camps. SS physicians and medical researchers used a number of children, including twins, in concentration camps for medical experiments that often resulted in the deaths of the children. Concentration camp authorities deployed adolescents, particularly Jewish adolescents, at forced labor in the concentration camps, where many died because of conditions.

It was 18th May 1944, and I died in one of these ghettos when they said they were taking us for a bath, but we all knew what it was. We were gassed in the chambers and submitted to our fate. In their "search to retrieve 'Aryan blood,' The Germans and their collaborators killed as many as 1.5 million children, including over a million Jewish children and tens of thousands of Romani (Gypsy) children, German children with physical and mental disabilities living in institutions, Polish children, and children residing in the occupied Soviet Union. I opened my eyes and here I was no longer a 10 year old boy killed in a concentration camp. As I was climbing the trek uphill, I noticed a bird feeding its baby. Seeing the two birds at bliss, I took a deep breath and remembered my days as an Afghan woman, Zahra Ali Hasan, struggling to breathe in a country which could have been very much progressive, but was turned to hell by the Taliban. My mother was born in Kabul in 1955 on a dry winter day. Her father was the advisor in the court of King Amanullah who ruled at that time and began a mission of modernization in Afghanistan. I remember her making the most delicious lamb and korba in the town and relatives from near and far, as far as even Peshawar and Rawalpindi in Pakistan came to have it on special feasts. She went on to study medical sciences in the Soviet Union and returned as a well trained and qualified doctor. It was the time when women began to attire themselves in Western clothing and were being educated in universities and working as representatives in government, which was in sharp contrast to the Afghanistan which I was born in. I had failed the genetic lottery by being a girl and brought utter shame and disgust to my father when he got the sad news of the sex of the child that my mother bore him. It was 1978, just a year before the Soviet Union invaded the nation and little did everyone know that things would never be the same from now on. But in terms of women rights, it was the silence before the tumultuous storm broke out. Though the next decade was fraught with violence and destruction, but it was during this time that women's rights reached their pinnacle in Afghanistan's history: 50% of teachers, government employees and students were women, and 40% of doctors were women. My mother was one of the doctors in the city government hospital and I always beamed with pride saying that. When the Soviet Union left in l989, the nation fell into chaos, and women's rights quickly eroded. By 1992, the beginning of civil war, women were precluded from public service, and by 1994 women were only seen in public in the burqa. But the horror which was going to shake this country was yet to come. The Taliban ruled from l996 - 2001. During their rule, they implemented the strictest form of Sharia law seen in any nation. They banned movies, dancing, music, clapping during sports events, kite flying, beard trimming, television, hanging pictures in homes, satellite dishes, chess, alcohol, anything made from human hair, nail polish, statues, dolls, pictures or photos of any living thing. The 'religious police' beat - with long sticks - any man who shaved or any woman

not wearing her burqa properly. Adulterers were stoned to death, and the hands of thieves were amputated. Women were prohibited from working, and from wearing anything 'stimulating' including the Iranian chador, which was considered too revealing: the burqa became mandatory. They were forbidden to be in public without a close male relative - a mahram. In l998, restrictions became more severe, and the Taliban ordered that windows in Kabul be blackened so women could not be seen inside their homes from the outside. Women were forbidden to see a male doctor, even though very few women doctors were allowed to work. Women were not allowed to deal with male shopkeepers, talk or shake hands with non-mahram males, appear on their balconies, be on television or radio or attend public gatherings, laugh loudly or wear high heeled shoes (women should not be heard), gather for religious festivals (or gather at all), wash clothes by a river or in a public place, use cosmetics (fingers with nail polish were sometimes cut off), wear perfume, or wear brightly colored clothes or flared pants under the burqa. Women not clothed 'properly', or seen without a mahram were subject to whippings, beatings, and verbal abuse. Women were publicly whipped for having non-covered ankles. Public stoning was the punishment for women for having sex outside of marriage, whether or not adultery was a factor. I was nineteen by that time and had joined college just a year ago. I was pursuing masters in literature and it was there that I met Rahim for the first time. He was a fellow classmate and was very much interested in poetry, the works of Rumi, Khusro and Hafiz being his all time favourites. It did not take much time before our hearts started burning in the flame of love, a love which was not meant to be and the flame which was soon going to cause a ceaseless fire. n-vaqt ke bahr- kll shavad zt mar, rshan ghardad jaml- zarrt mar. z-n m-szam ch sham'a t dar rah- shq, yek vaqt shavad jmleh- awqt mar. As the essence that is mine to the all pervading sea, Turneth, all my atoms shine in sublime resplendency. On the road of Love, behold! like a candle I do blaze, That one moment may enfold all the moments of my days. And this was the time when under a lot of pressure (mostly by the Taliban) my father decided to get me married. Marriage proposals started to pour in from all my distant relatives. Why wouldnt they have come? I was the only daughter and true to my name Zahra, which meant beauty in Arabic, I was indeed beautiful. Mashallah!, my aunts would say whenever I met them and they all would secretly want my hand for their proud, boastful sons. But none knew, that I was already spoken for someone. And on 27 February, 2000 the Taliban saw us together. We both knew how it was going to end.

We looked into each others eyes and said dooset doram (that we loved each other intensely) for one last time and accepted our fate. My family gave me contemptuous looks, my mother crying uncontrollably and my father slapped me hard in the face when he heard about us. Soon thirty thousand men and boys poured into the dilapidated Olympic sports stadium in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan.Street hawkers peddled nuts, biscuits and tea to the waiting crowd. The scheduled entertainment? They were there to see a young woman, Zahra, receive 100 lashes, and to watch her lover being stoned to death. What was my crime ? I had been arrested walking with a man who was not a relative, a sufficient crime for any woman to be found guilty of adultery. Since I was single, it was punishable by flogging; had I been married, I would have been publicly stoned to death. I was completely covered in the shroud like burqa veil and was forced to kneel and the Taliban "cheerleaders" had the stadium ringing with the chants of onlookers. Among those present there were just three women: my mother and my two female relatives who had accompanied her. The crowd fell silent only when luckless Rahim was driven into the arena and pushed to the ground. They pushed him into a hole and kicked him black and blue. Next they hurled stones at him, hitting him everywhere, his head, back, legs. Leaving not a single part of his body unwounded. Then, to restore the party atmosphere, the Taliban drove in a jeep once around the stadium,carrying his dead blood stained body, a flourish that brought the crowd to their feet, as was intended. I couldnt bear seeing all of this and soon fell unconscious. My own cousin, Masoud, shot me dead when they got me home, to save the trouble of bearing the shame I had brought to the family. Relieved of not living in such a trapped choking world, my soul fled into the abyss of darkness, with my body lying there. I took solitude into the body of a young man just brought into a hospital in Tibet. He had an active young heart and needed immediate attention. Having met with a severe accident, his own soul had given up hope and I shook hands with him as he left the fragile body and I entered it. My hopes were dejected, but the operation did turn out to be successful and I soon recovered to be a healthy young man. After having experienced a lot of pain and suffering, I stayed away from worldly pleasures and took solace in the Himalayas. I became Yeshe Tsongyal, a preaching Buddhist monk. And often when I go onto a trek into the wild mountains and stare into the beautiful space I remember so many lives I had, so many different characters to play, each with its own twist and turn, a lot of pain, dejection and sorrow mixed with hope and laughter and yet not wanting to stop on this beautiful odyssey called life.