MY KARMA HASN’T been very good lately. The potential termination of my day job has been all over the news, and my wife’s been asking me to sleep on the couch (she blames my snoring and a rough work week, but still).
Anyway, when I heard the Dalai Lama was coming to Toronto this month, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to find my life balance and get things back in order.
I headed south one morning on Atlantic Avenue off Queen Street and went in search of the mythical Little Tibet. I’d heard Atlantic Avenue was the best bet for finding Little Tibet in Toronto,but follow Atlantic south and all you run into is the metallic clang of the GO train. Of course, I had begun my search after a very, very long night, so I decided to pack it in for the day and try to find my Zen in the bottom of a bag of Cheetos on the couch.
But then, through dumb luck, a funny thing happened. On my way home, I ran into Tibet Touch on Dundas Street, not far from Ossington and also not very far from my house.
“You may find some Tibetan monks on Atlantic, but the majority of them are on Queen Street right by Jameson,” said the shop’s owner, Chon Yi, beneath a framed photograph of the Dalai Lama above her cash register.I look at the picture and hold Yi’s hand as she tells me her story.
Like most Tibetan refugees, her family fled their country when the Chinese invaded, and she was raised in Nepal. She saw the Dalai Lama,when he last came to Toronto in 2008, and believes that someday Tibet will be free.
“His Holiness lives in India now, but someday we will return home,”Yi says as she gives me a tour of her funky bazaar under his Holiness’s beatific gaze. Tibet Touch sells prayer beads and linen MC Hammer pants, and I look to buy something for my wife that will keep me off the couch.
“What’s hot right now in Tibet style?” I ask her, and she shows me a spangly muumuu dress that screams Lindsay Lohan, post-rehab. I check out the price tag and figure that for $7.99 maybe my wife will learn to like it.
Chon Yi lights some anti-stress incense (I’d told her about my day job worries), and while I’m reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead,she asks me the magic question: “Do you like dumplings?” she sweetly says.
“I thought you’d never ask,”I reply, and she tells me where to find the best place in Toronto for authentic Tibetan dumplings: Le Tibet, which is owned by Tenzin T.Valunbisitsang, one of the city’s Tibetan restaurant pioneers.
I grab my wife’s eight-dollar muumuu and enough anti-stress incense to get through the week and head back toward Queen Street to spot me a monk and get something fried and authentic to eat.
If I were a Buddhist monk, however, the last place I’d want to be is Queen Street and Jameson Avenue.When I find Chon Yi’s recommended nosh spot, it’s only after I wade through a dozen homeless men and nearly as many Coffee Times. Finally, I find the restaurant, and, beneath the same massive framed portrait of the serene Dalai Lama, I take my hangover to lunch.
“Would you like Tibetan tea? It’s made with butter, milk and salt,” asks local legend Tenzin T. Valunbisitsang after I introduce myself.The real answer to that, obviously, is no.
“Sure,” I say, because, after all, I’m working, and he pulls up a chair and schools me on Parkdale and Little Tibet.
“The community is seeing more Tibetans by the day,” he says,and explains that he’d opened Tibet Kitchen five years ago, sold it and then opened Le Tibet.
“People from Toronto know now, if they want real Tibetan food, they head to Parkdale,” he says, adding that his Buddhist temple is at Dundas and Keele.
I’m still after the world-famous Tibetan dumplings, but Valunbisitsang also recommends a dish called phingsha, which is beef with black mushrooms, bean thread and potatoes.
“The monks like the phingsha,” says Valunbisitsang.“When you invite them to your house to pray,that’s what they like to eat.”
“I’ll have that then,” I tell him, and I order a beer and am tempted to ask him to change his Bollywood movie to the Bills game, but that probably wouldn’t be good for my already shaky karma.We talk about the situation in Tibet while I eat, and it really is a tragedy how Tibetans can just “become disappeared” and how the Chinese government won’t allow foreign journalists to enter the small country.
“I don’t want to change my food to the North American flavour. What’s most important to me, more important than making money, is giving Canadians an authentic understanding of my country,” says Valunbisitsang, who runs the restaurant with his wife.
The 2008 Olympics were held in Beijing despite widespread public protests, and both America and Canada have come under Chinese consternation for allowing the Dalai Lama his official visits.
“Tibet has to be free,” Valunbisitsang says, as I drink my beer. “That’s why the Dalai Lama brings such excitement. For our people, he’s an agent of hope.”
Properly nourished, I visit the Tibetan Emporium beside the restaurant, and there’s a 28-year-old behind the counter selling DVDs in his parents’store.
“Our country’s but a small ant trying to fight a big elephant, but we believe in karma and we believe in his Holiness,”the son says.
I ask him what his tattoo means. “Karma,” he replies. “We believe that the world can change.”
I buy a red and yellow toque from the son that costs more than my wife’s muumuu, but it reads, “Save Tibet,” and though I’m sure it will look ridiculous, I feel good when I head back onto Queen Street.
I’m standing before a Tibetan butcher with a sign on its door that reads, “We have goat meat,”when I feel a tug on my arm.
“Excuse me, sir. Do you have a dollar?” a homeless man asks me.
“Sorry,”I say, and move on. Ben Kaplan is a writer at the National Post.
