Last Seen in Lhasa by Claire Scobie is the story of rare red lilies, Tibet and friendship.
Scobie’s first trip to Tibet in 1997 was in search of a rare red lily in Pemako, an area of Tibet rarely visited by Westerners but a place of pilgrimage for Tibetan Buddhists. During that trip, she met Ani, a Buddhist nun on her own journey of spiritual enlightenment. There were seven more trips after that first one (the lily was found on the second trip) and many of them were in search of her Ani, with whom Claire established a strong friendship.
This book has received a lot of praise and I was curious about it mainly because I have long had an interest in Tibet and the struggles its people have faced since China occupied the country in 1956. Sadly, I found the book rather dull. Perhaps her time in Tibet has influenced her writing – she writes slowly and carefully as you’d imagine a Buddhist might. But I found her style a little boring.
Most frustratingly, the high points of the story seemed to be glossed over. Finding the lily was given not even a page – she found and photographed one of the world’s rarest flowers but seemed strangely unmoved by this. Her meeting with the Dalai Lama also came across as bit of an anti-climax. There was no indication that she was intending to meet him – it just happened all of a sudden! It seemed to come and go with almost no fanfare. She also caught a glimpse of a rare red panda in the wild. I think this frustrated me the most. I wanted to scream at her, ‘Get excited! You just saw a rare, endangered animal IN THE WILD’. Well, I’d be excited.
I also got no sense of the physical difficulty of the trips she undertook. There’s no sense of time in her story, but I’m guessing the treks were weeks long and obviously arduous (I only say obviously because she describes the state of her clothes and shoes at the end of one trip).
Despite all this, I’ve enjoyed reading about her relationships with young Tibetans who struggle with finding work and their identity in Chinese Tibet. It’s sad to read about the monastries and nunneries that have been and continue to be destroyed and the damage that has been done to the Tibetan culture during more than 50 years of Chinese occupation.
The story of Ani’s unusual life is also quite interesting. There are many different types of Buddhism and many different ways to worship and Ani has clearly chosen to take the more difficult path.
Comments