Today – after several days of being offered Tibetan scarves, shawls, mandala paintings and Buddhas of every material and size; after walking narrow potholed lanes and being pushed aside by scurrying jeep and motorbike drivers; after wandering wide-eyed and wondering through the deity-creature-filled temple next to the Dalai Lama’s residence; after marvelling at this town site somehow perched along a hill crest and tumbling down nearby slopes, enjoying pathway walks through forests rising above us to sharp scree-covered mountain pinnacles glowing pink at sunset – after these many experiences of several days, today Dharamsala/McLeod Ganj has also come humanly alive for us.
Dharamsala, resthouse for pilgrims, home of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan government in exile, on the Indian southerly edge of the Himalayas across which sits Tibet, a distressingly near and far home to the thousands of Tibetans living here, this refuge from an occupied and dangerous land, really a resthouse for refugees.
It is in conversations with these Tibetans in exile that Dharamsala comes to feel most alive, a genuinely human place.
Some examples ….
We are walking a narrow mountain pathway up to Bhagsu Falls. Two young Tibetan women, both refugees, want to practice their English. One fled from Tibet by bus on a temporary visa, the other “hidden, covered in a blanket, in the back of a car.” A third girl, a friend, has gone to the US as a refugee. All have some support from a Tibetan uncle living in New York. Each longs to return to Tibet, longs to see her family.
A visit to the local museum shows what the Chinese government’s occupation of Tibet has meant to Tibetan Buddhists: its systematic destruction of some 6,000 Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries; the turning of remaining temples and monasteries into tourist showplaces, army barracks, public toilets; the destruction or selling of ancient manuscripts; the use of scriptural pages as shoe soles; the forcing of nuns and monks to desecrate religious objects.
Then the political persecution (imprisonment, torture), the movement of Han Chinese into the region in such large numbers as to turn Tibetans into a minority in their own home. And more: deforestation, mineral extraction, new levels of pollution. We pass blurry black and white photographs of Tibetans walking over the mountains into exile and a degree of safety, well over 100,000 refugees now, along the way the threat of immediate execution or years imprisonment always near. (“A degree of safety”: we have been told in Kathmandu that Chinese agents kidnap Tibetan off the streets and send them back to occupied Tibet.)
On another day we hike up through the nearby cedar and pine forests, so quiet, relaxed, a universe away from frantic Delhi, walking under prayer flags strung from tree to tree overlooking McLeod Ganj.
We want to visit the Tibetan Childrens’ Village, a large mountain complex with school, residences and craft workshops for some 2000 Tibetan refugee children and youth. Today, a holiday, some play cricket, fly kites, play tag, others play board games on slabs of stone. Betty stops near one youth who sits alone, a cast on his wrist. He looks sad, tears on his face, and she begins talking with him.
Trying to hide his tears, he says he misses his parents. The cast on his wrist? He has slipped on a wet stone several days earlier. He came to the Children’s Village five years ago, hidden in his uncle’s car on the flight from Tibet. Now in Grade 12, he has a brother in Darjeeling in Grade 11 and a sister in university in south India. “I only wish we could be together.” Homeless from Tibet, but also homeless from his family. It preoccupies him, this longing to be with those closest to him, most familiar to him – this and his upcoming final high school exams. He has been told the average he must get to gain a place in a good university, a step towards his expectation for a good job. Betty assures him that his work for good grades is a good plan and that his English is also good. A glimmer of a smile. We say our farewells, wishing him good luck.
Later, we volunteer to help in a conversational English class where most of the ‘students’ – all ages, male and female – are Tibetan refugees. We sit cross-legged on cushions on the floor, about eight groups of three or four people in a small room immediately bubbling with voices. They ask questions of us … How old are you? Are you married? Where is your husband? Wife? Do you have children? Grandchildren? We too ask questions … How have you come to this place? What are you doing now? What do you hope to do? Where is your family? Do you know how they are? What do you hope for?
In Betty’s group one woman describes being brought over the mountains by her father when she was eight “so we can live a free life.” Later her father returned to Tibet and brought out five more of his children. When his daughter managed to returned 16 years later, she found her mother suffering depression, unwilling to talk, and people of her village angry at father for “selling” his children – a misunderstanding she worked to correct.
In Tom’s group, all men, each person introduces himself. “I am a monk from south India here learning English.” “I am trained to be a cook. I came here four months ago to continue my education.” “I am learning English but am applying to return to the Tibet-China border.”
And where have you come from? “I left Tibet 23 years ago. I was 16. Yes, we walked over the mountains, 13 of us. It was very hard. There was one guide. He would take us, then return for others.”
“I was six when my father came with sister. We came Kathmandu. I learn English there, some, then came here.”
“I am from a monastery in south India. I came from Tibet 13 years ago. We left with nine people. We arrived with five. Two older people died, two were lost. We didn’t know where.”
I tell them about my work before retirement with Amnesty International, tell them that people around the world have worked to free a Tibetan nun and other Tibetan prisoners, refer to the infamous Drapchi political prison (two people have heard of the place), that we are talking about “human rights” and “discrimination” – concepts they recognize immediately.
One man describes being prevented “by a Hindu man” in Dharamsala from walking along a shortcut to his monastery. “He told me I must not pass. I said we always pass this way. He yelled. He said he would break my feet.” Have others had experiences like this? One says yes and tells about some taxi drivers refusing to take himself and other monks as fares.
Another man, a monk, asks how India and the world will react when the Dalai Lama is no longer the community’s leader. Will there be a government in India that might refuse Tibetans their home in exile? Will the world stand by if Tibetans here are attacked? I say that Tibetan have many, many supporters around the world who would speak up, like myself, if such things began to happen – assurances that bring smiles and nods.
When I draw Amnesty’s candle and barbed wire symbol – the barbed wire like Drapchi prison, the candle flame like their wishes for Tibet, for their families, their hopefulness, especially the importance of hope during dark times – the monk, perhaps 55 or so years old, breaks into a smile, “Yes, we must have hope. We must have the right spirit in our heart and mind, in our voice,” pointing to his temple, throat and heart.
Dharamsala, resthouse for pilgrims. Place of exile, place of displacement, place of homesickness, place of hope, place of new beginnings … the lives of a monk or nun, the painter of Buddhist miniatures we met along a laneway, the mother and sweet-maker, the guesthouse manager, the hawkers of flutes and scarves.
What is it like to have fled one’s genuine spiritual and physical home place, one’s family? The challenges, pain, uncertainties, the guilt of ‘re-settlement’. The knowledge that one’s real home is being occupied, colonized, transformed, suffocated, and that those left behind are ordered to deny themselves, that they live under constant threat. So much hope, so much “right spirit” it must take, in this restless resthouse for refugees, to begin the day and to consider the possibilities of tomorrow.
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