In Exile From the Land of Snows (16 page)

The great changes in the Dalai Lama’s circumstances soon became apparent. By public demand, he commenced giving a weekly
darshan
or blessing from a silk-draped chair on a rickety wooden stage at one end of the Birla House lawn. As summer began, Tibet’s exiled “God-King” turned into Mussoorie’s greatest tourist attraction until, on June 3, after being showered with rose petals by an audience of five thousand well-wishers and called to reappear twice on a balcony by latecomers chanting “
Darshan! Darshan!
“ his ministers, already in a storm over many Indians’ attempts to shake hands with “the Presence,” canceled all future appearances. Tenzin Gyatso, though, took eagerly not only to shaking hands but also to abolishing almost all of the centuries-old protocol surrounding him. “In the past there was too much formality. You couldn’t talk, you couldn’t even breathe freely,” he commented. “I hate being formal. Now, the new circumstances made it easier for me to change things. In this way, you see, becoming a refugee was actually useful. It brought me much closer to reality. And also it deepened my understanding of religion, particularly impermanence. Although the world is always changing one never notices it. Then suddenly your home, friends and country all are gone. It showed how futile it is to hold on to such things.”

While the Dalai Lama adapted, Indian officials paradoxically did their best to maintain past protocol. Three years after his arrival confusion still reigned, demonstrated by the experience of one journalist who having been instructed not to touch or to turn away from the Dalai Lama, stumbled backwards toward the door at the conclusion of his audience. For a moment the Dalai Lama looked on amused. Then he strode quickly after the reporter, took him by his shoulders, turned him around and gave a friendly push.

Within two months the Dalai Lama’s self-imposed silence ended. Since early April thousands of refugees had begun streaming over the Himalayan passes leading into Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal and India. With them came news of a wholesale effort on the part of China to uproot Tibetan society and culture. As they had been in Kham, “democratic reforms” were about to be imposed: collectivization of property and labor, class division, daily
political “reeducation,” dismantling of the clergy, as well as plans for an influx of Han settlers to begin the Sinicization of Tibet. In addition, there were reports not just of mass imprisonment and execution but of repeated atrocities, torture, rape and dismemberment, carried out directly by the newly established Military Control Committees in each region. The full dimension of Tibet’s tragedy now compelled the Dalai Lama, against Nehru’s admonishments, to launch a campaign for international support.

On June 20, Tenzin Gyatso held his first news conference. Under a large shamiana or open-sided tent, pitched on the lawn of Birla House, scores of reporters listened to the Dalai Lama read a lengthy statement cataloguing the destruction in Tibet, while identifying China’s ultimate aim as “the extermination of the religion and culture and even the absorption of the Tibetan race.” He called for an international commission to investigate the reports of atrocities, made clear that the Seventeen-Point Agreement was abrogated and stated: “Where I am, accompanied by my government, the Tibetan people recognize us as the government of Tibet. I will return to Lhasa,” he added, “when I obtain the rights and powers which Tibet enjoyed and exercised prior to 1950.”

The Dalai Lama’s most immediate concern, however, was the problem of refugees. By the end of June almost 20,000 Tibetans had fled their homeland, the first of repeated waves of exodus, eventually totaling 100,000. While those closest to the border had been compelled to scale the world’s highest and least frequented passes, others, traveling inland from Kham and Amdo, had fought their way free in running battles lasting three and four months. These saw their ranks drastically reduced; a typical group of 125 survivors, who reached Assam in June, reported that they had set out 4,000 strong. Most of the refugees were starving or wounded, ill from the low altitude and stunned by a profound culture shock on descending to an alien world. “During the summer of 1959 my immediate task was to somehow save the refugees,” said the Dalai Lama. “They came just as the hot season started, wearing heavy boots and long robes which had to be burned, as they were completely useless. It was necessary to take very close care of their health. Then, with the little knowledge we possessed, we took it as our duty to tell these ‘fresh’ refugees that it was not so easy to return to Tibet. ‘We will have to remain in India for a longer period than expected,’ we said. ‘We will have to settle mentally as well as physically.’ ”

Two large transit camps had been established to handle the influx: one called Missamari, located ten miles from Tezpur; the other, Buxa Duar, a former British prisoner-of-war camp situated near the Bhutanese border in West Bengal. The camps represented an effort not only of the Indian
government but also of the opposition parties, who, led by Acharya Kripalani, united to create a Central Relief Committee that was instrumental in obtaining food, medical supplies and international aid. Disinfected, fingerprinted, interrogated by Indian intelligence, issued blue-green trousers and brown bush shirts, the mixture of monks, guerrillas and families waited in barracks to be dispersed for road work to the cooler regions of northern India, a plan the Dalai Lama and New Delhi had jointly devised to check the growing number of fatalities. As July began, the first group left Buxa, to be followed shortly by hundreds more, deployed over a twelve-hundred-mile arc across the Himalayas. With their own limited chances for survival lay the sole hope for Tibet’s eventual self-determination.

A
FTER THREE DAYS
of tramping over the 25,000-foot mountains dividing Tibet and Bhutan, Tempa Tsering, his parents and two younger sisters faced their goal. Beneath them stretched the heavily wooded slopes of the southern Himalayas, breaking for the first time in days the uncharted wilderness of brilliant snow-capped summits, ridges and defiles that they had struggled through. Six months earlier, the revolt had been crushed. Tempa’s father, Chopel Dhondub,
^*
together with all the able-bodied men in the village of Drumpa, had been imprisoned by the PLA. Released, he was rearrested after only a few weeks, and then freed again, just in time to see his wife beaten and denounced in
thamzing
or public “struggle session.” He then received notice that Tempa, though only ten years old, was to be sent away with thousands of other Tibetan children for education in China. Frightened of losing their only son, Tempa’s parents decided to flee.

In the middle of October 1959, Chopel Dhondub led his family out of Drumpa. Departing after midnight, his wife and their five- and eight-year-old daughters hurried from the village in silence. A short while later, he and Tempa followed, leaving the door of their home unbolted so as not to arouse suspicion. Trailed by their dog, who refused to be turned back, the family walked east, carrying a few bags of food and clothing, before heading south, off the track, into the mountains separating Lhoka from Bhutan. Climbing all night, they ascended to 18,000 feet. The two girls clung to their parents’ backs, Tempa walked between, holding their hands. With each step forward the adults sank waist deep into freshly fallen powder that rendered the ascent extremely difficult. As dawn broke, they stopped to sleep behind a boulder, huddled together on a blanket on the
snow. Only then did they realize that their dog had disappeared, stuck, most likely, in a drift and unable to free himself.

On waking at sunset, Tempa’s family gazed out over a vaulted world of jagged peaks and indigo sky, the sere umber-colored hills of Tibet beginning to glow in the fading light far below. After a brief meal of melted snow, dried meat and roasted barley, they moved upward again, the moonlight so bright on the snow and ice that their eyes had to be shielded every few steps. By dawn all were exhausted. Tempa’s youngest sister had started vomiting from the thin air and altitude; the others had lost their appetites. Without eating, they fell asleep under an overhang in a depression between spires. The next night the trek continued. At three in the morning a needle-thin ridge suddenly loomed ahead. One at a time, Chopel Dhondub led his children and wife carefully across an invisible chasm dropping away in the darkness to either side. Once the ridge had been safely negotiated, however, the incline gradually descended. Camping again in the snow, they awoke the following afternoon and, less fearful of capture, traversed a wide, saddleback slope until, with the sun setting and the wall of mountains they had passed through now rising behind them, the foothills of Bhutan came into view. The family would have been greatly relieved if it was not for the condition of their youngest child. For two days she had refused to eat or drink. Throughout the last march she had lain limply on her mother’s back, unresponsive to attempts at reviving her. Listening anxiously to her daughter’s labored breathing, Tempa’s mother called out toward four o’clock that the child was “not keeping well at all.” The group came to a halt about an hour above the tree line. Sitting down, Tempa’s mother lifted her daughter from her back and began to rock her. At that moment, while the others looked on, the little girl stopped breathing. “It was a shock,” recalled Tempa. “One moment she was alive and the next, just when the worst of the climb was over, she died.”

As the sun sank below the last ranges, Tempa and his family wept over the corpse. Finally, Chopel Dhondub took his youngest daughter’s extra clothes from one of the bags they had brought, dressed her small body in them, and scooped out a shallow grave. He then buried his child, covering her face with packed snow. Still weeping, the family set off down the mountain. Four hours later, among boulders and waist-high shrubs, they laid out their blanket, made their first hot tea in three days and fell asleep.

Tempa and his family now lay on the edge of a world that in every respect was unknown to them. Once before Chopel Dhondub had traded in Bhutan. He, at least, had seen a forest. The others never had. As with many of the refugees coming from Tibet, their knowledge of the globe consisted of a vague image of China and India, beyond both of which, they
thought, stretched only the great ocean. Unaware that the Dalai Lama had escaped—the Chinese having kept his departure secret—the family, now that its flight was complete, had no further goal. As a result, on the following day they simply took the first path they found, which, after another night’s camping in the forest, led to a village.

To the Tibetans, the local Bhutanese, wearing knee-length checkerboard robes and short, braidless hair, looked like fellow countrymen who, lost for generations, had fallen into an odd, half-remembered mimicry of their ancestors’ ways. To the Bhutanese, however, the refugees were anything but strange. Since early spring thousands had already come this way, disoriented and sick, not a few of them starving. In the immediate aftermath of the uprising, the Bhutanese government had closed the main passes, fearful that China would exact reprisals if the refugees were permitted to enter. But with the great influx of religious and political figures, some of whom were related to the royal family itself, they finally modified their policy. Tibetans were subsequently permitted to pass through the kingdom on condition that they proceed to India. Although some 4,000 refugees eventually remained in Bhutan, the rest were forced to beg their way across the country, bartering the few pieces of jewelry, images and
thankas
they possessed, so that, on their egress a month later, most were destitute. Following the pattern, Tempa, his parents and sister traversed Bhutan, camping in the woods by night, begging in hamlets each day.

Within a week a routine emerged. Arriving at the outskirts of a village, the family divided into two teams, mother and daughter in one, father and son in the other. Passing from house to house, they appealed for whatever leftover food, mainly rice and vegetables, the inhabitants would spare. Returning to their camp outside the town, they ate and then continued traveling. Discovering that people were more generous to the children, Chopel Dhondub instructed his son to beg alone, but this, though profitable, only increased Tempa’s already persistent fear of getting lost, an anxiety they all shared. Unlike Tibet’s limitless vistas, the abundant forest, so thick that it often blocked out the sky, created intense claustrophobia worsened by the constant fear of separation. Dread of what lay hidden among the trees increased the Tibetans’ unease. Tigers, wild boars and poisonous insects were all present. Tempa’s father warned the children about snakes, describing them as creatures who resembled the black and white ropes used by Tibetan traders but who moved. No vigilance, however, was sufficient to guard against the omnipresent leeches. Each day they would latch on unnoticed and gradually swell with blood up to two inches in length. Salt and fire were the sole antidotes. Preserving their few matches for campfires, Tempa and his family begged for salt for the leeches
and wrapped themselves in their hot Tibetan clothing. Through it all, Tempa’s mother wept continually over the loss of her daughter. In the few words they exchanged before sleep each night, the others never mentioned the tragedy for fear of upsetting her more.

As the family’s trek across Bhutan progressed, they met other refugees, flowing like so many rivulets down through Thimbu, the capital, and thence to India. Finally, after five weeks of walking, they entered a large meadow in the woods filled with Tibetans preparing to cross the Indian border two days beyond. Among them, Tempa’s father found a family he knew. He joined their cooking fire, and the two groups exchanged accounts. Entering India together, they arrived a few days later at Buxa.

Located in an airless pocket between three jungle-covered hills, Buxa’s thirty concrete barracks, enclosed by a high barbed-wire perimeter, presented a dismal setting. At the time of Tempa’s admittance, thousands of refugees were bivouacked inside and outside the camp’s gates, the majority incapacitated from the heat and low altitude. To relieve overcrowding, the Indian government had begun shipping out sizable contingents, either for road work or to the more spacious transit camp at Missamari, where, after two weeks, Tempa and his family themselves were transferred. “We left Buxa in a large group and walked about two miles to the railroad,” recalled Tempa. “Everyone was discussing the train. No one had ever seen one; we had only heard its new Tibetan name,
rili
, from the English word ‘rail’ I was very excited listening to people talk about big houses that moved, but when we first arrived there was so much rushing that I had no chance to look.” Herded by Indian police into a narrow passage dividing two stacks of triple-level wooden bunks, Tempa managed to get a window seat, from which vantage point he soon received a terrific shock. “It was so funny,” he remembered. “When the train started I actually thought the mountains were moving out, not us. I was staring through the window and thinking, ‘How do these mountains move so quickly?’ I just couldn’t understand it.” By nightfall, though, as the train turned south and the Himalayas vanished, he had begun to adjust. Then, after a second night, they arrived at a town called Rangapari from where the refugees were driven in trucks to the new camp.