Week 6: Seeing Past Your Nose - History and Happiness

Tessa and I had only just finished breakfast at the honeydew green Mo-Nga Café, our routine haunt, when the power went out. This isn’t uncommon, and usually translates to a longer wait for coffee and pancakes as the electricity whirrs back to life. But instead of a longer wait, the owner of the café informed us the local government had just issued notice that power would be out all day for monthly service. So, there was no coffee at all. To make the situation more dire: monthly service in this remote town rarely lives up to the name “monthly” and our research depends entirely on wifi access.  Fortunately, Yargyal’s friend, Gonpo, has backup power and runs “Gonpo’s Tibetan History Library” - his personal collection of books dedicated to preserving and sharing the history and culture of Tibet. We sheltered there for wifi while exploring the shelves showcasing Tibetan writers (check out his library on Instagram, @gthl2023).

“History is who we are and why we are the way we are”—this quote garlands the entrance of the library, greeting every guest and inspiring Gonpo as he organizes the first ever Tibetan literary festival. Leaving our shoes on the raw stone floor of the sunroom, we pass under the quote and enter two rooms brimming with Tibetan literature. Two books that particularly moved me were Echoes from Forgotten Mountains: Tibet in War and Peace by Jamyang Norbu and Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women translated by Charles Hallisey.

We stayed tucked away in Gonpo’s library working on our individual projects (mine a contract for a loan agreement for an NGO) until it was time to journey back down the steep and meandering Jogiwara Road to Hope Café & Stories (on Instagram @hopecafeandstories), a cozy, non-profit café. Thoughtfully designed to collect and share the stories of Tibetan refugees, the cafe is decorated beautifully. Portraits of the faces of Tibetans adorn one wall in captivatingly imperfect wooden frames handmade by Tenzing, the owner, founder, and photographer of Hope. A projector hangs from bundles of cobalt blue string in the middle of the ceiling for documentaries as well as slideshows, like the one we’ll be seeing tonight. We’ve come for the weekly series Stories of Tibetans, a grassroots program to raise awareness of the problem of Tibet by inviting exiled Tibetans to share their stories. Every Monday another life is revealed, but today the owner of the café is sharing his own story: The Story of Tenzing.

The Story of Tenzing is a title that can be used to tell the stories of many Tibetans-in-exile; many Tibetans born after 1950 have ‘Tenzin’ or ‘Tenzing’ as either their first or surname in honor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. Tenzing came here to India at 6 years old on the back of a Nepali smuggler’s wife, his 4-year-old cousin the only family by his side. His aunt made the difficult journey of crossing the Himalayas on foot and took a month longer to reach the border. Crossing on foot is a journey so dangerous it’s nigh impossible to even imagine... not only will the hostile environment leave refugees riddled with the blackened skin or lost extremities so telling of extreme frostbite but the shadows of Chinese and Nepalese loom dark over the passage. Being found by these soldiers is a fate worse than succumbing to the elements. Refugees are either taken prisoner and returned to Tibet to be beaten and tortured or they are shot on sight. (Here is a wonderfully written— but gruesome—essay detailing the daunting Nangpa-la pass, the only path to freedom currently available to Tibetans: https://www.jamyangnorbu.com/blog/2019/07/01/looking-back-from-nangpa-la/.)

Tenzing told us how he and his cousin survived in a hole in the ground under the hut of the smuggler, eating the one meal once a day for a month while the leeches ate better and more often from their weakened bodies. By the time his aunt was able to cross the border into Nepal and find him, Tenzing’s cousin was dead, and his skin had purpled from the iodine he was given to treat his chicken pox. Watching the man himself tell his survival story, I was vividly reminded of how lucky I was to fly to India—the sum total of my suffering being grueling layovers in airports with overpriced restaurants and fending off huntsman spiders in hotel rooms blighted by running water. It was a stark reality check for all three of us non-Tibetans in the room. After describing to us his experiences in the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) schools established by His Holiness and then-Prime Minister of India Nehru to educate Tibetans in their own language, Tenzing ended with this: “Happiness starts from where you are. You won’t see your nose unless you try. Happiness is the same.”

Later in the week, while His Holiness was having knee surgery in New York and most Tibetans closed their businesses to pray for 24 hours for his recovery, Yargyal and Tenzin took Tessa and I on their motorcycles to introduce us to the staff of several NGOs. These meetings were not interviews for our research, but part of Yargyal and Tenzin’s endeavor to show us the ground reality of the Tibetan struggle and the actions of key stakeholders in the community. We met and had captivating dialogues with the Director of Lha Charitable Trust (where we discussed the contract Yargyal and I drafted), the local chapter of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), and the General Secretary of the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC). At SFT, we discussed (in an unofficial, so un-bloggable capacity) everything from current political situations in the CTA to Tibet’s international relations to grassroots activism. Something I do feel I can mention is that one of the STF members believes the most effective form of non-violent protest to be, of all things, singing. While not a novel form of non-violent resistance it is one that I often overlook. What I more often picture after my time here is organized marches or self-immolation, a strongly symbolic form of protest for Tibetans still living in Tibet.

Self-immolation is an act treated with the utmost respect by Tibetans. It is the ultimate sacrifice a Tibetan can make for their country, and the only way to be speak and be heard after being systematically denied their own humanity. In the office of the Tibetan Youth Congress, an organization that is working towards the complete independence of Tibet (rather than the CTA’s official approach of the Middle Way), there is a wooden frame holding a set of charred scraps of fabric behind glass. These are the remains of one of the 100+ Tibetans who have self-immolated in the streets of Tibet under Chinese occupation. The frame hangs in the eyeline of the desks in the office, a constant reminder of the fight for Tibet, and one man’s courageous act of defiance. I stood for a moment and stared, taken aback by the weight of those little pieces of cotton. Yargyal’s question to Tessa and I—whether we wanted a picture with the General Secretary—broke the sudden and reverent silence into which this memento of a young man had drawn me. I gasp back into my own reality. A reality where I confronted the evidence of self-immolation for the first time today; where I have never paid my respects to a brother, sister, friend, or loved one who has burned themselves alive; where I have not felt in my heart what it means for such an act of self-sacrifice to be made so that I may have a chance at freedom one day.

In all honesty, most of my hours outside of work this week were spent trying to metabolize everything we have learned so far. I am surrounded by people who are less fortunate and the guilt I fight has made me question what I am really doing here. But the sheer unproductiveness of letting myself simmer with guilt over the world being full of injustices that have skewed in my favor is also a bitter pill to swallow; it boils down to engaging in competitive victimization. I am belatedly realizing that I should simply be grateful I am in a position to help, however small the difference I make during my time here may be.

As my time here dwindles down to the final month, I will do my best to use these blogs to talk about what may happen when His Holiness the Dalai Lama inevitably passes away, how the future of Tibet could look under the Middle Way approach and under complete independence, and our continued experiences in the community. In the meantime, everyone here in Dharamshala and McLeod Ganj looks forward to His Holiness’ 89th birthday, and Tessa and I look forward to (or...dread?) starting the 2L summer job search, and maybe finally going hiking now that the weather is cooling off.