Week 6: Stories from Tibet
This week, the monsoons hit. When it rained, it was heavy, roaring on the tin roofs of buildings. When the rain stopped, dense fog took its place, making it difficult to see even twenty feet up the road. I love this weather. The constant cloud cover has caused the temperature to plummet, making walking the half-hour to work every morning downright delightful. 
Along with a change in weather came a change in work. I spent Monday researching the history of Ponzi schemes, as well as cases of Ponzi schemes in India, to help my boss with this month’s ‘legal information’ video. (The TLA puts one out every month, always on a different topic.) In addition to being interesting, the research was quite fun, and on Tuesday I used my research to write a report on Indian Ponzi schemes. When I turned in the report, my boss asked me to write a script for the video, which I did with glee (and in the classic ‘Courier’ font).
When I started the Ponzi scheme research on Monday, the power went out in our office, and we were told by a local café worker that it would be out in the area for the whole day due to maintenance, so Kate, our boss, and I took a taxi to Gonpo's Tibetan History Library. Gonpo, a friend of our boss, opened his library in 2020 with his own collection, and his mission is to keep Tibetan history alive through all who read his books. The library is a small and comfortable space, with a few couches, a table, and books stacked ceiling-high.
On Wednesday and Thursday, I read a 644-page document called the “Verma Report,” which identified issues in Indian criminal law and recommended changes. At the request of my boss, I added a few things from the Verma Report to our POCSO recommendations. I also read more about Tibetan statelessness, which I'll write about next week.
Friday was filled with interesting meetings. First, we met with representatives at a charitable trust to discuss a contract the TLA is drafting for them. Kate and I got to help with parts of the contract (mostly redlining and suggested additions), which was great fun and made me pleasantly surprised about how much I recalled from Contracts class. We also met, purely for our edification, with the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) and with Students for Tibet (SFT), both groups that advocate for the total freedom of Tibet (as opposed to the official stance of the Tibetan government-in-exile and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who advocate for the “middle way”: an autonomous but not fully independent Tibet). We spoke with representatives of both groups at length about their visions for the future of Tibet, the things that still bar the path to independence and freedom, and their views generally on the status of Tibetans-in-exile. One directive of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to which Tibetans hold fast is the practice of nonviolence. During our meeting with SFT, I asked one member what he thought the most effective form of nonviolence was. “Singing,” he responded.
Speaking with the TYC and SFT about their hopes for a future independent Tibet made me think about an event Kate and I attended on Monday evening. After working at the library for most of the day, our boss took us to Hope café, a local eatery and arts venue whose profits go to grassroots activism within the Tibetan community-in-exile. The event, called “Stories of Tibet,” is a collaborative project by Hope café and the Volunteer Tibetan Advocacy Group (V-TAG), to raise awareness about the stories of individual Tibetans. There, we heard about the life of Tenzing, the owner of Hope café, who escaped from Tibet with his aunt and cousin when he was a young boy. He told us all about his life: his escape from Tibet, his fleeting memories of his homeland, his experience arriving in India and starting in a new school, his journey to college, his decision to stay in Dharamshala instead of travel to the U.S. with his family because he felt he was called to help the community that raised him.
It’s a privilege to be able to travel to India the way that tourists do, he said. To leave Tibet as a Tibetan doesn’t just put your own life in danger; it endangers everyone you leave behind. Guides across the Himalayas are expensive, and even with a guide, it’s a dangerous journey. Many die trying to flee Tibet, whether it’s from severe frostbite, malnutrition, or, as in one famous case, from being caught and killed by Chinese border guards. Although Tenzing and his cousin were helped to cross the border into Nepal by the Nepalese wife of a guide his aunt had paid, and so didn’t have to cross the Himalayas, the conditions while they waited for Tenzing’s aunt to cross the mountains were so severe that his four-year-old cousin died. He described waiting for his aunt: only eating one meal a day, hiding in the wall-less basement of the smuggler’s hut, waking up every morning covered in leeches and having to pick them off, treating his chicken pox with so much iodine that by the time his aunt arrived to take him to the refugee reception center in Kathmandu, he was purple, and so malnourished she didn’t recognize him.
As an adult, Tenzing runs Christmas gift drives for Tibetan children without families, teaches English, and tries to spread his core belief that “happiness starts from where you are.” His dream, he said, is to make documentaries about the situation of Tibet and Tibetans-in-exile. In fact, next week he will be working on a documentary about Tibetan POCSO victims, and plans to come by the TLA for an interview. He told those of us in the audience who were foreigners what non-Tibetans could do to help the Tibetan cause: share their stories.
Kate and I spent the weekend putting the final touches on our POCSO recommendations and reserving seats at the next Hope café event.