In Tibet

by Tinzen Choeden

            I was born in a small village called Bylakuppee in India, located in south state called Karnataka. My village is five hours away from the city Bangalore. It is big village with sixteen camps for Tibetans, we lived there as a refugee. My grandparents and parents says they are very thankful to Indian government because they were so kind to give us place to live without discriminating and made us feel like home.

However I don’t know what they are talking about because I have never seen Tibet my whole life. So, I don’t know how home feels. Fifty years ago, In 1959 H.H. the 14^th Dalia Lama and a lot other Tibetans escape from Tibet because the Chinese government ruled Tibet. H.H. The 14^th Dalai Lama had to take responsibility of Tibet at very young age but at age of twenty-five he asked for help to the Indian government and because of him we Tibetan got place to live safely. Since then till now my grandparents, my parents and a lot of other Tibetans have not seen Tibet including me. And for fifty years, six million of Tibetan in Tibet had been suffering a lot. For example a lot Tibetan in Tibet were tortured and killed when they protest or even kept H.H. The 14^th Dalai Lama’s picture in their house. My grandfather once told me that when he first escape from Tibet to India, he thought he will go back to Tibet in three to four years, but he ended up lasting fifty years in India. And he is eighty-five years old and he wishes to see Tibet get freedom before he dies and wishes to go back to Tibet and die in Tibet. When he said that, it really touched me and brought tears into my eyes. I felt like whatever is happening in Tibet is not right and whatever we are doing is not enough.

I really respect H.H. The 14^th Dalai Lama for what he has done to us Tibetans and his way of non-violence to free the Tibet. But sometimes I feel like protesting, marching and striking have not affected China that it has been fifty years and Tibet is still ruled by China. May be it have effect China, but I just don’t see and feel it. Sometimes I feel like we have to be violence and bomb some part of China in order to show that we waited long enough and enough is enough, we will not take it anymore and we will never give up. Then I think the whole world and China will take Tibet seriously and think about what they are doing. I also believe that a lot of other Tibetan feels the same way but we don’t do anything because that will be same as disrespecting Dalai Lama. It will be like spitting on all the hard work he has done and we would rather die than do that because we have a lot respect and trust in his peaceful non-violence way to get freedom and we will always follow him. That is how I feel about Tibet.

Now I am going to talk about how my life went in the village. My life in the village went very wild in a fun way. I lived in my village for fourteen years and some people might think it sucks because the education is not good as here (U.S.A), heath care and etc… I also use to think that when I was living in the village, but now when I am here in America and when I look back and think about how my life was in the village. Those were the time when I had a great life and that was how I wanted to live. Like everybody, I also have a lot of good and bad memories. Usually people don’t like sharing bad memories because it is embarrassing or too personal. However I like telling my bad memories because now when I think of it, I am thinking it was very cool and my friend also think it was very cool too. For example one of the bad memories that I now think is cool is this two crazy day I had in roll.

The first day I had very rough and rushed day. I came home running from school because I was late to pick up my younger siblings from the kinder garden school. I was scared they might get hit by a car or gets kidnap trying to walk home. So, I rode my motor bike full speed to their school and luckily they were there waiting for me. So, I drove back and got home. And when I got home I had to rush and run back to school because I had a cricket game. Cricket wasn’t really my sport. I love basketball, but I never got to play much of basketball because there is only one basketball court in my camp and the elder uses that court. When we try to play, they wouldn’t let us play because they want to play and their excuse for not letting us (the teenager) play is that we are too young. If we insist and talk back to them, we will get beat up. So the best thing is just don’t play and don’t bother them. You will at least get to watch it. Back to track:

We lost the cricket game and I was very upset because I lost ten Rupees. We bet in the game. So I got home around 8:30pm. I was in the living the living room on my couch watching TV while eating. I got thirsty and I realize I left my water bottle in the kitchen. So I went down to the kitchen and all of a sudden the light went off. I looked at the time and it was 9:00pm. Then I wasn’t surprise because in my village the electricity is very poor and the lights are off most of the time. Out of the fourteen years that I have lived in the village, more than half of my life I have spent without light days and night. So, I was walking down the stairs with no light and on the last step, I felt something very smooth on the bottom of my feet. It was the smoothest thing I have ever felt and I loved it. I didn’t think or care about what it was at that time, I just loved the feeling. All of a sudden the light came back and I took one step back to see what it was and it happen to be snake Cobra looking at me. I got so scared because I thought the snake is going to bite me and kill me and the snake did try to bit. But luckily my grandmother happen to be right behind the snake and she had a brush on her hand because she was cleaning the house and when the snake try to bite me. My grandmother swinged the brush so hard that when it hit the snake, the snake was flying in the air and got smashed on the wall really hard. I screamed and called my siblings for help. They help my grandmother killed the snake and after we killed the snake. We burned the snake because in our country we believe that we have to burn the snake after we killed them. So the snake’s children won’t take revenge from us. I don’t know why they believe in that, but they do and they burned it. And while the snake was burning, a frog came out of the snake’s stomach. It was groace!

After a crazy day, I even had a crazier day on the next day during school. In our school, every morning at 8:00am, all the students have to gather in the hall and pray, like Christian people goes to church every Sunday. We have to do that everyday and everyday this one student in our class never comes to pray. He always skips and run away and our class monitor is a girl. So, every time he runs away she could never catch him. This one time our class monitor and I were walking to the hall and we saw the student jump over the school gate and try to rum away. The monitor ask me to catch him and I went to do it. I thought I could catch him easily, but he was pretty fast. It has been over an hour and I still couldn’t catch him and I still kept chasing him because I didn’t want to go to my first two periods. So when I get back, if the teacher asks me where I went, I was going to blame it on the monitor. So I was still chasing him and screaming “stop! If you don’t stop and if I catch you, I am going to beat your ass!” He turned around and said, “FUCK YOU!” to me and went inside the jungle. I got so pissed that without thinking I went into the jungle. I got so pissed that without thinking I went into the jungle and chase him. After ten to fifteen minutes we were pretty deep inside the jungle and I stop and try to find the way out, but I didn’t know which way was out. Also all of a sudden, he stopped and told me to come to where he was standing and told me to look over that little river near us. I looked and I saw two gigantic elephant. One was just sleeping and the other was just walking around. I got so scared because I didn’t know the way out and I just saw two gigantic elephant. I thought I was going to die, but luckily the person I was chasing knew the way out.

So we both ran and got out of the jungle. Right when we got out of the jungle, I grabbed him from the back and I punch him on the face because he made me run for more than three hours and he almost got me killed in the jungle. Then I took him to school and when I got to school. I took him to the monitor and she took us to the principal. At first I wasn’t scared because I was going to blame it on her if she if the principal try to hit me. But right when we got to the principal, she said, “They both ran away since morning”. I think she knew if the teacher ask me, I was going to blame it on her and she will get in trouble. I try to tell the principal she is lying but of course the teacher is going to believe the monitor. My witness could’ve been the person I was chasing, but he took a revenge of my punch by not being my witness. So we both got beat up by the teacher. In our school, teacher can hit student because they believe that is the best way to keep the students on track.

So at that time, I learned that never do anything unless you have permission from the right person. Also now when I think of those memories, it makes me happy and I love sharing it.

Also life in the village is very different and I like the life in the village much better than the life in city. People might think I will have better education and life in the city, but I think I learn better by seeing it in real life than reading it and try to learn from the book. Also in the village I find more freedom and I feel like my life goes smoother. So someday in the future I will move back to my village and try to teach the villager as much as I can and learn as much as I can for them.