By Tenzin Dickyi
New Delhi
I am ready to die any moment. I feel blessed now. I got the opportunity to have audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama twice and there is nothing more I am looking forward to in my life.
Friends of Tibet (FOT), Delhi Chapter organized a public gathering to hear the Nangpa la shooting survivors speak in New Delhi at the Press Club of India yesterday. Present at the gatherings were many young Indian as well as Tibetan college students.
Two survivors of the Nagpa la shooting Ven.Thupten Tsering, the most outspoken of all and Lobsang Choenden, the young boy who survived the shooting by hiding in the toilet of a western mountain climbers made their presence to witness the shooting.
Tenzin Tsundue, General Secretary of friends of Tibet, moderated the whole session while he also translated for two of them. The progarmme was supported by Indo-Tibet Co-ordination Office.
The session commenced with the screening of a 10-minute video footage of the firing, which was shot by a Romanian mountaineering team camping near the pass as part of their trek.
As the two survivors started narrating their story, there was complete silence in the room.
Lobsang Choenden, who sat there in a very depressed state and in his gloom prepared to narrate his perilous escape from Tibet.
Born in Kardze region of Tibet, Lobsang is a married man. He has left behind his parents, wife and two children to seek a better livelihood. As he describes the route through which they escaped on his hand drawn sketch, the innocence on his face reflected the actual fear they went through at that moment. ‘The firing came so sudden that there was no time to think about where to run, thankfully I found a place to hide in the tent of those foreigners’, he told the audience as he narrates and laments over the death of Kelsang Namtso, a 17 year old nun who was shot dead on the spot by the Chinese patrol.
‘How was your feeling when you were hiding in the tent from the Chinese assault?’ Instantly came a question from one of the audience.
I lied there cold and dead with not even proper clothes to wear. I sat there for hours and wished I could explain things to those white people but our language was alien to each other. I made the hairline escape leaving behind 31 of my friends who were apprehended by the Chinese patrol. Nobody knows their whereabout, said Lobsang.
Lobsang Choenden will be joining Tibetan Transit school in Dharamsala, a special school set up particularly for the young Tibetans newly arrived from Tibet.
‘I am ready to die any moment. I feel blessed now. I got the opportunity to have audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama twice and there is nothing more I am looking forward to in my life’, Ven. Thupten Tsering, a 23 year old from Kongpo region of Tibet spoke unhesistantly.
Chinese greatest fear lies in His Holiness’s international fame and few of the Chinese think tanks believe that with the passing away of the Dalai Lama, the story of Tibet will fade away too. The most outspoken of all, Ven Thupten Tsering said that being a monk in Tibet is risking your life more closer to death. Making Tibetan monks and nuns to denounce His Holiness is the core aim of the Chinese government. They were forced to read and learn texts which deprecates Dalai Lama.
Ven. Thupten also shares one of his most happiest moment. After making it to Nepal, we were once taken to Namgyal High School in Kathmandu where I received a glance of the Tibetan National Flag flying high and my ear could not stop listening to the National Anthem sung by the students. How I wished Tibetans in Tibet could get this little freedom to raise high their National Flag and sing proudly the National Anthem. I cant measure my joy at that moment, told Thupten.
Ven. Thupten Tsering is leaving for Sera Monastery in south India later this week to pursue his Buddhist studies.
