Khagyun Stories: Karma Donya

Karma Dhonya, 83 years old
“New Fourth Camp”, Bylakuppe India

Karma Dhonya

I was a monk from the age of six to eight years old. After that, an uncle of mine who was one of the managers of the monastery sent me to the north. Because my uncle was appointed as a manger of the monastery, and since my uncle was very old, I was sent on behalf of my uncle. I knew everything about the place, about the area, since it was my home.

There was a Tibetan army called the Chushi Gangdru, and the soldiers took me along to show them the way around since I knew the land so well. This was around 1956, I don't remember exactly. I then fought against the Chinese for two days. They were riding horses and shooting. The Chinese had vehicles and armored jeeps and better rifles than we had. I was shot by one of the Chinese soldiers. (He points to a scar that is there below his throat and to the right). Karmapa gave me an amulet for protection, and this saved my life. Even though I was shot there, I didn't die. I fell down when I was shot. It was a Russian bullet. I fell down, and one of my friends asked me, "What's happened to you?" And he saw the blood, and he took the bullet out from just below my throat. There was a little blood, but it didn't really go very far inside. I was senseless, like in a dream. I didn't know what was happening, and was unaware, really. He didn't put any bandage on it, nothing. I was on a hill when I got shot, not on a horse. Nobody was shooting at that time, there didn't seem to be any Chinese soldiers around, so I just stood up, and immediately I was hit.

On the way, I met some nomads and they gave me butter and tsampa barley flower. And a little bit of curds (yogurt). And I just had this, there was nothing else to eat. It was not really a matter of winning and losing in this battle. You killed as many as you could, and then ran away. It was a guerrilla war. This was guerilla war, because I was not in the Tibetan government – they had their own soldiers. Most of us were volunteers. Since we were volunteers, people gave us food on the way. We wore our bullets in belts around our waists, along with a gun and a knife that were hanging there. Almost all of us had horses. In our army company, it was our rule at that time, that you were not able to rob any people. If you did rob anybody, the leader would kill you. It was against our religion to rob. You would have to be very bad to do this. It was a rule. I think I killed some Chinese soldiers , but I'm not completely sure. Although I was a Buddhist and a former monk, I felt that we were fighting for our own reasons. The Chinese government had destroyed so many things, so many precious things, and they had occupied our country. And there was anger, and I had real reasons for fighting. I felt sorry for those who were killed. Now I feel grateful to those Tibetans who died fighting for their country. At that time, we were very angry, and it was very dangerous. Now I can feel compassion, and I did some bad things, but then it was different. We were trying to save our region, our culture.

Later, one time I was on a mountain, and I saw helicopters of the Chinese army landing. I also saw a horse in the background. There was a packet of bullets on the horse, and I wanted to get the bullets. So I shot the horse in the leg, and it fell down. I went and collected the bullets, and just moments later a Chinese soldier shot me in the leg. The bullet went into the calf, into the muscle, but it missed all the bones, so it was almost as if nothing had happened. It was so hard; the muscle was just torn away with the blood. I became unconscious. Some of my fellow soldiers put some ointment on the wound. I think it was medicine that was made in America. Then they put a bandage on it, and they left me and went away. So I stayed with a family of nomads. I stayed quite separately from them. The Chinese troops would always come and ask the older nomads if there were any rebels there. So I stayed quite far away, separate from them, but they looked after me very well, and I stayed for two months to heal the wound. After two months, the wound was completely healed, and I went on foot to my own monastery where I had been a monk.

All the Chinese soldiers, they asked all the Tibetan people if there were any rebels there. When I was in the monastery, one of the Tibetan people told the Chinese that I was one of the rebels, and that I had been in the rebel army and had fought against the Chinese. In my family, there were six members totally – my parents, three brothers, and one sister. Then, the Chinese officials and the Tibetan people had a meeting, and they said, "Karma Dhonya was one of the rebels, and he has killed many Chinese people." So it was decided in the meeting that I was to be punished. So I was to be arrested. But one of my relatives told me to run away, that the Chinese soldiers would catch me and put me in prison and maybe beat me. They might do anything to me. So it was better to run away. So I decided to run away, along with the whole family.

We took all our belongings and our sheep. His Holiness had already left, and I had been fighting by then for many years. At that time, I didn't know anything about India. I was only hearing about Nepal, and people said that the Dalai Lama was in Nepal. For India, it's "Hindustan" that we said, that was our word. So I thought the Dalai Lama was in Nepal. But after reaching Nepal, they were saying His Holiness was in Hindustan.

It took four months for us to reach Nepal. My current wife's region was quite near, much closer than mine, just a bit north of Lhasa. Four months it took me, though. I came in 1960. (We weren't a couple then, we came from different places and at different times.) We took yaks and sheep on the way. Many of them died on the way from lack of food. It was summertime. Before I went to Nepal, I stayed about eight months at the border, before actually entering Nepal. Some people told me that being from Tibet, where it was cold, that it would be very difficult for me because in Nepal it's very hot, and that I would die, so I was very afraid. But I was very close to Nepal.

We sold the yaks to the local people for money to live on. For one yak we got about one hundred Nepali currency. At that time we could not use Tibetan currency, because the Chinese had collected all Tibetan currency. All six members of the family were there. We also begged for food.

Then I traveled through some huge rocky mountains and reached Nepal. From where we stayed along the border for three months, then we reached Nepal. We stayed for a few days in Nepal, and I was very happy to see a very holy stupa there. Then we walked up to Raksul, along the border between Nepal and India. It took two months, because we had no money, so we just came walking on foot. We got food by begging. I could only use one or two words of Nepali... "Help me, give me food", like that. We got maize flower, corn, a few grains and cereals. In Tibet we ate tsampa flower, high mountain barley. On the way, we made a makeshift stove with three stones arranged like this (demonstrates). Then we put the utensils into some water, and then light it, and we boiled water and cooked the maize on the way. Our entire bodies were so dirty, because we could not get water to wash. When we asked for water and got some, it was only a cup, so we drank it. I was 24 years old. I could not shave and had a long beard, and I even had lice, just like a prisoner.

From Raksul, we got on a train. We had no money, but we just got on a train. I saw a man dressed in a black uniform. He was the ticket checker, and we were quite afraid. Some people said he would throw us out of the train because we had no tickets. We were helpless. We didn't have any money. We just said, "Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama" like that (puts his hands above his head in prayer and bows). Tibetans were generally people who didn't have much money, because the barter system was used so much there. We didn't take much money. We just exchanged goods and did things for each other and all that. Whether you were rich or poor, you had your own food to eat. We didn't have much money, it didn't really matter.

After the train, we also went on a boat without having any money to pay the fare, just saying "Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama." We didn't have any idea where the Dalai Lama was staying. So whenever we saw a train, we just got on it and said "Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama." After our train journey, we came to a place in India called Lucknow. We stayed there for a while, and we met some Tibetan people who came much before the Dalai Lama came to India. They spoke Indian languages very well. They gave us some rice and dal, but we didn't know how to cook rice and dal, because we were hill people.

These Tibetan people wanted to go to Dharamsala. They were sincere, and they spoke Tibetan much more than the Indian languages, but they pretended that they too didn't know how to speak any Indian languages, so they didn't have to pay. We went along with them. We arrived eventually at Varanasi. We had a very good pilgrimage, since it was a very holy place, the place where the Buddha gave his first public talk after attaining enlightenment. Then we came to Bodh Gaya. The Tibetans that we had met who were travlling with us helped us a lot. Being in Bodh Gaya made me feel like I was a monk again.

After Bodh Gaya, we reached a place called Amritsar in the Punjab, and then went on to Potankote, and then to Dharamsala. We saw His Holiness the Dalai Lama there. At that time there were only two security people with the Dalai Lama, one lady and one gentleman. The man was checking the body of the men, and the lady was checking the body of the ladies. His Holiness was staying in a very small house at that time. People said it was a British house when India was under British rule. The army unit that I had joined in Tibet had mostly managed to get together again in Nepal and form a group too there. We had a battalion in Nepal. But the Chinese government pressured the Nepal government that they should not allow us to organize, so we were expelled from there into India. Afterwards we formed a group in Dharmasala. A group of 100 people was sent to Manali, where she (Lobsang, his current wife) worked. I also worked in Manali as a laborer.

When I was 36 years old I came here to the Bylakuppe settlement. From Manali I first went to Orissa, one of the Tibetan settlements. I stayed there for three years. For five people, three acres were given to cultivate land. Later, I went as a helper for those who ran a sweater business. I only got sixty rupees a month for this work. There were some people who did business at that time. All my family members were there in Orissa. One of my brothers ran a school. Another went into the Army, the Indian Army. My sister was living with them then. She got married, and afterwards she suffered from tuberculosis, and she died. This happened to many Tibetans -- it was quite common.

I also got married to a woman who had been a Tibetan nomad. She also died in Orissa. Then I worked as a servant helper for a businessperson, and I traveled all around India. I was living here (in Bylakuppe) at that time. After being quite successful with his business, my boss had quite a bit of money. He asked me to come with him, in part because he was worried that some bad people might try to take away the money. My boss also bought some butter, lots of tins of butter to sell here. So I helped him with all his business affairs, including buying and selling butter. "Come with me to Bylakuppe," he told me, "and whatever profit you get, you can keep." So that's how I came. That's how I met Lobsang here.

Actually, this is her house, and officially I belong to the Orissa settlement. I keep a big knife around the house, because we're getting very old. I keep it for protection. She is blind in one eye, so we joke that I'm deaf, and she's blind. I see for her, and she hears for me. We are staying alone here. She cannot walk. Whatever work we have to do, I do. I do everything for her. Since her daughter... Well, the Tibetan exile government sent about a thousand refugees to America, I think it was maybe in 1991, and her daughter was one of them. Because of her, we have no problem. They send some money. We have no work now, and she has been a great help. She lives in New Mexico. She has four children. She has to look after her four children as well as her parents, and has four sons in America – all sons, no daughters. She sends us about $700 per year.

For the future, I'm very concerned that the younger generation does not speak Tibetan purely. They have mixed it up with many languages. For example, when we have vegetables, they say "sabji" (Hindi). We have our own word, but they don't use it. This is a great concern for me. And its very important to preserve our rich culture. For example, for the word "bread", in Hindi, they say "roti". In Tibetan, we say, "bag leb". Some people don't speak Tibetan, even though they are Tibetan. They say "roti", like "Do you want "roti?"