The complex crowns a saddle on one of the higher ridges of the town. Above, in the grey wintery light, loom the black rock walls and fault lines of the Himalayas, rising to a series of gleaming white snow peaks glowing strangely with refracted light at the level of the clouds.
Below, rutted roads and cobbled footpaths lead down to the Tibetan Parliament, which despite its grandiose name is in reality little larger than a village scout hall. On one side is the equally modest yellow ochre Tibetan Home Ministry; to the other a library and archive. Farther below still, through steep slopes of cedar and deodar, and below the slowly circling eagles, is a stutter of foothills. These lead down to the foggy floor of the Kangra Valley, where the hilltops emerge from the flat blanket of winter morning mist like the humps of a school of whales rising from the deep.
The old people’s home for Tibetan veterans where Passang had finally found shelter lay a short walk below the library, on a projecting ledge of rock in the lee of a small temple. It was late afternoon when I arrived. The old veterans who had been sitting silently on benches in the sun, playing cards or watching the light rake down the peaks, now found themselves in shade, with the temperature dropping rapidly. So they gathered their shawls around them, and adjusted their knotted mufflers and bonnets. Then they began to shuffle inside to drink their evening butter tea before heading up to the temple for their evening prayers. I later learned that of the 150 inmates in the home, no fewer than thirty had, like Passang, been monks who had given back their vows to fight in the ill-fated Tibetan resistance.
Passang led me to his room, a warm and snug space at the back of the home, in the shadow of the cliffs. This he shared with one other monastic army veteran. On a shelf at the end of the room lay a line of doll-like images of Tibetan saints and rinpoches. A butter lamp burned in a brass brazier, and a red electric light mimicked the flickering of a candle below a framed image of the Dalai Lama. Above the door, Passang had hung some fatty yak meat to dry on an improvised framework of skewers.
For a few minutes the old man fiddled around with a primus, making chai, which he poured from a saucepan into small cups. He passed me one, then proceeded to sip noisily from his own. Only when he had finished did he begin to talk.
“I was born in 1936 in the Dakpa country of Kham province,” said Tashi Passang. “Like many in eastern Tibet, my family lived a semi-nomadic life. Although we were small landowners with a stone three-storey house, we also had many yak and dri. The herd numbered almost 100, and in summer it was the job of the boys of the family to help my grandparents and my uncles to take the animals up to the high summer pastures.
“As a young child, I would watch my elder brothers go off with the herd, and feel sad to be left behind. But the valley where we lived was very beautiful in summer. The trees were all in blossom and there were so many wild flowers—cornflowers, poppies, deep purple gentians—that I couldn’t name even half of them. There was a big river leading to a lake near our house, and in summer red crane and white duck would come in their thousands, and build their nests. They laid their eggs by the side of the lake and my parents would warn me not to go near the nesting area, in case I touched the eggs. Then the mother would smell a human and abandon them, and the young would die—something my mother said was a sin and which would bring bad karma on all of us.
“In autumn the birds would fly south, and we would begin to prepare the butter lamps to light us during the cold and darkness of winter. I remember helping my father roll the cotton for the wicks, hold it in the centre of the bowl and pour in the melted butter, then put it aside to settle. As we did so, my father would quietly chant mantras, as if it was some sort of religious ceremony.
“Soon after, winter would come, and both river and lakes would freeze over. It was very, very cold and the blizzards would bring a covering of thick snow. The ice on the river was so hard that you could walk or even skate on it. We each had a pair of flat wooden skates that my mother kept in a special box, and would produce only when she was sure the ice was hard enough to take our weight. During this season the yaks were all sheltered in a covered enclosure, and it was only at the beginning of the thaw that we would take out the young beasts and pierce their noses so we could put a rope through and harness them for ploughing.
“When I was twelve, I asked my parents if I could accompany the herds to the mountains for the summer. Finally, after much pleading, they agreed. For me this was a totally new way of life. That part of the year we all slept in a single round ba made of skins. Inside there were no partitions, and a fire in the centre; the smoke would escape through a small hole in the roof. My mother would pack tsampa—roasted barley—and butter, cooking vessels and lots of bedding, and load them with the tents on the back of the yaks.