(It is said that a number of Bylakuppe's initial settlers were set upon by wild elephants in the course of trying, painstakingly and with each swing of the machete, to forge a community.)
Yanglay was about thirty when she got here--a widow with an infant daughter. Her husband had been killed by the Chinese prior to her escape from Tibet.
We meet one gray weekday morning outside an empty temple in Bylakuppe's fourth station; Yanglay stands alone in the wind and drizzle, waiting for us. I can't help but notice, beneath her traditional long Tibetan skirt and apron, the things that adorn her feet: pink plastic slippers with "Hello, Kitty" icons on them.
All told, there are five of us inside the temple as we begin interviewing: Silas (the cameraman), Tashi (the translator), me (the interviewer) and Sean (the photographer). Yanglay sits on a plastic chair facing us: quiet, expectant, perhaps a bit nervous. Meditation cushions lie in a large, neat stack over to the side of the room against one wall.
Just before we start, a gust of rainy wind prompts a hard green papaya to be released from its tree. With a jerk, the papaya flies though the open doors of the temple and lands with a satisfying thud on the floor in the middle of us all.
Release papers are handed to Yanglay. Like many of Bylakuppe's older residents, she can neither read nor write. So she signals her agreement to be videotaped by pressing her thumb into a purple stamp pad and using its imprint in the place of a signature.
“In 1956, the Chinese first came to our community and ordered us to register our guns," Yanglay remembers. "When they next returned and ordered us to give up our guns, we decided to protest.”
Yanglay pauses.
“The Chinese took the dead bodies of the Tibetans they killed and brought them back to our village," she continues haltingly. "They made the parents of the dead circle their sons' bodies. They were forced to taunt them, to say out loud, 'See! When you don’t listen to the Chinese, this is how you end up.'”
Recalling her husband's death, Yanglay brings her hands to her face and begins to cry.
"He was always very nice and kind to me," she sobs. "I never got a chance to say goodbye.”
Eight months pregnant at the time of her escape, Yanglay joined a small group making its way to India. The group had no idea in what direction India lay.
“Follow the sun and you’ll get there,” Yanglay recalls a lama suggesting.
The group did as they were told. Along the way--in Nathuka--Yanglay gave birth to a daughter, prematurely.
At the memory of her arrival at Bylakuppe, Yanglay pauses and again begins to cry.
“I lost my mind due to sadness," she says through her tears. "I went on to bear two more children and can’t even tell you who their fathers are." For an long moment, Yanglay looks down at her hands folded in her lap.
"The lamas had to bless me, and somehow I made it through.”
“I want the Chinese to be out of Tibet," says Yanglay. "Each day I do my prostrations so that the Chinese may be cleared from Tibet and we may return freely to our homeland.”
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