Thérèse Obrecht Hodler’s ‘A Childhood in Tibet’ is about being born into turmoil

Tendöl Namling turned 60 in March 2019, exactly 60 years after the Dalai Lama was forced to flee from Lhasa and the uprising of his people was brutally suppressed by the Chinese People’s Army. As poorly armed Tibetans faced the overpowering Chinese military might, Tendöl’s fate was rewritten.

As the daughter of a high government official, she underwent the ordeal of ‘re-education’ with full force. She was to spend the next 22 years under Chinese atrocities. ‘A Childhood in Tibet: A Biography’ is a story of what happened in those two decades — the people she lost, the many executions she was witness to, the aggravating hunger that drove her to eat pig food in a Chinese garrison, the pain she endured all day and which subdued only as she cried herself to sleep each night.

When Tendöl turned 10, her brother was arrested and her mother sentenced to 10 years in prison. She never got to meet her father, who had escaped to India during the unrest as his family lived at the mercy of the occupiers. Without any means to help them, he died in 1973, amid powerlessness and uncertainty about the fate of his wife and kids.

Tendöl had to work in road construction for several years. At the age of 20, she was allowed to start an apprenticeship as a motor mechanic. Thanks to the efforts of her family in exile, Tendöl was able to leave Tibet in 1982. After 20 years of hardship, she landed in Switzerland and began piecing together her life, reuniting with her father through the letters he had written to her sister, leaving Tendol wondering if he had mysteriously transmitted the Buddhist principles to her during her years of suffering.

The painful memories, however, are still fresh and a handful of crumpled photographs from the time tell a tale of resilience amid all that torture. And Tendöl Namling dedicates this book “to all the Tibetans who continue to rebel against the Chinese occupation”. — TNS