AP: Exiled Tibetans long for families

DHARAMSALA, India (AP) — When I was eight years old, my parents paid someone to take me across the Himalayas, on a walking tour from Tibet to India. It is a journey that tens of thousands of Tibetans have covered since the Dalai Lama fled after a failed uprising against the Chinese presence in 1959.

My parents must have had their reasons for sending me here, They must have had the best intentions.. But 18 years later, I still don't know why they did it. They were not involved in politics. They were two small farmers who grew barley and raised a few heads of yak in a rural area not far from Lhasa., THE CAPITAL OF TIBET. I haven't seen them since..

At first, I hardly thought about them. I was in a new country, as part of a community of exiles that the Dalai Lama had created in India. He lived in a school with hundreds of minor Tibetan refugees. But as the years went by I began to miss them..

Today we talk from time to time on the phone and that helps us stay united despite the distance.. But in our conversations there are often long silences. As time went by, our relationship became more complex., more limited.

It is a relationship that many Tibetan refugees understand perfectly well.. These photos of Tibetans who have not seen their parents since they came to India is an attempt on my part to understand the ideas of family, the homeland, the sense of belonging and nostalgia. Some of us cling to familiar artifacts, others to old vows. We learned to hold back tears when our mothers cry on phones, for fear of making them feel even worse.

Through the years, with so much distance in between, everything changes. Time heals many wounds, but it also generates strange phenomena.

Tsering Choephel, a Tibetan who left home ago 23 years, He said that sometimes he dreams of seeing his family again.. He often laments the fact that he hardly misses her..

"La gran tragedia de mi vida no fue haber sido separado de mi familia, sino el haber perdido la capacidad de extrañarlos tras vivir sin ellos por décadas".

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Tsering Topgyal, a Tibetan refugee based in New Delhi, He has worked as a photographer for The Associated Press since 2011.

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Photogallery: Exiled Tibetans long for families
https://es-us.noticias.yahoo.com/fotogaler-tibetanos-exiliados-oran-familias-160548197.html

 

 

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