Displaced

By Vani Krishan

Asia is a continent traumatized by its own past, as powerful nations vie with each other for dominance of the large landmass and its resources. A refugee monk travels through a part of the continent, to witness first-hand the effects of this competition on Asias land and its people. The innocent monk, displaced from his land, transforms over a period of time into the head of a major crime syndicate in Asia. The story is a work of fiction set in the backdrop of true events, highlighting invasions, birth of insurgencies, rise of organised crime and the operations of intelligence agencies in the region. Finally, the story is about an individuals struggle to maintain balance between love, hatred and righteousness, in the face of violent odds. In an attempt to live a normal life, the refugee views events from different perspectives; as a victim, a perpetrator, a witness and a monk. He finds wealth at the end of his struggle and finally at the pinnacle of success, he turns to spiritualism to find inner peace. The wheel of life turns a full circle and the monk resurfaces to triumph against all odds. History repeats itself with amazing consistency.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Oct 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482836325

Vani Krishan

Vani Krishan has utilized the knowledge of Special Forces and Law enforcement officers, with years of field experience in Asia. Buffered by a decade long research, they use fiction to present an authentic account of the turmoil in Asia. Experiences in meditative spiritualism, facilitates lucid depiction of the conflicts within the human mind. She has been married to a Special Forces officer for 24 years. Her parents and grandparents were displaced when India was partitioned, to form Pakistan. She has heard accounts of violent acts from her parents and various army officers. She has also experienced first-hand, the stress of having a husband out in operations. Presently she is teaching in Delhi, India. She has spent her time researching about conflicts in the region, as a matter of interest, having been affected by them throughout her life. She has managed to retain balance by delving into yoga and meditation. The story she has written is thus very close to her heart, which is visible in the deep understanding of the inner conflicts in the minds of her characters.

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Copyright © 2014 by Vani Krishan.

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4828-3628-8

                Softcover         978-1-4828-3627-1

                eBook              978-1-4828-3632-5

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Blood In The Snow

Chapter 2 The Child Who Would Be King

Chapter 3 The Fire-Breathing Dragon

Chapter 4 Escape From Tibet

Chapter 5 Tashi And The Lust For Blood

Chapter 6 Cia’s Guerrillas

Chapter 7 Nyima And Rebirth In Delhi

Chapter 8 Mumbai And R-Company

Chapter 9 The Life Of Crime

Chapter 10 The Moles Of War

Chapter 11 Kill To Be Noticed

Chapter 12 Working For Rashid

Chapter 13 Bodyguard To Master Smuggler

Chapter 14 My Country-My People: The Tragedy Of Tibet

Chapter 15 Narcotics And Brothers In Afghanistan

Chapter 16 Transnational Organised Crime

Chapter 17 Shraddha: Adopting A Family

Chapter 18 The Digital Life

Chapter 19 Spoils Of War

Chapter 20 The Monk Survives

Chapter 21 Returning To Tibet

Chapter 22 Brush With Terrorism

Chapter 23 Those Who Live By The Sword…

Chapter 24 The Chameleon

Chapter 25 Search For Enlightenment

INTRODUCTION

In the early years of the twenty-first century, I was wrestling with the challenges of bringing up a family in Delhi, the capital of India. As a working mother, power cuts, delayed school buses, and workplace politics figured as major crises in an otherwise mundane life. That was till I met Pema Tsering (name changed).

Standing at about 5'4", Pema is a soft-spoken Tibetan, who had once trained to be a monk. Later in life, he became a soldier and saw action in some lesser known wars. He teaches Tibetan to one of my close relatives. Hearing the story of his life and his struggles, my problems paled in comparison. He hid the pain of his violent past behind a polite smile.

Pema was born in a prison in Shigatse, Tibet. His parents were categorised as less sensitive political prisoners but were released only when the Chinese gave amnesty to some prisoners in early 1980s. They could never recover their ancestral wealth, and he grew up in abject poverty, going hungry and walking barefoot to school. He joined a monastery and became a monk, but after his parents died, he escaped to Nepal, hiding in the false bottom of a truck. Working his way through Nepal, his journey to India was traumatic. However, when I met him, he was still full of compassion for all living beings and bore no animosity to anyone. He was happy to be just studying Buddhist scriptures and meditating for hours at a stretch.

I was so taken in by his simplicity that I sat with him for days, listening to the story of his life. Through him, I met a number of old Tibetan men and women who recounted their struggles in the pre- and post-Chinese eras.

Who wrecked the lives of these peace-loving people and why? The question intrigued me and aroused in me a desire to search for the answer. This search has led me on a journey through Asia, spawning over a decade, meeting victims and masters of this great game.

Asia is a part of the world most traumatised by its own past. Due to the abundance of natural resources, the control of land, sea, and air routes to Asia has always been important. The continent, therefore, became the battleground for powerful nations. In the process, Asia, destined to be the richest region on Earth, has ended up being exploited, becoming a picture of human misery in every form.

I found not only refugees from the third world, but also men and women from developed nations, mourning their dead in Asia. They spoke about the honour of dying in lands far removed from the ashes of their fathers and temples of their gods. I unearthed a truth, much more complex than the story of devotion to God and country, fed to these simple men and women. The more I searched, the more I was convinced about the ‘criminality of the state’.

Innocent soldiers died in these wars, while the real culprits hid behind meticulous doctoring of historical and military facts. I was convinced that everyone has suffered equally in the battlefields of Asia. This was a story worth telling, but how is it possible to narrate the story of such a large continent in turmoil? This book uses fiction as a crutch to narrate some of the stories of Asia and the plight of the victims of these war games.

In Displaced, a Tibetan refugee has been chosen to travel through time to some parts of Asia, giving an insider’s view of this turbulence. It is in no way a critique of the Tibetan people, who I admire for having retained balance in the face of the worst oppression in the world.

The oppression and demographic invasion of Tibet continues unabated. Self-immolation by Tibetan youth, as a form of protest against Chinese rule, has now become the order of the day. The rest of the world watches helplessly, afraid to take on the economic and military might of China. However, this story is not limited to Tibet, but covers a large part of Asia.

The inner struggle of a peaceful individual in the face of violence is the main focus of the story. It is the story of an individual’s wandering through these turbulent times to discover inner peace.

This story is a work of fiction, set against the backdrop of true historical events, taken from available research. It is the story of a continent in turmoil. At times during the narration, even I was concerned about the story bordering on the impossible. However, improbable as it may sound, the narration has more or less followed real life and events.

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Realism in scenes depicting combat and action has been introduced by my friends, who were once a part of these battles. They have painstakingly added to the visualisation of these scenes, using knowledge gained over years in combat. I am indebted to them for their help and support.

All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy of historical events and geographic details. Any inaccuracy that may have crept into the narrative is unintentional. The characters are entirely fictional and any similarity to any person living or dead is purely incidental.

PROLOGUE

I move slowly up the stairs leading to the temple and the monastery, a peaceful shrine dedicated to the study of Buddhism, both as a religious philosophy and a way of life. I pause to admire the green treetops of the forest stretching for miles around us. ‘Shraddha’, my lifelong friend, with her thirty-year-old son, is standing at the base of the steps, heads bowed in respect. With a final nod, I amble up the steps clutching my monk’s robe with one hand and a walking stick in the other.

I had long given up the life of crime and become a monk in Thailand. However, they have come with information about a threat to someone’s life, someone very close to me in my past. As a monk, there is no conflict in my mind; the gap between black and white vanished a long time ago. I finished my discussions and, after brief hugs, bid adieu to the only family I have had for the last thirty years.

I was reborn in this monastery at the age of sixty. Shraddha belongs to a life I have left far behind, a life in which I was a different man, violent and ambitious. Today, I am content and at peace with myself. Dispassionately, I remember the man I was before being ordained as a monk.

I had never accepted the laws imposed by the powerful. I had learnt early in my life that the poor do not have a choice and the rich do not share the gift of prosperity. So I made my own rules to acquire some of this prosperity, thereby becoming a criminal.

I was, hence, a monk who had once dared to be different. I had never been a conformist; a renegade, perhaps?

In more than sixty years, I have seen a world full of people who have done the right things and chosen the right paths. They live predictably, reach predictable positions in life, and, perhaps, will pass away predictably.

I, however, was not so lucky and was forced by circumstances to grow up unpredictably. In the process, I ended up charting an unpredictable path for myself, at times leaving a mess in its wake.

Such is the story of my life, the story of a displaced child, the story of a refugee destined to be a monk, a man who could have met God, but chose to lead the devil’s pack instead. It is a testament to the sacrifice of a single life and to the ever-increasing lust for power over others.

I sit down on a stone near the entrance to the temple. It is time for my meditation, but first I want to indulge myself a bit. I want to review the life I have lived. I close my eyes to recall my first real test, half a century ago, in another monastery. That is where my story begins.

Part I

THE HOME WE LOST

Chapter 1

BLOOD IN THE SNOW

I hate it here Ache (elder sister). I want to go home, I cried to Wangmo, my elder cousin, as I hid my face in her bosom. I was only ten years old.

She hugged me tight. Don’t cry, my baby. You will get used to this life. She kissed my shaven head. Dhechen, get some butter tea, she asked another nun sitting next to us. Dhechen got up for some tea, as if it was a magic potion to cure my homesickness.

It was just before bedtime for me, and we were sitting in the nuns’ wing of a monastery in Tibet. It had started snowing and we were sitting in the kitchen. The heat from the burning wood and dried dri (yak) dung were giving the kitchen a warm and homely air. We could not feel the cold wind blowing outside. There we were safe and at peace, cut off from all sounds of the world outside.

Tibet towers above the rest of the world, with an average altitude of 16,000 feet from the sea. It is a landlocked country situated in Asia, surrounded by high mountain ranges on all sides. It has maintained its isolation from rest of the world at large.

To its south lie the Himalayas, with Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world. It shares its southern borders with the Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal, Bhutan, and the northern states of India. Thus, it is surrounded by rugged mountains and criss-crossed by glacial rivers and glaciers. The terrain in the south is inhospitable and sparsely populated.

To the east and the south-east lies the river Yangtze or Dri Chu. The area around the Dri Chu has lower but very rugged mountains, covered with evergreen coniferous trees. The terrain is extremely inhospitable and conducive to guerrilla warfare. This region of Tibet has rolling, grassy meadows and is suitable for seasonal cultivation. This region is called Kham and sits astride four rivers and six mountain ranges (also called Chu shi Gang drug by the locals).

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Buddhism arrived from India in the seventh century and is deeply embedded in its culture. People managed, for centuries, within whatever resources their land provided. The need for violence was rarely felt in most of Tibet; hence, the people are compassionate and peace-loving. Education was imparted by the Buddhist monasteries dotting the countryside. Love and compassion was essential to their religion and had become a habit through practice.

I had joined the monastery a year ago, at the age of nine. Wangmo had been a nun for ten years; being a woman, she would never be ordained and would stay a novice nun. Still, she was greatly respected in the monastery. She doted on me, and in her, I found refuge from my loneliness. With her was Dhechen Lhamo, another frail-looking novice nun from our neighbouring village. In the early winter of 1956, we still led a serene life in that monastery in the heart of Tibet. The Chinese, at the time, were in the process of consolidating their control over Tibet.

Wangmo had just returned from our village after meeting the family. I sat having tea with Wangmo and Dhechen, talking about home. As soon as I had finished my tea, Wangmo came over to me and helped me up. Run off to your bed. Your prayers start early. We will sit and talk in the afternoon. I hugged her once more and scampered out of the nuns’ wing to my part of the monastery.

As I lay in my bed, my thoughts returned to Ache and Dhechen. Both the nuns looked after me like their own child. I can never forget their kindness in those difficult days in the monastery. Wangmo was a beacon of hope for everyone in the monastery. Her compassion included looking after all the dogs and the birds in and around the monastery. I was still thinking about her when I drifted off to sleep.

I was awoken from my dreams by a loud blast that shook the ground and sent tremors through the walls. This was followed by more bangs, as bombs rained on the monastery complex. Terrified and still dazed from my sleep, I ran out towards the nunnery. I was scared and wanted to be near my Ache. As the aircrafts droned over us dropping bombs, I could hear screams coming from the temple in front of the monastery.

I found Wangmo behind the nunnery consoling some young nuns. As the bombs exploded around us, the ground shook with a force that sent some structures of the monastery crumbling to the ground.

Born into a warrior clan, we had heard gunfire earlier, but this was different, and briefly, I saw fear in Wangmo’s eyes. We had heard rumours about the Chinese attacking Tibetan monasteries, and as a Khampa woman, she knew all about battles. Before joining the monastery, she had witnessed pitched battles fought by her folks to defend their villages during raids by other tribes. I was confident that she would lead us to safety; fighting battles was in our genes.

We Khampas hail from Kham, the only vulnerable part of Tibet, plundered by the Chinese and the Mongols in turn. The Khampas are fierce, sturdy, and well-built warriors. The tough tribesmen carry weapons, knives, and guns as a part of their dress and are accomplished horsemen. They represent a paradox of sorts; although devout Buddhists, the Khampas can fight, loot, kill, waylay travellers, and commit all kinds of heinous deeds when provoked.

Traditionally, the Khampas have not accepted the suzerainty of any invader. In fact, they maintained an independent existence led by their own tribal leaders. They had always been fighting invaders or amongst them; fighting is thus a way of life for the average Khampa. They do not have typically Mongoloid features and, owing to their height and build, can be easily mistaken for Native Americans.

Wangmo, like a true daughter of the tribe, sprang into action. She caught hold of my arm and we ran out of the nunnery, climbing the hill behind it. We were trying to get as far from the exploding bombs as was possible in that snow-clad night. It was still snowing; the bright moonlight and the snow helped us in maintaining our direction.

Keep climbing. Hide in the rocks, she told me as she ran down to two nuns who were still screaming for help.

I scrambled up the hill as fast as my little feet could carry me. From behind a big rock further up on the hill, I looked down at the monastery. Four or five shadows were climbing the hill; perhaps it was Wangmo and her group of nuns. It seemed futile; bombs were landing all around and no place seemed safe.

Ache, get behind some rocks. It is not safe up here, I shouted to Wangmo. The shadows kept coming towards me; my voice could not be heard over the din.

Soon, more aircrafts came and continued the bombing of the area. Some bombs started landing on the hill. I hugged the ground and lay still, praying. Splinters hit the rocks around me, and I waited for one to pierce through me. The bombing continued for more than an hour, and then, there was silence. Miraculously, I was still safe and unhurt.

Ours was the biggest monastery complex in the region and most of it was on fire. As dawn broke, looking around the boulder, I saw total destruction. Bodies of monks lay strewn in the snow around the rubble that was once a monastery. Fire and smoke arose from the buildings; some monks and nuns were moving around amongst the dead. The group of young nuns hiding in the rocks below me were still there. I withdrew behind the boulder, too scared to come out.

As a ten-year-old boy and novice monk, I had no experience in handling such a situation. I had only heard tales of battles from my father and my uncles, stories which were more like fairy tales. Nobody had told me about the numbness which sets in due to this overpowering emotion of fear. I lay frozen from the cold and fear; nothing could have coaxed me to leave the safety of the rocks around me.

Very soon, the shouting and screaming started again. I looked through a crack between two rocks at the monastery. Through the haze of smoke, I could see monks and nuns being marched out in a long line. The Chinese soldiers were carrying branches of the bolo (spruce) tree and were using these to beat the monks and nuns, herding them like cattle. We were at war with the Chinese, and they were taking prisoners; but why the monks? They were not soldiers. I was confused by what I saw and continued to watch this drama as it unfolded in the courtyard of the monastery.

Two big guns, towed up by horses, were getting ready to fire from a position next to the track. They are going to kill the monks and nuns by firing shells at them, I told myself. I had heard stories of Mongols giving the same treatment to their prisoners.

Then the guns started firing at the monastery complex, as if it were the enemy. All of us sitting on the hill behind the monastery came directly in the line of fire. Some shells missed the monastery and hit the hill where we were hiding. Screams of Wangmo’s group of nuns could be heard again over the din of shells exploding all around us.

Cautiously, I looked through the crack in the rocks and saw a young nun crawling towards me. She was moving slowly and blood was oozing from her dress. She opened her mouth to say something, when another shell exploded near us. She went limp and slid backward, down the slope.

The guns stopped firing and now the soldiers started firing their rifles; I could hear some bullets hitting the rocks around me. The sound of bullets left me feeling exposed; every bullet seemed to be passing over my head. Once more, my body became numb with fear as I heard the cracking of bullets going past me.

I withdrew behind the rock and sat motionless, praying. I looked up at the hill for an escape route, but there was none. I had to stay there and hope that I had not been noticed. Then there was a very loud explosion which shook the ground. Somebody had fired the big gun directly at us.

Afraid of being discovered, I slid down to the ground, sobbing softly. My heart started beating faster and a lump formed in my throat. After a while, the firing stopped and gradually all sounds faded till there was absolute silence. I still had no idea about what had happened.

I sat there in shock, not comprehending a thing. It seemed that the soldiers had left without me. I soon realised that nobody had discovered me hiding on the hill behind the monastery. Nevertheless, I could not muster the courage to get up. The cold was already biting through my clothes.

I wanted to be with Wangmo. I called out to Ache softly, hoping that she would hear me. There was no reply. I raised my voice, but still no response. I waited behind the rock worrying about Wangmo. After