The outbreak of violence in Tibet and other Chinese provinces last week has triggered protest in McLeodganj in Himachal Pradesh, seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile in India and home of the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan flag—with its snow lions, a radiating sun and red and blue rays—adds colour to the air as little armies of monks, nuns and ordinary Tibetans pour into the three cramped streets of this tiny hill town in the Dhauladhars every few minutes. It’s a well-choreographed affair with every little platoon led by a cheerleader prompting slogans. Youngsters not part of the organised groups trawl the streets in ones or twos with the Tibetan flag wrapped around them. Even office-goers sport it in style or have it flying from their purses. The cafes and restaurants owned by Tibetans lie forlorn, their shutters down, as the owners do their bit for their movement outside the main monastery or at the various hole-in-the-wall offices where NGOs work day and night to keep the tempo going. Even students contribute their mite, lining up for some serious spot of poster pasting. With hope giving free rein to their imagination, far away from the Potala Palace in Lhasa, freedom seems just a slogan away.

Dhardon Sharling, 26
Sometimes your nationality can temper your dreams. No one knows it better than the pretty Dhardon Sharling. A masters in mass communications, this 26-year-old would have been a journalist with some Indian media house had it not been for her Tibetan antecedents.
“As an Indian I would have had the liberty to choose between the corporate and social sector, but as a Tibetan, my first duty is towards my people.” The petite beauty typing away furiously at the office of the Tibetan Women’s Association (TWA), the second largest Tibetan NGO after the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), was five when the idea of a free Tibet began to shape her thoughts. “Tibetan Village Schools are very political in nature. They never let you forget your allegiance to the cause of Tibet.”
It wasn’t that India did not fashion her ideas, but Tibet always intruded. “I love India, its films, its songs, its dances,” she says, telling you how she was the entertainment secretary at her college in Chennai where she would teach others to master Hindi music and dance, and how she saw the first day, first show of Taare Zameen Par in London.
But it was as a Tibetan that she took a conscious decision to refuse a job with an Indian media house and pursue instead an MSc in counseling from University of Edinburgh before taking up a job as an editor-cum-researcher at TWA.
No, she doesn’t think she is depriving herself of more material success by not working in a big city. “You can be more effective if you are at the epicentre of events than by being at the periphery,” says the articulate youngster.
Tibetans, she says, are not different, just deprived. The last few days have been particularly traumatic for her. “Initially, we were very upbeat about the protests in China but the reports of the crackdown are very depressing,” she says.
But Dhardon has great faith in the human spirit. “This crisis is a wake-up call for us. We were losing our spirit of patriotism. This has rekindled it. The more China suppresses us, the more we will rise.” And just as you begin to think it’s all about Tibet for her, she makes a gentle confession: “Tibet is my country but never having lived there my heart beats for India.”

Phuntsok Chomphel, 26
A gentle bespectacled youngster, Phuntsok Chomphel is the sort you never expect to catch in the midst of an argument. But mention Tibet to PC, as he is fondly called by friends, and you will see a different man.
This postgraduate in history from M S University in Baroda, had always wanted to be a teacher until he got involved with the Tibet cause. So now he is earning his bread as an employee of an NGO called ‘Choice HIV AIDS Initiative’, but getting his raison de etre from his role as an executive member of the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress.
Tibet for him is a dream that is nearing realisation. “I am glad the native Tibetans decided to rise against the Chinese. We can’t expect the world to help us, we have to help ourselves,” he thunders, making a café his stage.
PC says he is deeply confident of Tibet’s liberation from the Chinese. “I always wonder why our people lavish lakhs on buildings and monasteries here. Don’t they know that they have to leave for Tibet eventually. We should spend on health and education, not on buildings that we will leave behind,” he argues, adjusting his specs.
His faith in the free Tibet is blind, so are hisconstructs.
These are busy days for PC, who shuttles between his office and the protest venue outside the gates of the main temple. It’s members like him who are keeping the hunger strike going. “Every day we have to mobilise 40 to 50 people for the strike besides organising avolunteers in shifts to ensure things go smoothly,” he says.
Such is his preoccupation with the protests that he hasn’t been able to give any time to his guilty passion—Hindi movies. Shah Rukh Khan is his screensaver.
No, he doesn’t think China is invincible. “For breaking a wall, we only need a crack. And that crack has appeared with the local Tibetans rising in protest.”

Yangzom, 30
Her warm smile is a pleasant change from the cold breeze outside. Dr Yangzom, 30, is generous both with her time and advice when it comes to her patients. But then, playing the perfect healer is what she had always dreamed of while growing up in McLeodganj, the town her grandfather, a guerrilla leader in Tibet, had adopted in 1959.
“I always wanted to work in a field where I could serve my people,” she smiles, telling you about her early years at Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi followed by a three-year stint at a private hospital in the national capital. Fast-paced and exciting, Delhi was full of friends and possibilities but Yangzom missed the sights and smells of home. So one day, she packed up her bags and moved back to the tiny hill town to work in a government hospital at half the salary she got in Delhi.
Two years on, this stylish doctor with a fetish for sappy Korean movies, has no regrets. “Money can’t buy you job satisfaction or the sense of belonging that comes from working for your own people,” she explains. “No matter where I go, my identity is paramount, so why should I run away from it by moving away in distance,” she argues. It’s this identity that has been making her march with the protesters in the past few days. “That’s the least I can do,” she shrugs, calling the present stir yet another chapter in the “Tibetan freedom struggle”. Her grandfather Jamyang Choephel, a much-feared guerrilla leader in Tibet, was part of this movement. “I grew up listening to his stories about Tibet,” she says. Even though she has now graduated to self-help gurus like Robin Sharma and glossies such as Cosmopolitan, her grandpa’s tales continue to inspire. Ask her if she thinks free Tibet is a possibility and she says, “Complete freedom is like asking for the sun and the moon, but we can make a go at autonomy. That I think is possible.”

Tenzin Jigme, 29
“Tibet is my country but McLeodganj is my home. I love it.” A Tibetan flag around his shoulders and a cigarette between his lips, Tenzin Jigme, 29, has no confusion about his identity. “You see I am half Indian, for I was born in India. Were Tibet to get freedom, I would spend my winters in India and summers in Tibet,” he laughs, flinging back his long punk star mane.
But then Jigme is a free spirit, a high school dropout who is as good at making music as he is at whipping up lasagna for his mother’s cafe. It was in 1998 that he and his two brothers gave McLeodganj its first rock band, christened JJI Exile Brothers. Reared on an eclectic diet of Beatles, Eagles and Mohammed Rafi, the brothers are masters of fusion.
This mishmash of music, says Jigme, best echoes the Tibetan predicament. “We set up the band for we wanted to give the Tibetan youth something they could call their own,” he shrugs. That explains why Tibet is such a throbbing presence in the second album the brothers recorded at Bob Dylan’s studio in Los Angeles last year. “There is a song called ‘Rose’ which is about the tragedy of Tibet,” says Jigme humming it.
As another wave of protesters chokes the street in front of his café, the young singer says he has learnt to savour life as it is. “I am happy, for I have food to eat, a place to live and make music. What more can I want.” A free Tibet would be the icing on the cake but he has his doubts on it. “I remember my grandfather used to tell us how he would take us there. Then my father used to talk about it. Sometimes I wonder if I too will pass away telling the same stories to my children,” he laughs.
But beneath this hard-boiled scepticism is a flicker of hope. “I know China is too strong for us, and it will never give up Tibet, but then don’t they say that the truth always wins. And is it not true that even the most powerful conquerors have had to bite the dust?”

Tenzin Samten, 27
He is an American citizen with an American accent and attitude to boot. But just five minutes with Tenzin Samten, a 27-year-old pharmacist from Minnesota, will leave you in no doubt about his Tibetan heart.
Samten, who emigrated to the US in 1996, starts his day with a look at a site dedicated to the Tibetan movement, spends his evenings bonding with fellow Tibetan expats, works the weekends raising funds for the first-of-its-kind Tibetan university coming up at Bangalore, and pays a longish visit to his birthplace, McLeodganj, every alternate year.
Growing up in this Himachal town with his father in the Indian Army, Samten says he felt the first stirrings of nationalism during the violence between the locals and the Tibetans at Dharamsala in 1994. “I remember hearing a police officer say ‘Look we gave them land and this is how they behave’. It was that day I felt like a refugee for the first time in my life.”
There was another piece of paper, the registration certificate (RC) given to the Tibetans that underscored his temporary status in the country. “It’s a certificate that has to be renewed in person every year no matter where you are. The worst thing is that many a time the airlines don’t accept it,” says Samten. Now at home on vacation to be with his parents and younger brother, this member of the Students for Free Tibet spends his days agonising about the future of Tibet. Samten’s biggest worry is of Tibetans after the Dalai Lama. “Right now Indians are giving us shelter because of him. What will happen to us when he is no more?”
For Samten, the longing for a free Tibet is something he will battle all his life. “I may be a citizen of the United States on paper but in my mind I am permanently in exile, and nothing can fix this feeling of deprivation.”