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.”

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