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?”

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