WINTER IN INDIA, SUMMERS IN LHASA

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.
8220;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.8221; The petite beauty typing away furiously at the office of the Tibetan Women8217;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. 8220;Tibetan Village Schools are very political in nature. They never let you forget your allegiance to the cause of Tibet.8221;
It wasn8217;t that India did not fashion her ideas, but Tibet always intruded. 8220;I love India, its films, its songs, its dances,8221; 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 doesn8217;t think she is depriving herself of more material success by not working in a big city. 8220;You can be more effective if you are at the epicentre of events than by being at the periphery,8221; says the articulate youngster.
Tibetans, she says, are not different, just deprived. The last few days have been particularly traumatic for her. 8220;Initially, we were very upbeat about the protests in China but the reports of the crackdown are very depressing,8221; she says.
But Dhardon has great faith in the human spirit. 8220;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.8221; And just as you begin to think it8217;s all about Tibet for her, she makes a gentle confession: 8220;Tibet is my country but never having lived there my heart beats for India.8221;

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 8216;Choice HIV AIDS Initiative8217;, 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. 8220;I am glad the native Tibetans decided to rise against the Chinese. We can8217;t expect the world to help us, we have to help ourselves,8221; he thunders, making a cafeacute; his stage.
PC says he is deeply confident of Tibet8217;s liberation from the Chinese. 8220;I always wonder why our people lavish lakhs on buildings and monasteries here. Don8217;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,8221; 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. It8217;s members like him who are keeping the hunger strike going. 8220;Every day we have to mobilise 40 to 50 people for the strike besides organising avolunteers in shifts to ensure things go smoothly,8221; he says.
Such is his preoccupation with the protests that he hasn8217;t been able to give any time to his guilty passion8212;Hindi movies. Shah Rukh Khan is his screensaver.
No, he doesn8217;t think China is invincible. 8220;For breaking a wall, we only need a crack. And that crack has appeared with the local Tibetans rising in protest.8221;

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.
8220;I always wanted to work in a field where I could serve my people,8221; 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. 8220;Money can8217;t buy you job satisfaction or the sense of belonging that comes from working for your own people,8221; she explains. 8220;No matter where I go, my identity is paramount, so why should I run away from it by moving away in distance,8221; she argues. It8217;s this identity that has been making her march with the protesters in the past few days. 8220;That8217;s the least I can do,8221; she shrugs, calling the present stir yet another chapter in the 8220;Tibetan freedom struggle8221;. Her grandfather Jamyang Choephel, a much-feared guerrilla leader in Tibet, was part of this movement. 8220;I grew up listening to his stories about Tibet,8221; she says. Even though she has now graduated to self-help gurus like Robin Sharma and glossies such as Cosmopolitan, her grandpa8217;s tales continue to inspire. Ask her if she thinks free Tibet is a possibility and she says, 8220;Complete freedom is like asking for the sun and the moon, but we can make a go at autonomy. That I think is possible.8221;

Tenzin Jigme, 29
8220;Tibet is my country but McLeodganj is my home. I love it.8221; A Tibetan flag around his shoulders and a cigarette between his lips, Tenzin Jigme, 29, has no confusion about his identity. 8220;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,8221; 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 mother8217;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. 8220;We set up the band for we wanted to give the Tibetan youth something they could call their own,8221; he shrugs. That explains why Tibet is such a throbbing presence in the second album the brothers recorded at Bob Dylan8217;s studio in Los Angeles last year. 8220;There is a song called 8216;Rose8217; which is about the tragedy of Tibet,8221; says Jigme humming it.
As another wave of protesters chokes the street in front of his cafeacute;, the young singer says he has learnt to savour life as it is. 8220;I am happy, for I have food to eat, a place to live and make music. What more can I want.8221; A free Tibet would be the icing on the cake but he has his doubts on it. 8220;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,8221; he laughs.
But beneath this hard-boiled scepticism is a flicker of hope. 8220;I know China is too strong for us, and it will never give up Tibet, but then don8217;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?8221;

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. 8220;I remember hearing a police officer say 8216;Look we gave them land and this is how they behave8217;. It was that day I felt like a refugee for the first time in my life.8221;
There was another piece of paper, the registration certificate RC given to the Tibetans that underscored his temporary status in the country. 8220;It8217;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 don8217;t accept it,8221; 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. Samten8217;s biggest worry is of Tibetans after the Dalai Lama. 8220;Right now Indians are giving us shelter because of him. What will happen to us when he is no more?8221;
For Samten, the longing for a free Tibet is something he will battle all his life. 8220;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.8221;