SOS Homes for Tibetan children has around 1,000 kids who are either orphans or their parents are in Tibet, says Ritu Pandey
It’s a short walk from the Mall Road to lal Bahadur Shastri Academy. But in contrast to the incessant chatter that surrounds me on Mussoorie’s most prominent landmark, silence rings aloud on the Academy Road. But walking away from Mall Road rather than around it is a choice you have to make if you’re looking for something offbeat in the ‘Queen of the Hills’.
I was on my way to Happy Valley, a settlement where the Tibetans had first arrived, led by the Dalai lama, when they fled from lhasa in 1959. The Tibetan Government-in-exile functioned from here for a year before the Dalai lama moved to Dharamsala. Happy Valley however, still remains home to thousands of Tibetans. A mini Tibet of sorts.
Past the practicing footballers, mounted lBA Academy trainees, and groups of young Tibetan girls, I arrived at the monastery. It was a quiet, tranquil place of worship with a few monks chanting and a handful of tourists watching them. Post my moments of solitude inside, I started looking around the place when a group of what looked like small Tibetan houses at a distance caught my attention. The SOS Homes for Tibetan children, I learned, housed around 1,000 youngsters with no living parents, or parents who are in Tibet or elsewhere.
Without wasting a minute I made my way to the Homes, which though seemed to be in quite a distance. But before I could get there, Yangzom Samdup, a young girl who was feeding a bunch of dogs on the stairs below, asked me to see the SOS hostel for Tibetan girls. Hidden amid the lush of hilly greenery, the hostel was a double-storey structure that was started alongside the Homes in 1995 and today houses 185 girls.
Tsering Choezom has been managing things at the hostel since its inception and has seen several batches of residents. However, the place is not very welcoming of visitors is what I realised within seconds of my arrival there.
I flaunted my most persuasive smile for Choezom trying hard to impress her with my business card. However, the middle-aged warden at the hostel didn’t seem to care much for smiles. Or for names with fancy designations. She allowed me inside the premises only after she had seen my identity card and completely assured herself of its veracity. Mussoorie’s Happy Valley was almost living upto its name this far with young Tibetan girls and monks full of soft, smiling faces. This seemed like a minor aberration. I tried to brush off Choezom’s skepticism with an easy conversation and a slight show of ignorance. She, however, refused to let her guard down. She stood across me almost blocking the doorway to the hostel courtyard. I could see several pairs of eyes across the iron channel gate but Choezom wasn’t in the mood to allow us to interact. By now, I was getting a little uneasy with her cautious stance, when in walked Samdup. My guide to the place said something to Choezom in Tibetan following which, I suddenly started feeling the lady easing. She asked one of the girls to open the channel gate and almost immediately I was surrounded by a bunch of chirpy youngsters.
Tashi Nhadon was a class XII student, who still stays at the hostel. She came to India from Tibet in 2005 and hasn’t been home since. Nhadon said that she hadn’t seen her parents in all these years. Telephone was her saviour, she told me, adding that she feared her calls to her family might be tapped by the Chinese Government. She wondered, “But how long can we keep living in that fearIJ”
Her batchmate, Tsering Choden, has been at the hostel since 2006 after having made a harrowing escape from her motherland. “My uncle who brought me here hasn’t gone back since. His friend, who accompanied us, did return only to be arrested, tortured and killed three years ago under Chinese oppression,” she says. However, Choden does talk to her parents over the phone though not very frequently since her home is in a remote area with erratic mobile connectivity.
lhamo Pema is a recent admission at the hostel and suffers from the usual emotions of a first-timer — home-sickness, anxiety, etc. But she did confirm that she was taken good care of. “My parents call every week. Because letters don’t reach them due to postal surveillance,” she said.
With 185 residents, the hostel was full of such stories. As were the SOS Children’s Homes, which have younger children under the care of a foster mother. You would be immediately charmed by the innocence of the young ones and the assuredness of the girls, even as you could sense the anxiety in the eyes of their keepers — still living under the constant fear of the Chinese authorities. They refused to get anyone clicked, at the Children’s Homes they even refused to give out their names. It was a strange mix of warmth and suspicion.
Far from their parents, in an adopted land, the young Tibetans faced a hard choice as they grew. Should they cling to their Tibetan identity or should they be more accepting of their adopted countryIJ Of course, learning Hindi is the first prerequisite in their path to making India their second home. little ones trying make a conversation in broken Hindi were quite cute. The girls too, have taken to their surroundings — a few even sported salwar kurtas. Among the hostellers, there was no dearth of aspiration. Multimedia, designing, communication — the career choices they plan to pursue once out of school are as varied as they are creative. But their know-how about these is limited. And so are the resources. Choezom said that a lot of girls came from not very well-to-do families, which became an impediment in higher education. The Valley administration provides them everything from day-care to medical aid, primary and secondary education as well as vocational training. “But finding employment for everyone is a concern. We’re just trying to help these children become self-dependent,” she told me as I bid everyone goodbye.