A business family of the North East

In Sikkim, my great grandfather was somehow introduced to the Chogyals (Namgyal), the monarchs of Sikkim and he earned favour to join and serve them. The king at that time apparently took a great liking to my great grandfather and bestowed upon him several land estates and properties in Sikkim, Darjeeling, Kalimpong and other regions

The families that fled Tibet with the Dalai Lama

The man in the photograph above is my grandfather Faizullah Baba. Standing left is my grand father’s eldest son, my uncle, Abdullah, age 7, and on the right is Abdullah’s cousin Majid.

During the Tibetan Uprising in 1959, fearing for his life, the Dalai Lama and his advisers fled Tibet with the help of the CIA and were given asylum by the Indian Government. While the world press published stories of strain in Indo-China relationships, very few threw light on the families that followed the Dalai Lama and fled from Tibet to India in the subsequent months.