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.

The school that never differentiated between rich and poor

The school’s location was almost in the wilderness when it was partly shifted from its location on Mirzapur Road to its new location in Memnagar in Ahmedabad. The school building was the only building in an area of about two kms., with no paved roads and no connection to any public transport system. At the time there were no auto rickshaws or mini buses. To go to school there was either the school bus, some public transport, a bicycle or your own two legs.