By early March of 1959 the situation in Lhasa had become untenable. It was clear that the Chinese were about to capture the Dalai Lama, and it was equally clear that the thousands of Tibetans that surrounded Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama's summer palace, were willing to sacrifice their lives to prevent that from happening. The oracle had been consulted several times and he insisted the Dalai Lama should continue to communicate with the Chinese authorities. Then, on the 17th.
Tibetan buddhists believe in rebirth. To someone who is not a believer in any form of life after death this seems an absurdity. Which it is, if taken literally. But if speech was limited to considering only facts that are known to be true by experiment, we wouldn't get very far at all.
So what was I doing halfway across the world in Mumbai? For that, I have to go back in time, and talk about the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people.
On March 17 1959 the 24-year-old Dalai Lama left the capital of Lhasa on a two-week journey across the Himalayas into India, as the Chinese military occupied Tibet, overcoming a tenacious resistance. He was accompanied by a small retinue of about 100 people, but many thousands more would follow him into safety in India.