Week 1: Delhi, Dharamshala, and Really Good Dal
It is nearly 100° when we land in New Delhi at 2am on Friday, May 17th, two days after I boarded the first of four flights to get here from Missouri. Bug spray is frantically applied before Tessa and I even make it outside to wade through stray dogs and mosquitos to hunt down a cab to Lutyens Bungalow, our home for the next three nights...right in the middle of the only Indian flying fox roosting zone. By 4am we have circled what we think is the bungalow property twice with no sign of the night guard we are supposed to meet, so we thank our cab driver and set out on foot to find the “south gate”. I fruitlessly ask a security guard outside a diplomatic mansion who has ventured out of his shack to note our loitering if he knows where the night guard for the bungalow is. We decide to just start walking and eventually come upon the elusive south gate, let ourselves in, and wake up the night guard. He silently shows us to our rooms as the parrots, monkeys, and birds start their morning chorus. In the dark, the courtyard and garden seems beautiful, and when we finally wake up at 4pm the next afternoon I confirm that it is, and the smell of the water used for the vegetables is anything but.
At 7pm in just above 100° smoggy heat, we shuffle to the back patio of the main house for a home cooked dinner prepared by Shukla, who has been managing for over 30 years the 1930s bungalow built by her father-in-law. We enjoy rice, roti, chole, cauliflower, and more, all prepared using the vegetables from the garden, and all some of the most delicious food I have ever had. Tessa and I retire back to our rooms and dial in to work on the JJC for the rest of the evening, and I belatedly realize what the bucket in the shower is for.
The next day passes all too quickly, beginning with a late breakfast at 9am during which the peanut butter is melting off of my toast from the heat and the resident puppy, Maple, takes to stealing the hats and shoes of unsuspecting guests, forcing them to play a game of reverse fetch with her in the courtyard. The rest of the day is spent attempting to correct citations for the JJC and enjoying more of Shukla’s cooking with an entertaining variety of conversational companions, including a couple from Portugal,a film director from Australia visiting for meditative studies, and a woman from England staying for a few nights on her way to a tapestry and textile workshop she owns in the Himalayas.
At the Delhi airport Sunday morning we are bussed out to the ATR 72-600 that will deliver us to the Kangra airport, and everyone pauses on the walk across the tarmac to take in the sight of the twin-prop standing in hazy contrast to the smoggy sunrise before boarding. About an hour and twenty minutes of unbelievably hazy views of the foothills of the Himalayas later, we land in Kangra and claim a cab to McLeod Ganj, the higher elevated neighbor of Dharamshala where Tessa and I will be staying for the next ten weeks. We check into Green View Guesthouse and –with the exception of a nap cut short by a monkey sneaking into my room to steal snacks–work on JJC until it is finally time to turn it in. I do not sleep at all thanks to the combination of a huntsman spider I dubbed Atticus and arachnophobia that I fail to rationalize my way out of.
Tessa and I arrive at work at 8:45 Monday morning and learn from a woman at the neighboring school that Tenzin and Yargyal do not usually arrive until 10 or later. Amused at our own lack of awareness of the work culture, we walk a few minutes back up the mountain and park ourselves in Monga Cafe beside the stairs to one of the many monasteries in town to start searching for flights home and other guesthouses to stay in in McLeod Ganj until Tenzin lets us know we can now meet her at the office. Tenzin gives Tessa and I a brief introduction to our schedules, the dress code (there is none), and our research projects, and Tessa and I head back into town to do some brief shopping and then crash in our rooms until it is time for dinner and Bridgerton.
Tuesday morning feels more like a real morning now that we have a schedule and some idea of what our jobs will be when we meet the attorney we will be working with, Yargyal. Yargyal tells us that we will start our time with the Tibetan Legal Association (TLA) by first and foremost beginning to learn about the people of Tibet and the cause that TLA–and by extension, Tessa and I–is meant to serve.
Our first stop on the learning curve is the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission. Because Tibetans are stateless and the Tibetan Government-In-Exile or Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) does not have legal authority in India, the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission (TSJC) hears only civil disputes, and the power to enforce the rule of law comes from the parties to the case signing a document whereby they agree to abide by the Commission’s ruling. The TSJC was established in 1997, and to this day has only heard 21 disputes. This is largely because the path to the TSJC first involves adjudication at two levels of lower courts, and because Tibetans show a strong preference for alternative dispute resolution.
After visiting the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission, we went across the street to visit the Tibet Museum, where Tessa and I spent a very heavy couple of hours gaining a superficial understanding of what China has done and continues to do to the Tibetan people, before continuing down the street to the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. There we heard from a Tibetan man about the heartbreaking impact that missing cultural artifacts–most in the hands of British and Chinese museums–has on the stateless people of Tibet who have already endured so much, and were lucky to see hundreds of original Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts.
Wednesday and Thursday were both work-from-cafe days for Tessa and I that we spent researching the Prevention of Child Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act, passed by India in 2012 in response to an increase in these kinds of offenses, and how the CTA can adopt and effectively implement the POCSO Act in Tibetan communities across India, taking into consideration Tibetan culture and the unique legal position of Tibetans in India.
Friday morning the first question Yargyal asked Tessa and I was “[d]o you have any experience drafting policy and legislation?” While our answer was of course, as first year law students, “no,” what Yargyal seemed to hear instead was that we were in fact ready to go to a meeting with the Women’s Empowerment Desk of the CTA to interview them about how to approach drafting our recommendations regarding the CTA’s implementation of the POCSO Act and, by the way, he would not be going with us, and the meeting is in a few hours. After frantically drafting an hour’s worth of questions based on our limited research from Wednesday and Thursday and finding a restaurant that could still serve lunch despite the power being out in town, Tessa and I conducted what felt like a successful meeting with the Women’s Empowerment Desk and began our weekend a little less confused about our purpose here and very much looking forward to what next week has to bring.