Week 10: Goodbye
Just like that, we have completed our final week in India. What a uniquely educational and metamorphic experience.
This week (plus two days), we finished a report about the legal status of Tibetans-in-exile and interviewed some high-ranking members of the Tibetan community (including a few in prominent government positions! Kate and I sat up very straight for those). Kate and I were asked to keep much of our research private, including the names and professions of some of those we spoke to, so I will not write in-depth about that here. I can say, though, that what we worked on was the very beginning of a much larger project—one that we know the people at the TLA will continue to pursue.
This summer, I was able to do the type of work I most wanted to do when I entered law school. Leaving India, I feel profoundly that the work Kate and I did this summer, from POCSO research to redlining contracts to our most recent project, will directly help the community we were working in. We have promised to keep in touch with the lawyers at the TLA, and they have promised to tell us what happens with our projects.
Exploring and navigating a new country, visiting schools and monasteries and restaurants and advocacy centers, making new friends, interviewing government officials, carrying home pallets of bottled water, hanging a makeshift clothesline across my room and hiding it from the guest house workers, buying far too many presents for friends at home, eating lunch with Kate for a total of $3 U.S. dollars, bluebooking Indian case law, walking up into the mountains to see the view across the Himalayas—I am certain I will never forget these experiences, and that one day, the memory of them will bring me back to Mcleod Ganj.
On our last day, our bosses at the TLA, Tenzin and Yargyal, took us out for dinner at a small, hidden Tibetan restaurant that (according to them) only the locals know about. It was, of course, the most delicious food Kate and I had eaten the entire summer. We had boiling clay pot noodle soups, fry bread, hand-pulled pasta, steamed and fried momos, and a platter of fried vegetables and tofu. Yargyal told us he had questions for us but wouldn’t ask them because they were too personal. When we insisted he ask, he put forth the all-important question—team Edward or team Jacob?—and we all laughed.
At dinner, Kate and I each received a fancy pen and a handwritten note thanking us for our time at the TLA. None of us wanted to say goodbye after dinner, so we went up the street for some ginger lemon tea, where Yargyal and Tenzin presented us each with a Khata, a white scarf primarily used in the Buddhist tradition in Tibet, a symbol of honor, respect, purity, and compassion. We were both moved to tears.
Finally, the night was over, and we all walked to the town center, where Tenzin and Yargyal would get their taxis. We said a sorrowful goodbye and returned to our guest house for a final night in India.
On our last day, Kate and I went back to the tea gardens, where we took photos together and had a final cup of Kangra green tea.