EMOTIONAL DALAI LAMA HUGS HIS SOLE SURVIVING GUARD
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama was visibly emotional on Saturday when he embraced and bumped his head with that of Naren Chandra Das, who received and escorted him when he stepped onto the Indian soil after staging an escape from Lhasa in 1959.
Das (79) was then a rifleman with the 5 Assam rifles and retired as a havildar.
He was around 22 then and Dalai Lama was 24. An elated Das was greatly overwhelmed by the gesture of the Tibetan government-in-exile on being invited to the ‘Thank You India’ event, which marks the beginning of 60th year of the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India.
“I feel fortunate to have blessings of his holiness again,” Das, who belongs to Balipara in Sonitpur district of Assam, told the mediapersons. He was also honoured by the Dalai Lama by offering ‘khata’, a ceremonial sacred scarf.
Das and his colleagues, led by their section commander, were ordered to move to the international border to receive a special guest and bring him to India safely. They were instructed not to talk with the Dalai Lama, who was disguised as a soldier.
The 82-year-old Buddhist spiritual leader was reunited with Das for the first time in 58 years during the ‘Namami Brahmaputra’ river festival organised by the Assam government in 2017.
“Looking at your face, I now realise I must be very old too,” the Dalai Lama told Das at the emotional reunion.
The Dalai Lama has lived in India since fleeing Tibet in 1959.
He initially stayed at Mussoorie and shifted to his current exile home McLeodganj a year later.