67-year-old Pema Wangchuck has the hair and complexion of a 35-year-old, as well as the tonal authority of a drill sergeant, at least when scolding the juvenile mendicants who run ragged across the colony. However, she’s practically winsome once you’ve ordered a bowl of Lahphing from her. While she’s not keen on being photographed, she’s happy to talk about this side business of dishing out the soupy Tibetan staple in the courtyard of Delhi’s Little Tibet, colloquially known as Majnu ka Tila (MKT).
The area, home to Tibetan political and religious exiles since the early 1960s, houses some of the most popular habitués for semi-broke college kids and budget tourists, being inundated with fantastic (and cheap) eateries, salons, apparel and footwear merchants, and stores specializing in Tibetan and Buddhist bric-a-brac. It also has many homestays and Buddhist dharamshalas for Lamas, disciples and the otherwise spiritually curious who are on their paths to enlightenment (via bus, taxi, or train), with aid from the many travel agencies here, which organise mountain meanderings.
While the Sino-Indian war may have been a mitigated failure for India, it did result in the successful establishment of Majnu ka Tila (officially New Aruna Colony) near Delhi University’s North Campus. What began as a refugee colony is now a bustling community of Tibetan settlers, Nepali and Bhutanese workers, as well as milling Indian, and occasionally white, tourists whom you can identify by the helpless expressions on their faces and the way they thrust their phones towards the sky, trying to get a signal (the network in this warren has been notoriously patchy over the years, though connectivity is steadily increasing).
Behind the myriad dream-catchers and Drokpa Katsa (a tripe stew) lies a certain disdain that locals hold for non-mountainous Indians; this is a quasi-role reversal in which shopkeepers pretend not to understand people from the plains, waggling their heads in increasing amusement to your increasingly strident queries in Hindi or English. Considering how North Indians usually treat people from the mountains, we consider this fair game, or karma as the many lamas who throng the alleys of MT might say.
Kancha (definitely not his real name), a waiter hailing from Nepal’s border region, finds the disconnect between locals and visitors hilarious, noting that, as he looks North Indian but speaks Nepalese, he gets along with everyone. “A lot of people from my country, when they come to Delhi for work, find their way here. The (Tibetan) people and businesses here are familiar, if not exactly the same, so this is good place to transition to India, for newcomers from our mountains,” he confides, eventually unbending enough to reveal that his actual name is Tarun.
It is a patent fact that there are plenty of employment opportunities as MT is stuffed with restaurants, crammed due to space constraints as well as their popularity. While some restaurants like Dolma House date back to the early ‘80s and mainly serve Tibetan, Bhutanese and Nepali cuisines, newer avatars like Ama Café, Kalsang, and a few others which cater to more modern (read Western) sensibilities and dish out pancakes, burgers, and other boulangerie basics.
That dining differential spills over on to prospective clienteles as well. While college kids are more excited to go to the cafes and their Instagram-friendly dishes and interiors, touring visitors prefer to go to the older restaurants, their menus replete with Tibetan specialities like Thentuk (noodle broth), Shapta (sliced, grilled meat), and Shapaley (stuffed pastries).
There’s also a definite uptick in Korean restaurants, as K-pop culture is all the rage among college-going regulars, with even the many, many general stores in the neighbourhood stocking Korean groceries alongside the more traditional yak cheeses, cured meats, and other speciality products.
The owner and staff of the many eateries are welcoming enough, being extremely aware of customer demographics.
“I like that young people come here, from all over,” beams Wangchuk, adding, “I like to think that they get a real sense of what our country was and how our people are, and everyone seems to like what they experience here.” While she can only estimate a guess as to her own age of 67, she’s fairly certain that she won’t get to see her homeland again. Having left Tibet as “a young child”, she’s contentedly resigned to her life, saying, “This is my home now.” As we’re slurping down our lhaphing, there’s a chorus of “Hi aunty” as a gaggle of young college kids, clearly old customers, descend around her makeshift stand looking for their fix of soup and noodles. For some then, home is where the hearth is.