When Tenzin Nyima was growing up in India’s western Himalayan region of Ladakh, his parents, worried about his strongheaded ways, sought out a local oracle for guidance. The sage told the family, who had fled to India from Tibet in 1966 several years after a failed uprising against Beijing, to stop fretting.
Nyima was destined to be a “brave soul,” he said. Indeed, in 1987, Nyima, just 18, went to an army base in Leh, the capital of Ladakh, asking to be recruited into a secretive Indian paramilitary unit with Tibetan soldiers, known as the Special Frontier Forces (SFF).
On August 30 this year, Nyima’s mother Dawa Palzom, 76, was reminded of the oracle’s words when she got off the phone with
•
Sep 25, 2020