Smiling Buddha

Even while fleeing China, the Dalai Lama had a confident smile on his face, recalls the soldier who escorted him across the border 58 years ago.

- Rabi Banerjee

Deepak Das is upset that he lost out on a big oppor-tunity. His father, Naren Chandra Das, was one of the braveheart soldiers of the Assam Rifles who escorted the Dalai Lama to safety from the India-China border as he fled from Tibet in March 1959. Deepak didn’t know that. Fifteen years ago, he had appeared for a recruitment test for the Assam Rifles and failed to clear the fitness test. He now thinks he would have had a better chance, if he had known about his father’s rare distinction. “I came to know about it on April 3 this year when the Assam Rifles took him to Guwahati to meet the Dalai Lama,”says Deepak. “Had I known earlier, I would have told the recruiting officers.”

But the father doesn’t understand what the fuss is all about. “Why should I tell them about it?” he asks. “I had thought the world had forgotten about it. But, I was wrong. The director general of the Assam Rifles went through the records and traced me. He brought me to Guwahati during the felicitation of the Dalai Lama,” says Das, 76, who lives in Baliapara village in Sonitpur district of Assam.