ABSTRACT
The responses to the sstatement about past of elderly Tibetans need to remain silent about a past they had lived through and with the impact of which, in many ways, they were still grappling. Perhaps, like survivors of other historical traumas, they too felt that those who had not themselves suffered a similar fate would be unable to understand them. Moreover, interwoven in their narratives were also accounts of the period in which they had co-existed with the Chinese, their journey into exile and the hardships associated with becoming a refugee. From being ‘persons’ we became ‘nobodies’ in Nepal. Our survival depended on begging and while some Nepalese people were very kind they gave us food, clothing and water many shunned us and refused to let us enter their localities.
