ABSTRACT
Twenty-four-year-old Jigme was the first recent arrival the author met in 1996. For the next four-and-a-half years, up to October 2000, he regularly followed the twists and turns that were affecting his life as a migrant. Despite the estrangement, one positive feature of their stay in India is the widening of their exposure. Enabling them to re-establish some partial links with Buddhism and their culture, their relationship with the rest of the world also helps them to explore many novel facets that were thus far denied to them. Even as Jigme continues with his ongoing sojourn across many internal and external locales, his last few words do communicate to his listener an emerging clarity in his thoughts vis-à-vis the impact of multiple issues whose presence he registers from all fronts. The persecutory and closed political system had been an intimate part of their entire life.
