Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR’s international correspondents share snapshots capturing moments from their lives and work around the world.
I was resting near a playground, between interviews for a story on the shrinking number of Tibetan kids in a boarding school built for them in the northern Indian city of Dharamshala. This Himalayan valley is where the Dalai Lama settled after fleeing Tibet, and so did thousands of Tibetan refugees. The Tibetan diaspora in India is much smaller now, but the school continues to take in Tibetan children as boarders and teaches them about their heritage.
It was quiet in the Alpine cool of the afternoon — until a few girls rushed out of a building. They scrambled up play equipment and goaded each other to jump off a platform that looked high for little ones. A woman walked out — a housemother or a teacher — and scolded the girls in Tibetan. They nodded obediently, and as soon as the woman turned her back, they were back to jumping off the platform again. I was laughing as I took this picture — I have a soft spot for cheeky kids, and I love seeing how children, no matter where they are, find a way to play.
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