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The flagpoles groan under the weight of hundreds of yards of fabric — all rainbow-hued prayer flags — draped around them by devotees. The flagstones in front of the temple wear a glossy sheen, polished by the repeated prostrations of countless worshippers. The streets around Barkhor Square ring out with the chants of dozens of devotees rolling over the cobblestones, their arms raised in prayer; they are performing full-body prostration, a quintessentially Tibetan form of worship. The acrid smell of yak butter lamps envelopes the square in a haze, contrasting it with the brilliantly clear cobalt blue skies overhead. Lhasa’s Barkhor Square wears a perpetually festive look. Hundreds of other native Tibetans in their flamboyant traditional attire and fancy hats amble leisurely but purposefully towards their favourite shrine, the Jokhang Temple, considered the holiest of the holy for Tibetan Buddhists. Almost all of them swirl their prayer wheels, muttering prayers under their breath. Some faces are so weather-beaten, yellowed and creased that they look like walking mummies. It is perhaps the altitude and the dry de-oxygenated climate that turns a perfectly healthy skin into parchment long before its time. But the altitude probably does much more. What else would explain the all-pervading tranquillity spirituality and apparent equanimity of the native Tibetans under Chinese yoke? After all, Tibetans live in an extremely adverse political environment today. Lhasa is a city swarming with Chinese militia. Indeed, Lhasa is a fortress city today. Its markets are barred by numerous barricades, X-ray machines and frisking booths, which both locals and tourists have to brave. Virtually all shops and establishments are run by Han Chinese, who have settled here from afar. Native Tibetans from the rest of the Tibetan Autonomous Region need permission even to visit Lhasa; when they do, they cannot even digress from the route approved by the administration. Tibetans living in Lhasa cannot venture out of their city without permits and passes. Ditto for tourists visiting Lhasa. The Tibet travel permit, a coveted piece of paper obtained with great ingenuity and some prevarication costs a bomb and limits your peregrinations to Lhasa city only, that too under the watchful eye of your guide, who is more interested in reiterating the list of things you cannot do — such as not even enter a temple or monastery without a guide etc, than actually showing you the city. He chaperones you from the moment you land in Lhasa and does not let you out of his sight until you board your train to Chengdu. There are scores of Tibetans who were schooled in McLeodganj or Bylakuppe and hence can speak fluent Hindi or Kannada but your guide ensures you have no access to any of them. Lhasa today has been unabashedly seduced by modernity. It has shed its lamaesque gravity and garb to embrace crass materialism veiled as market economy. Night clubs and bars advertise their wares even on monastery walls. Giant hoardings tempt you with the latest gadgetry and designer labels while beauty salons do brisk business. The Chinese run virtually all business establishments, peddling mounds of junk that passes for turquoise and coral. The concentric streets around Barkhor alone must provide business for hundreds of turquoise bead factories in Noida and Dadri. Native Tibetans, meanwhile, seem utterly oblivious of the changes that have overtaken their land, content to swirl their prayer wheels and feast their eyes on Potala in a pilgrimage of a lifetime that would take them years of labour to finance. They have no use for the seductions of the market. They probably are too impoverished to indulge them but more likely, their sight is set on things beyond. As one strolls around Potala, one can see a steady stream of native Tibetans making their way to the palace that once housed the Dalai Lama, their spiritual as well as political ruler. The Potala is a magnificent piece of Tibetan architecture — a white-washed edifice of unparalleled grace and serenity bejewelled with richly-decorated wooden windows. A Chinese flag flutters atop the structure, once a revered place of worship, now no more than a museum, despite its parade of golden Bodhisattavas and green and white Taras. A bored monk amuses himself playing games on his cellphone while tourists — mostly Chinese with a sprinkling of Europeans — gawk at the priceless treasures as they are rushed through the maze of rooms in a hurry to complete the visit within an hour which is all your expensive ticket allows you. From the Potala, you have an expansive view of the Lhasa valley through which the Lhasa river, a tributary of Yarlung Tsangpo snakes its way around. Tibetan temples and monasteries suffered much damage during the protests against Chinese occupation and subsequently, during the infamous Cultural Revolution but the Chinese Government seems to have woken up to their tourist potential. Many of the edifices have been rebuilt, the Norbulingka restored to its former glory and the monasteries are being re-populated with novices and senior monks. At Sera Monastery, we are witness to a surrealistic charade enacted entirely for tourist benefit — hundreds of monks congregate in the yard under the shade of peepal trees to argue Buddhist theosophy; there is much foot-stomping and gesticulating, even as tourists click away furiously. This is a daily feature here. Lhasa today is rapidly turning into a multicultural faceless modern city like any other. It is no longer remote, connected by daily flights and several world-class trains that link the city to the rest of China. If you want to see what it might have been like before the Chinese swamped Lhasa, go into the numerous lanes radiating from Barkhor. You will see shops piled high with Tibetan delicacies — yak butter mounds and dried yak meat. There are two mosques where Tibetan Muslims hang around, their crocheted fez and spotless white tunics distinguishing them from the Buddhists who form the majority of the population. However, on nearby Chakori hill, the gorgeous Buddhist rock paintings of yore have been coated over with garish fresh paint in a pathetic attempt at restoration. Traditional Tibetan structures are being dismantled by giant cranes to make way for modern shopping malls and concrete blocks. SUVs hoot impatiently even as pedestrians risk life and limb to cross the streets of Lhasa. Unlike the Tibetans, I can no longer retain my equanimity.
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