Kesang Takla is a rare commodity. For most of us, devoting our lives to one person is a daunting prospect - but for Takla it wasn't a difficult decision to make. As one of the key ambassadors for the Dalai Lama in Europe, she has spent more than 40 years working for the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
Her life changed forever on October 7, 1950, when China invaded and occupied her homeland. Takla, who grew up in the capital, Lhasa, hasn't been back to Tibet since 1959. She left that year, shortly before the National Uprising, and headed for the safety of India.
While living in West Bengal in 1962 she got the call from Dharamsala in North India, where the Dalai Lama and his followers were establishing a Tibetan government in exile. ''My father told me to go,'' she explains. ''He said, 'You can go back to education any time. For now, it is important you go serve His Holiness.'''
Then 19, Takla put plans to attend university on hold and, as one of a mere handful of female government officials, spent several years working with Tibetan refugees using scant resources. ''When I look back it all seems quite amazing,'' she says. ''Sometimes we had as many as six children sleeping in one bed, lying crossways to fit them all in. There would be many more sleeping below on the floor.''
During this period she met her late husband, Phuntsok Tashi Takla, part of the group who disguised the young Dalai Lama as a common soldier to aid his escape from Tibet. ''When you have a responsibility it can give you the strength and courage to be brave,'' she says.
Takla set up the Tibetan Health Department in 1974, introducing primary health care and TB control programmes in refugee settlements across India and Nepal. She then moved to London to set up a base in northern Europe. Most recently she has overseen plans for the Dalai Lama's UK tour. Later this month he will visit Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dunfermline.
For Takla, now 59, her fellow Tibetans still living under Chinese rule are never far from her thoughts. ''It is important for us to speak on their behalf. We have the freedom to do that; they do not,'' she says. ''I often look back on our years in exile and wonder what it would have been like if we had given up on day one. It was not easy but we struggled on. All Tibetans hope that one day they will be able to return home.
I too share that hope.'' n
For more information visit www.dalailamascotland.org.uk
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