(This article is part of 'Ways of eating': a mini-series on food in Southasia)
It is a sunny October afternoon and outside the monastery in the Majnu-ka-tilla (MKT) colony in Delhi, Tenzing begins to prepare the dish that has made her popular. Her shop is a simple set-up; a table which serves as her workstation between two garden benches, where we sat observing the elaborate ritual of preparing laphing, a Tibetan dish of cold flat noodles served with or without cold soup, featuring a bright palette of red, yellow and orange and tangy, sour, and spicy flavours. For eight years, Tenzing has been selling her famous laphing at the same corner of the temple courtyard lined with similar food stalls, a thriving centre of activity. It is where people visiting the area eat, smoke, talk or just sit as if in a living room, in the middle of one of the only Tibetan settlements in Delhi.
After the Tibetan Uprising in 1959, many citizens migrated to neighbouring countries when the Dalai Lama had to flee the country, establishing the Tibetan government in exile in India. This would be followed by more migration from the Tibetan plateau between 1986 and 1996, from different provinces such as Kham, Amdo, and U-Tsang. According to estimates from the Dharamshala-based Central Tibet Administration, around 109,015 members of the Tibetan diaspora reside in Southasia – particularly in India, Nepal and Bhutan. In India, the community has settlements across several states apart from Delhi and Himachal Pradesh, including West Bengal, Orissa, and Karnataka, among others.