BEIJING, Dec. 19 -- When the mystical and exotic Lhasa became earth under the feet, there was slight disappointment.

    It is not the medieval land of inscrutable and otherworldly lamas and sages practicing levitation and astral travel that came into the view. Wide roads, advertisement billboards, shopping malls, modern restaurants, bars and even massage parlors announced that the old fantasy had taken shape as a modern city.

    Only in a small area around the Jokhang monastery could I see signs of the Tibet of the past that probably existed in other parts of the city too.

    The simple piety of thousands of Tibetans, each prostrating hundreds of times before the temple, chanting, turning prayer wheels and waving prayer flags were over-whelming. The courtyard of the ancient temple teemed with worshippers. The commerce around the temple was on a scale no less than around any big temple in India.

    Nehru, in his attempt to discover India, had wondered whether the piety of millions of ordinary villagers that moved them to the Kumbh mela was the wellspring of the Indian civilization through ages. It could only be truer in Tibet where all life has always revolved around religion.

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    The Potala palace, the traditional seat of the Dalai Lamas, would take one¡¯s breath away. The 1300-year-old, 13-storey palace stood up at the center of the city, and gleamed like the frozen laughter of Buddha. It is built into a high hill, a complex agglomeration of imposing structures with cavernous passageways, rising above the city and contemplating the world around it and the mountains in the distance. Art and architecture merge in a great statement of clay and wood in service of religion.

    The Dalai Lama¡¯s apartments are preserved intact in the palace and are untenanted after 1959. It houses thousands of priceless books, relics and religious articles, and shrines containing many jewel-encrusted golden statues. There are also huge tombs of past Dalai Lamas, plated with gold and studded with diamonds and other precious stones.

    Here is an air of sublimity and deep reflection, mixed ironically with opulence, enveloping the palace, but looking out, one could also see the reality of mundane life. The proximate existence of the two, the unmoving palace and the city on the move down below, emphasized the dual reality of Tibet as it is now. They are complementary in one sense, because the facilities being developed in the city and the train link, which is now available, would draw more tourists for whom the Potala palace is the main attraction.

    Development of tourism is high on the agenda of the government and the now mandatory entry permit to visit Tibet may not be needed in the near future.

    If Lhasa is emerging as a modern city, there is more of the traditional Tibet outside it. Barley fields rolled in the sun and wind, prayer flags happily fluttered and empty spaces unspoiled themselves to invisible and far frontiers. The liberalization of economic policies has made visible changes in Lhasa, though it is difficult to say what changes it has made in other parts of Tibet.

    Modernization, while creating new signs and symbols of progress, also tends to push people back into traditional ways and styles of life. A new order life might emerge from the friction between the two. Tibet needs it more than any other society in the world, because it has stagnated for centuries and has to catch up with the rest of the world. But would this be the situation in the distant future too, with more and more Chinese coming to Tibet and living there?

    Fears have been ex-pressed that Tibetans will become a minority in Tibet, though the Chinese have always emphatically denied any plan to colonize it.

    It is also difficult to imagine the death of a culture so strongly rooted in the best and most positive human aspirations and the values of giving and compassion.

    Retired official, with whom a meeting was arranged, when asked if he could recollect the events surrounding the escape of the Dalai Lama to India in 1959, said he couldn¡¯t. The senior administrator of the Potala palace, whose family was associated with the palace, also said he couldn't. But both said the life of the people had improved after 1959. This is clear, and there is no doubt that the unequal and feudal society is no more.

    "The Chinese have worked for it and might genuinely feel that Tibetans are a part of the Chinese nation. But they might also know that we were not the only visitors to whom a stray man on the street would go up and say that he did not like the Chinese."