The Odd World

The present day Paro town view

It was the year 1981. Paro Bazaar was just a single street market area, the hub of Paro locality with the weekly market event at the dingy square at the corner next by an old pagoda and a big antique tree with those many tangling branches outlining just from the short thick trunk of immense girth like the sprawling network of live veins. Its overhanging branches but far off the ground shaded the unpaved square. Ngodup could remember the raised quadrangle of slab-paved base where people, idlers, lounged chatting and chewing Dhoma to the end of the day. For them the day seemed to be much awaited for the simple matter of fete gathering interest after spending the days in the fields and forests. So they celebrated it to the end even without having anything to do.

The one thing he could remember so vividly was a beggar lying on one side of the base of the antique tree. During a Bazaar day, when he was with his mother, he had enough time to look at him with mere childish wonder as he had never seen such a beggar in such poor state. The beggar was a young man like in his early twenties in full rags. His emaciated body, especially the grime-coated face, was like what he had heard from his mother about those who suffer in the hell. He thought that he had found the true example here. Is he suffering for his past misdeeds, he thought instantly. He groaned in pains. He was lying on one side with his back to those passing by him. He groaned more as he detected one or more paused by him and looked on him.

He remembered a little later a Tibetan woman like in her fifties approached him. She seemed to be from the bazaar, a shop keeper in one of those plank-walled shanty stores on either side of the single street. She talked to him in half Tibetan and half Dzongkha like she was chasing after the other when the one failed to convey the right message. She was well-versed in swinging between the two mediums that correspond at the heart. The beggar, a Bhutanese, groaned louder as he found someone caring was by his side.

‘Oh, do you pain, dear boy? Are you hungry? I will bring you some food. Do you want it?’ The Tibetan woman, as Ngodup found, acted like his beloved mother to that whimpering beggar. She even touched his thin stick like arm covered in a grubby white sleeve.

‘Yes, I am hungry. Will you please bring me some food? I would thank you so much. Thanks Konchok Khen!’ He tried to turn slightly towards the crouching Tibetan woman who was in a dark Chuba and colorful Pangdhen. Ngodup saw the profile of his face grimy and bony, the angle bone of his skinny broad cheek jutting out below his translucent ear. He was in great pain.

A little later the woman arrived with a plate filled with rice and meat curry. The rice was Bhutanese red-rice Chum and the curry looked hot from those dried red chilies sprinkled all over the rice like the soup. There were pieces of meat. She had also prepared an omelet of single egg. The omelet looked deep fried and placed at the side of the plate. As like jolted out by the yearning smell the beggar raised himself up to the waist by supporting on one hand. His sunken eyes wide that seemed to dance round and round like the only sign of thankfulness or gaiety that he could contrive for the moment. He took the plate in his both hands like one accepting a coveted prize. He was in cross-legged position in a moment and hogging one mouthful after another.

The Tibetan woman looked fixedly at his progress with a smile around her wrinkled mouth. She moved her own lips as he enjoyed the hot stuff amid hissing breaths. Ngodup felt his mouth watering like he had never felt before, so full of water that he couldn’t swallow casually out of an imposing self-consciousness.

Ngodup found him cleaning the plate to the last piece of bloated rice grain. He looked satisfied, energized as he smiled revealing the decayed teeth. He wiped his smeared parts around his mouth with one hand and the other gesticulated thanking again and again.

‘Thanks, you enjoyed it. I would bring you food later too,’ the woman said in an assuring consoling tone.

He broke into a long sob. He said he couldn’t sleep well at night. He pointed to the antique tree and said the one in there didn’t let him sleep. He must be talking about a ghost, Ngodup got it at once as from his mother’s such narrations plus her means of taming him not to stray at night like walking back late home from school. But he didn’t feel a shudder of fear in the day light teeming with people. The woman patted him and left. The beggar slowly lay down in the same position like in complete indifference to what was happening behind him.