You Old Chenar!

Oh, you, old chenar tree!

You have cheated me for being new here

Letting me take you as an old maple—

Only the leaves, if there can be differences other than size.

Now, your lush green foliage crumpling yellowish-light-brown

Littering around you like fallen grey hair proving your time.

More sadly, those third-fourth-hand used cars under your overhanging branches

Bear your litters over their being bleached rooted like to prove

How fuss of infatuation is just a blink, emotional deception.

But your short trunk bearing three prime branches looks robust,

Why not, for the act of displaying the same cyclic beauty,

The lesson, the nature how we have tried to shun.

The bright yet yellowish glowing lamp lighted up your vicinity,

An emphasis on your skeleton by lighting from below.

Oh, sorry, you fume for being that revealed,

For being that ungrateful for the gone years beauties you imparted,

Leave the uncertain upcoming.

And the queue of those stationed old sputtering cars,

Within their white-lined prisons, are there for  you, you old chenar!

And I, too, find times to look out of the window and cast glances at you

To prove I see you closer day by day, learn more day by day, friend!

You must be laughing down at the vibrating engine below you,

The new infatuation, unaware of, how possible, where to end up…

The old-new car, a silver grey nice sedan it is.

The driver with his lover by him have now time to stay longer in it

By letting the engine vibrate like ignoring you.

The yellowish hand, as the effect of the light, on the knee,

The other’s hand covering the bare one on her knee.

Infatuation within infatuation—and so to learn and see so.

The sacrifice of life for such simple yet complex joys.

An alien one, I, cast several peeks down

Trying to catch the clearer glimpses of the yellowish hand over the other,

The movements, the subtle caring nervous quivers.

It isn't possible to peer closer as there are lots to see around,

Such accidental revelations tonight, a rare time.

The overcast night sky that spares vanishing patches of clearness.

Oh, Mr. Moon, though almost full, captured behind the dark gliding veils,

Hidden but your milky lights couldn’t be hidden.

Or you are trying to steal peeks as me over the sleepy town—

Especially, what I spot down there?

So strangely, what I find the next day, the sudden baldness,

The unwelcome patch among lovely greeneries nearby including the old chenar.

The leveling and cutting that have left the baldness like the scar of ringworm,

So sudden, how could the man, father, and the boy, the son in army trousers,

Carry out such leveling behind their home, a villa, normal European style home,

Within short period of time, morning till afternoon?

I mean by their bare hands with simple tools, as my instinct holds.

Oh, only later, I find it isn’t so, foolish.

It was carried out by the chain-wheeled machine with the rolling blade at its front,

So sharp leaving not a single leaf torn into several pieces,

Even the pale-dark soils, the natural skins, roll-grinded in its heavy rolling blade,

The monster fangs with such infernal noises.

Like a yellow toy bus, but bigger than toy, the driver is in the glassed cabin,

Couldn’t be seen from here, with the arched front glass like a protruding single devouring eye.

I see how it knocks down the lovely young beech after some shoves,

Oh, so sad, it drops down for their second infatuation.

An ocher coated pony in the next by such leveled patch,

The odd vegetable bed untamed but unused lawn,

The odd play ground set with a small trampoline recently

But without anyone to play jumping up on its springy dark round patch,

Just a display, parents’ sacrifice in their mimicries how to treat children.

Yes, the pony, so placid, all the day long there,

Heeds not a lift of its bowed head like already being deafened.

Its nibbling dark mouth on the green tufts around and in the untamed bed

Just marked by the two ocher flower pots with no flowers but dark soils

And the vestiges of hand-touch on the small patch within the old leveled patch.

A man, like in his fifties, in white T-shirt and pale blue nylon trousers,

Could be a supervisor to the progress of leveling to create another such patch but grander?

His grey hair cropped but the mid shiny yellowish bald patch so visible from here.

His hands behind, mute, like brooding or calculating, with his eyes fixed before.

A grey wheel barrow stands near by the man, not like the old rusted lawn-cutting machine,

Must have been brought here for fresh use

But not for those cut logs revealing skinned strips stacked at one side,

Maybe to rot there beside the rusted lawn-cutting machine.

The fresh pale baldness is spacious enough to threaten the surrounding growing ones.

I quickly shut the window to brood inside alone. 

A Herald

Ngodup always heard Dhargyal’s radio blaring with Tibetan program transmission from Indian capital New Delhi. The languid thick voice of the program anchor was familiar too but Ngodup could get only the beginning and the ending notes ‘from Indian capital New Delhi Tibetan broadcasting service transmitting news headlines…’ and ‘news has been transmitted….’ During the interval he could get only the hottest news about the ongoing Iraq and Iran war. As his Tibetan was only bound to Dromo dialect spoken by his parents and those around and Dzongkha, he couldn’t get more. There was no one who would tell him about the news. And he wasn’t interested as well. But he always heard the same notes over again and again that he could imitate the notes.

It was past midday. Dhargyal seemed more engrossed today as he listened by pressing his ear on the round perforated frontal part. There were times when he would chuckle like finding the right note he had been expecting for. Or he was carried away by another funny thought. When listening so with a rare smile on his face it was a great time for him and others. He would be attached to the same mood for hours. 

The respected Lama could be seen outside Sonam’s shack pressed against the hand-dug natural wall of the ledge. The footpath just ran along behind it at its dark weathered plank-covered low ridge-roof level. It led to the upper dwellings of Wangmo, Pasang, Dojree and others. Pressing it that close could be for saving the strip of front yard and the small square part next by that was trampled smooth and whitish, the thrashing ground. The old peach tree in front of the shack grew from the lower part off the end of the frontal strip. A few slabs with spaces between were laid for the strip of front yard. There were weeds growing in the between spaces.

The lama’s yellow upper wear was so catchy from the distance down there from Dhargyal’s home. The lama visited Sonam’s home in the morning. He was now coming without spending night there. There wasn’t enough room. He was talking with Sonam and Choedon. Jojo was hard to be seen outside. Ngodup found the lama was coming to his home and going to spend night or more. He rushed to inform his mother about it.

‘Kyapsu che, we should invite him and I have got things to learn from him,’ Dolma went to the window to have a look up there. Being confirmed, she set to work to take out the best Chinese cup as to serve with freshly made salted butter-milk shaken tea.

‘Where is the lama from, mother?’ Ngodup happened to ask so.

‘From India where there are many great monasteries and monks. Good you are curious. You have to join one such in the future. You don’t understand if I say so now. Good!’

‘How far is India?’ He went near his mother who was wiping the new Chinese cup with a clean piece of white cloth that she kept near the offering bowls on the ledge in front of those holy images.

‘Oh, so far. May be a weeklong from here. It isn’t like here. There are plains after plains, endless. And, yes, the blue ocean, the boundless one. You know about the story of well frog and ocean frog? It is said that before ocean it’s like the sky meeting the endless water surface,’ Dolma said in a tone affected with self-wonder. She had such mind to tell her son about her only wish. But she thought it’s too early.

‘Oh, then, the sun and the moon rising from the water surface?’

‘Yes, it would appear so. You can’t distinguish between the sky and water surface.’ She looked at Ngodup and smiled, a rare smile that he couldn’t get at the time.

‘The well frog died of heart attack at seeing the ocean. Can there be such danger then?’

‘Ha, ha, my boy. It died of being so narrow-minded. But you aren't narrow-minded like a well frog, are 

you? You think Paro is the biggest in the world?’

‘No, mother.’

‘Then you won’t die before it. You would wonder and can’t take in its grandeur for some time.’ She laughed.

Ngodup couldn’t get it. And a voice and footsteps outside. The lama had just arrived. Dolma hastened out with Ngodup following behind. The lama was in a sleeveless yellow upper wear and maroon garment. He carried only a small bag. His medium stature was healthily slim and light as he walked. His bright wrinkled face was adorned with a broad smile all the time. Dolma greeted him in Tibetan and invited him inside with due respect. The lama raised his right hand in a blessing gesture and stepped inside. Dolma led him to the bed by the holy images and the ledge set with those offering bowls and butter lamps. She had got time to burn some dried juniper.

‘Oh, such an aromatic smell. Must be a good juniper,’ the lama said while he took a look at the holy images including a framed picture of Dalai Lama adorned with the best scarf called Ashi Khatak, not threadbare like Sushi. He put his clasped fingers of both hands at the center of his chest and mouthed a brief prayer like blessing the only sanctum of the family. Dolma had spread the clean cloth on the bed. After sitting compactly in cross-legged position on the bed, he smiled more before taking a sip from the cup set on a bare wooden box before him.

Dhargyal had been busy with his engineering work of cutting and joining for hybrid yield on a single tree. And he had learned about the lama coming. He was going to return late. He knew what his wife had in her mind for inviting the lama home. Even if he hadn’t had a real hope for his son becoming educated and materializing his dream, he loathed the idea of sending him to a far away monastery in India. Even if he loved Yangzom more, he didn’t have a least hope of her coming to his rescue. He knew her weakness of being so shortsighted. Ngodup wasn’t the son of his dream. But he had such love for them that was like pitying an innocent.

Dolma and the lama talked much. Ngodup was beside his mother and listened. Yangzom remained for some time till she found out that the lama wasn’t fit to be her client as he knew only how to smile endlessly. She found out he didn’t share any sort of joke. So she left out.

Dolma at last got to her point about learning from the lama after talking for an hour.

‘How about the monasteries in India?’

‘Oh, there are big monasteries like Sera, Gaden and Drepung. They are the major learning centers. There are monasteries in Darjeeling but they are almost like those here in Bhutan. The monks at those big monasteries have to study much rather than ending up being Amchok, the one who only knows how to perform rituals. The younger monks cycle during weekend. It’s really fun and learning to be monk,’ the lama said with a majestic pose of resting his hands on his thighs and protruding elbows outward. He moved his body to and fro slightly when he spoke in the same pose.

Dolma listened attentively while Ngodup was only fascinated by the idea of cycling. He had seen a Bhutanese student only a couple of years older than him cycling a small real bicycle at school. He had seen him like the one possessing a real bicycle, as a so privileged one not like himself who had only the chance of taking a crude board to slide over a declivity overrun with dried tuft-stubbles. But later on, when walking across the bridge when fetching WFO rations including milk powder in dark-yellowish hard paper, oil tins, wheat sacks all labeled with USA and the mark of shaking hands, he found him that pathetic. As he was cycling like the most privileged one showing off his bicycle, a senior student or two attacked him from behind by throwing torn carton parts at him. Ngodup saw him first resisting by shouting back. But when he was knocked down in the middle of the bridge that incurred minor damages to his bicycle wheel causing a few wires gone askew, he broke down with his own cycle and cried as loud as he could, when Ngodup found him like a fallen hero. But he had that mind to have one. As the lama spoke about the young novices cycling at weekend, he could visualize a self-created mental image of maroon clad novices chasing one another by cycling.

Dhargyal came late after dusk. When he entered, he made a fuss of bowing to the lama and asking Dolma about what food to serve. He didn’t talk much after the exchange of a few words. The lama seemed to sense Dhargyal’s aloofness like a precaution before showing himself off. But the lama remained all the time with the broad smile. He had long prayer to say before the prepared dinner with more cheese and dried meat curry. It had been prepared by Dolma as per not to go against Dharygal’s usual complaint of being watery. She did fry onion first and the rest stuffs well before pouring water. The lama praised the curry tasted great.

‘How possible Lama la, but we are sorry,’ Dolma pleaded spontaneously.

‘No, it’s really good. On the other hand, we don’t have good food at the monastery. I am from Sera monastery in South India. All the three big monasteries known as the three great seats for learning are situated in South India. As you know the original three great seats are in Lhasa at close proximity so far,’ he said with an air of story teller observing how his listeners heeded him.

‘Oh, Lama la, we heard about such in Lhasa. But we had never had time to pay a visit. I had never been beyond Shigatse till the flight into exile. Such a sad story. Like a tethered serf and without any knowledge I found my life back at home so self-contained but detached. It’s the case here as well for those children. The two elder ones have never had a learning opportunity. They are to end up almost like us. But what to do?’

As Dolma recounted so, Dhargyal cast several angle looks like the best means of expressing his contempt from the far corner. After talking much even after dinner, Dolma prepared bedding for the lama on the bed at the head of all. He got more prayers to say before retiring. Dolker and Tsomo had to go out to spend their night in the watch-hut or on the roofed terrace of the cattle shed. They liked to keep away so as the best time for their jabbering was during night. Sometimes they dragged on past midnight when one of them had to tame the other for sleep.

They didn’t go to the watch-hut as the prospect of the night seemed to be rather damp. So they chose to go up the terrace of the shed, which was a few steps away from home. They had bedding kept there for such purpose. After lying down on the soft dry grass-mat covered with the homemade bed-rug woven by Tsomo, they began on the latest turn.

‘The lama seems to be gentle. How mother is pleased to invite such one, a rare chance indeed. She must have asked many of her questions.  The lama seemed to be eager enough to tell much. Is he going to stay tomorrow night?’ Dolker was curious.

‘Oh, I don’t think so. He may have to visit more homes at Jishingang and Paro Bazaar. Mother seemed to be attracted wholly to the prospect of novices at those big monasteries in India. She must have found a firmer ground to send Ngodup there,’ Tsomo was quick to strike at the point.

‘Aah, that rascal but pity, will he obey to go there. How he cried that much for going to school like going to hell. You had to carry him on back for the initial three days. Such a burden,’ Dolma fumed and sibilated the ending three words.

Tsomo adjusted her lying position by turning on her back and pondered for a moment. She heard the shrilly winds blowing and rampaging through the openings left between the roof and the terrace of pounded soil and mud. But they were warm amid dry grass as the reserved fodder. And a sudden thought struck her.

‘He will go. I know it. When I threatened him so on way back one day, he said, “Do send me then, I am not afraid. I will go.” He sounded confident. As you know, he is now more exposed after going to school for a year. He isn’t the same as before. He isn't like block-headed Yangzom,’ Tsomo said.

‘Oh, if he obeys, then it’s like taking a burden off us. His life would be good as well. Yes, mother’s wish will be fulfilled, the most important. Will the lama help?’

‘No, mother doesn’t want to send him there through his help. She has her relation there at Sera monastery. And father has a closer relation there at Drepung. But it’s after some years only, how now?’

Dolker was silent like she had got the point. Mikser barked several times.

‘There must be something in the apples? He barks vigorously,’ Dolker said.

‘Just leave it. It must be a deer, that stray deer we saw recently in the evening. It won’t do any damages. It seemed to be lost from the rest or a pariah one on its own. It was sad to see the gentle creature roaming along the far side of the fence. Must be going to fall into a trap or be killed by a hunter, any of those soldiers with guns deployed at Ashi’s estate. But that wild pig can’t be killed. Such an odd,’ Tsomo sighed and was determined not to go out.

When Ngodup woke up the next morning, he found the lama was already seated cross-legged on bed and meditating or contemplating on something. His back straight, eyes lowered on the tip of his tiny nose, the outer hand resting on the other palm and thumbs converged. He was motionless too. Ngodup slowly lay back and observed the lama from the opening he made after covering his head with the furry blanket. Dolma was busy with preparing tea at the fireplace. She had to take care not to make any clatters as Dhargyal was in bed. He was fast asleep. His big white tin-mug was beside him on the box. The scars around its bottom rim were mostly caused by his hitting it on the ground. Ngodup had an abomination to drink in it. He found it cumbersome.

When Dhargyal got up, he had something in haste and left. Even if Dolma requested the lama to spend another night, he refused politely saying he had got to go to Paro Bazaar to pay visit at a few households. Then she asked to stay for lunch. He refused again. So he left almost past 10am when Dolma walked him to the far side of the fence. As he departed amid many gestures, Ngodup followed his eyes after his light agile steps. And he thought about bicycle once again before it was going to fade away.

Ngodup felt the pervasive smell of Changkol being well fermented. Dolma seemed to be lost in a stupor of its smell growing now stronger and now milder. She raised the tip of her nose like fending off the intoxicating smell. But her gentle kind heart was filled with joy at such smell. She knew she was going to be busy.