Dhamek Stupa: The Sojourn

Courtesy: web source

For the next three days Ngodup had found a few novices to play with. He had been lost so. None of his parents had come to him. Especially Dolma must have deliberately avoided seeing him as she had feared of inciting sort of change in him. Ngodup hadn't had tiny doubt of his mother studying him from distance. He had just thought of his mother but not of going to her. Now they had left. There was still a week ahead to stay as the monks were preparing to go on pilgrimages. Dadul took Ngodup to different sites, from which he had visited a few. He just went with him all mute. There were those who made fun of him after learning that he was from Bhutan. ‘Aku Dukpa’ was his name for the time. He didn't talk much. He couldn't answer when someone asked his name.

One evening before a couple of days left for leaving for Varanasi he just rambled around alone. The place was virtually deserted and littered. The swelling waves of throngs had disappeared like sand dunes. So those handicapped beggars in rags had gone out of sight as well. ‘Meri Sati Bai Poone Karo’, the high pitched intonation haunted the deserted avenue and the intersection. He happened to walk along further till the point from where he had sudden mind to go to see the place where they had pitched their tent. He had a sudden dreamy thought of his mother being there yet. It made him long for his mother for a moment. He walked on. It was rather unbearable to see the place in litters and deserted. Everything had been dismantled and gone. The tents on the other side of the road were being taken down. He just looked at the place and hurried back.

He was going to learn from Yangzom much later (after 18 years during his second time home) that when they arrived Phuentsholing Dhargyal didn't show up in the evening. Dolma sent her to him as she knew he was at the Tibetan restaurant on the Indian side where Tongba was served. Teznin was with them but, as per someone’s recommendation, in a maroon Goe he had been able to procure. They were at the same place, the storeroom with a table and chair next by the interior door. They had been resting there since past midday. Their truck had arrived at Phuentsholing around 11.30am. It was to leave around 7pm against odd remarks made by those like driving at night was dangerous, especially at those precarious points. It was past 6pm. Teznin was sitting on the floor. Dolma was bit nervous.

‘Oh, don’t panic. Yangzom can find him and take him back. Then we can leave. It’s okay. But his intemperance, strange after Kalachakra empowerment. Not having bit restraint not to take Chang. Here have some snuff instead,’ said Tenzin and handed over the snuff tin to Dolma. The broad flat part between his nose and upper lip was tautly unmoving when he talked. It was partly smeared with dark-golden snuff despite he wiped again and again with a handkerchief that he dodged not to be spotted when taking out and putting back somewhere in his belt.

As Yangzom knew the place just on the other side of the deep wide gutter, the demarcation line between Bhutanese and Indian side, connected with planks to walk over, she went there with rising anxiety fearing she would find him tight drunk. There was just unpaved walkway on either side of the gutter. The Bhutanese side was less crowded and cleaner but the other side was crowded with odd buildings and shacks. There were two Tibetan families running bars and hotels with cheap rooms in the odd concrete buildings. The mishmashes of wires crisscrossed over narrow winding alleys leading to the main street. Even one side of the narrow walkway just at the edge of the gutter was partly occupied by hawkers selling cheap things ranging from kitchenware to toys.

There was a paying counter almost shoulder-high next by the entrance of the bar. It was old varnished but grimy. It was an oblong piece of box with front drawers. The rims of the top were bordered with miniature balustrade of whitish metal with the tops of the balusters pointed with sloping sides. It had been given such fancy, attachment for being the counter with the drawers to draw money. A chubby guy of dark complexion, who was almost in his mid fifties, was at the counter on a high metal chair matted with cushion and folded woolen blanket. His puffy face, stoutness and sitting like rooted there proved his further degradation into sedentary slothfulness.

The first room was the proper bar with those grimy wooden tables and chairs. It was rather dark and packed with tables and chairs. A door at the far back led into kitchen on the ground floor. There was a concrete staircase with a landing and iron handrail on one side at one corner leading to the upper floors. Even the place under the landing was set with a table and chairs. Yangzom found Dhargyal at one table at the far back with a few others. He was tipsy. She had trouble approaching him first as she was afraid. But she had to. The rest tables were occupied by a few like Dhargyal but there were free tables. Dhargyal was on the side facing the entrance and counter. His two mates, Bhutanese guys who were back from Kalachkara empowerment and in the same truck, were facing him with their backs to the entrance. Yangzom timidly approached and called her father’s name twice.

‘Apa, Apa, mother sent me here to call you back. The truck was leaving at 7pm,’ said Yangzom with ‘her heart about to disgorge out of her mouth’. It was her words.

Dhargyal looked at her followed by his two mates. She was both embarrassed and frightened. Dhargyal at once began to chat with his mates who were tipsy as well. The younger one like in his late thirties was more impressed by Dhargyal’s drunk jabbering. He looked from Dhargyal to Yangzom who was standing a few paces away between the tables.

‘See, she is my daughter who knows nothing. Mercy for her. She knows nothing. Okay, okay, Apa will come now,’ said Dhargyal while the younger one laughed foolishly.

Dhargyal stood up and followed Yangzom.

Ngodup had found out Dadul had a novice disciple named Jampa who was two years younger than him. He was with him. He was from a South Indian Tibetan settlement near Drepung Gomang monastery. Ngodup found him frisky, fussy and with a sort of disorder for his laughing heartily and long for nothing until his whole face turned dark red. He was of natural short stature. There was another novice named Tsering from Nepal with bright complexion. ‘Inji’ those novices called him for his fairness and blondish hair. He was taller and of Ngodup’s age. He was half Tibetan and half Nepalese of Tibetan origin. He was also known as Dhadha, sort of ringleader, as he had a few novices back there at the monastery who took his orders. Jampa was under him. There was another named Kaldor who was crippled but active. The elders would called him Kangkyok as he was crippled and lame from he was so small. He was of Jampa’s age but more independent. Even if he was under Tsering, he didn’t take so. He acted like he had guts to fight back to redeem his image any time. So Tsering couldn't act his superiority showily before him. They were in the same tent with their elders or guardian-masters who were all aged. They were Ngodup’s temporary friends. Ngodup had times to loiter around the stupa and go on pilgrimages with them.

‘Pugu Sarpa’ (new boy) was the name given to Ngodup for his muteness by Tsering whose Tibetan was rather variable with heavy Nepalese accent. And Ngodup took it. He lost with them. He didn't think about home at all.

When it was time to move for Varanasi and stay there for a week to do pilgrimages around, he remembered going in an old bus painted white and blue with barred windows. It was like 6 hours drive till they were disgorged on a roadside. It was said Chinese temple with a gate with sloping double slate-roofs. It was to walk in but not into the temple but around into its backyard, the spacious yard with big mango trees that exuded an air of oldness. It was dark and cool in the grove like an oasis after scorching heat on the way. It was like walking into a wonder garden after lurid glare of the white painted walls, burning asphalt roads and sultry heat.

Everyone began to unroll their baggage and occupy their places under those fat trunked shady mango trees with lush dark-green leaves. It was their camp as well. There they were free to use kerosene stoves to prepare food and tea. Dadul prepared a plain tea without milk and sugar to have some Tsampa. Ngodup was given his share. Jampa sat beside him. He displayed his seniority at every given moment. ‘Sartomba’, namely ‘blockheaded new’, he would call Ngodup when he found him acting out of his way.

Within a couple of days more monks had arrived. The most mango trees had been occupied. There was an elderly monk like in his late thirties just a few paces off them. He was alone. Ngodup found him interesting for his being rather odd among others. He just sat there with his belongings scattered around him. In such heat he had a furry sort of upper wear. At one time he was finding something in the white fur by taking it off. He was picking up lice among it or passing his time so. He was a huge man of immense built with strong limbs. But he looked overpowered by heat and lethargy associated with it. The skins of his chest and back were infested with reddish heat-pimples. He scratched them again and again rather violently. His face was that of early man type unwashed and coarse with grime. He sat with his legs stretched. He was just taking in the coolness the place offered. Ngodup was going to learn later that he was a new comer from Tibet, who had come to Kalachakra empowerment by braving through hazardous terrains of snows and Chinese border guards’ secondly surveillance so ready to shoot out even a dark moving speck on the infinite whiteness. He was going to learn he was one of them who had sacrificed their lives to enter India to have a blessing audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The shocking parts he was going to learn were those losing lives, being caught and incarcerated, losing limbs as of snow-bites, and more interestingly, those venturing further into exile after release from 2 to 6 months incarceration under tortures and harassing interrogations.

But for now Ngodup found him like an alien one. He didn't interact with others. He was all alone, topless and taking in the coolness like he had come to India to get it.

Ngodup found time to go out with Kaldor. He learned from him he was from a Tibetan camp near Drepung Gomang. He emphasized camp number 5 of Mundgod. His emphasis meant for the best camp, the richest. His being crippled had affected both his growth and gait like trampling more on one side when his whole figure moved. But he could run pretty fast. He was in an old yellow singlet and faded red garment like a small skirt. The thinness of the cloth of his garment accentuated the deformity of one side of his buttock that protruded more. He knew about here as of his coming here after the earlier Kalachakra empowerment at Bodh Gaya. He led Ngodup to the park off the vast spacious compound of the towering ancient Dhamek stupa of bare-brick circular mound known for its being enshrined with the relics of Lord Buddha and his disciples. The reserved park was vast with dried tuft stubble and ruins. The unpaved walkway along one side was just alongside woods. There was a zoo nearby but he led him to the children playground with swinging post, see-saw, slide, a turning one with round plank-floor and hand bars holding almost more than 5 children. Ngodup was fascinated by the spacious playground of oblong plot with ragged low hedge partly impaired. They played there for long till towards the afternoon. Tsering and Jampa came as well. But Ngodup went more with Kaldor.

They visited it again the following days. It was on the last day before leaving that Dadul led Ngodup to the temple of dark-grayish stone-walls within the Dhemak stupa compound but almost 200 yards off it. The plots of lawns around the temple as demarcated by well-maintained low hedges dotted with Ashoka trees were being watered and manicured by white muslin Dhoti clad Indians. The walkway around and broad front part of the temple were slab-paved and clean. It was around 8.30am. The paved front yard was packed with devotees. They stood in the queue of single file. It was the day to reveal the prime relic, a relic of Lord Buddha, of the temple to the devoted public. Ngodup was going to learn about it only when he was inside and next to the one before. A young Tibetan lay guy flanked by two saffron clad Indian monks was standing next to the quadrangle glass case with sloping four sided golden roof set on a clothed table. The young Tibetan guy must have been called from Institute for Higher Tibetan Studies to translate the significance of the relic to the devoted visitors. Ngodup only had an angle view of his face like a flash as was his time to stand and look through the glass case.

‘Look carefully! Those tiny dark dots like tiny pills were Lord Buddha’s…,’ said the young Tibetan guy. Ngodup didn't get the latter when his time was over. 

He didn'thave the interest to ask Dadul about it. Dadul didn’t ask him either as he was going to ask later like what the disciplinarian had said during a congregation recess as to test or see if he had attended the congregation or not.

Ngodup’s time at Varanasi was even more fun-filled with Kaldor. He was both adapted and experiencing more. It was almost like the validity of his blind attachment to his family and mother was almost over ever. The time here at cleaner Varanasi was over too. 

Opaque: The Two Worlds

The chilled world outside

The heated world inside

Like a teaching zone-buffer

Thou, the pane of glass, blurrier

To dribbling—a counter-balance,

Warmness b’ing snatched away

Or chill subsiding for those at bay.

When graffiti rumbles to nuance.

When finger-drawn characters,

Promising solidity of clear-strips

Glisten as elegiac as to falter—

The analogy within takes the skip,

Clear-muffled game—the life.

Yonder world tantalizing-distancing

As being tethered to boring strife.

Thou, steam coated glass, thus sing.

Jot It Down

“Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.”

― Philip Roth

November 19, 2013

The soccer match on TV today is like a cricket match in India, a sort of social cushion marked by hysterical movements and shouts. The momentary trance or joy. But there is banging from my next door, the room of the old Muslim guy seemingly in his sixties. It’s 9.30pm now. There are those like three of them with the young guy, the nosiest one, who lives on the other wing of the oblong five storey building with the demarcating flights of steps in the middle just from the glass-door entrance. I always find the old guy in the same light checked shirt and dark trousers seemingly stuck over his medium height figure. I only had several angle views of his face puffy and pockmarked and his hair curly. As from the tucked up sleeves of his shirt up to the elbows I saw his sallow hands skinny, limp and with those embossed lines of veins. His thick fingers bear the proof of hard labors before being a recluse here. So I learn I am one of those hermits. So I did learn about the same at Hayange. He coughs a lot as he drinks and gets drunk sometimes. His French is terribly blurry like his Arabic in loud trembling voice. But his young mate’s voice is rather compressed shrill of the type that can be identified from an earshot distance. I saw him only once below on the front yard from the window of my room on fourth floor. He, too, is of medium built with dark coarse complexion. I saw him in a track jacket and dark jeans. His hair was cropped that accentuated his round small face and deep-set eyes. It is him who is shouting hysterically while banging on the table or any with the palms of his hands. It can be known from the raised voices of the commentator and the drones of the spectators that a goal has been bagged by their team. The drama is just like how it’s in India, how game is fanned with such physical displays.

I have been reading a book. I can’t get on. So I get up and start writing it instead as to carry on in my own way while they enjoy the match.

I can hear the guy in the other room just opposite me is behaving in the same way but rather mildly alone. He, the chubby guy with the heavy dangling paunch, is the first person here who came to me to introduce himself when I first came here on 9 August. He was bit tipsy then. As soon as I had just put down my baggage with the help of my friend he appeared near the door. After some French he learned my French and began to speak in English. His English is okay. I at once smelt he reeked mildly. He led me along the narrow corridor that has to be lighted even during the day time. He showed me the kitchen and bathroom like the official in charge (director) had shown me beforehand. The kitchen was small yet cleaner than what I have found before at other places. There is the other door that leads inside the proper dining room with the locker of six box sets (one box for each head to keep their personal kitchen wares). There is the table pressed against one corner of the wall. And those plates set on an old plastic rack. He showed me those plates first.

‘They are clean. See? You know you should always clean after dining. It’s the rule. Okay?’ He instructed like he was starved of getting someone docile enough as me to be instructed thus.

His bleary eyes roamed side to side. His front bald just above his back-sloping forehead made him appear with long abnormal bright face.

‘Oh, are these yours?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but they are clean. You see?’ He laid the stress on their cleanliness.

As he wished we sat down on the old blue painted plywood bottomed chairs. He seemed to be interested in new comers or after learning that I am a Tibetan. He seemed to be so tight that he acted like he couldn't bear his heavy head that fell this or that way like troubling his thick neck with bright limp skin. He blurted out some French now and thereafter spoke in English like getting to himself after repeated drifts. Yes, he knew about Tibet and its problems. But he wasn't the one who would say there aren't human rights in Tibet. Through his switching mode between French and English but more in the former I learned what he said again and again.

‘Tibet should be independent. Tibet should gain independence,’ said he while pouting his lower lip with a farting sound again and again.

As I sat and listened with a gathered interest as not to hurt his sentiment, he at last wept that I first found as his usual mannerism. But, no, he was weeping like a child. I was moved. Yes, he had introduced himself as from Algeria, an alien citizen here.

As I have found out at Hayange, those elderly and aged inmates of mine here are mostly retired ones, those with minimum mental pains as of social or family strains that have driven them here as recluses. So boozing, as I have found, is their first remedy after viewing such match with two or more others (if not mysteriously locking themselves inside). The chubby Algerian guy has a visiting woman and a boy, a slender woman with short hair and a small boy who I saw from back only, as his sister or wife. Whenever they come, there would be a moment fuss in his cluttered room (I can just guess so from his appearances), especially marked by the boy’s playful voice like asking him to do this and that. Then his languid compressed voice would be followed reciprocally playful now and tiresomely deterring thereafter when the woman would intervene to tame the boy. Our doors face each other with only a step gap between.

The older guy has his rather anomalous habit of getting awake like at 2am as driven by seemingly habitual hunger. Then the thuds followed by turning on micro oven to the single ring after a minute are what I can hear so clearly like he is doing it in my own room, so clearly for the thinness of the wall and stillness of the time. Then after filling followed by a belch, fart and going out to toilet he would go to bed again. His routine reminds me of the next door one at Hayange, a black guy in his fifties who was friendly the way he greeted me in French that could go farther than ‘bonjour’. His peculiarity was to stay up night long watching TV with someone, who came everyday at the fixed time past 8pm, by sleeping half day till 12 or 1pm. He was more troublesome by the way he talked on mobile phone sometimes at night in such loud voice like he could see the other side. He must be calling his wife or any family member back there in his native place. I found his voices always had the touch of closeness and benignity despite being loud—as the infatuation created by the distance.

And there at Hayange at the grand five storey building on its ground floor where I had a small room I found how those single aged ones of multi-racial origins lived on to the tune of an aged one’s manifestations between life-vigor and dread-grief—the despair for the fading former; the forced resignation, as may be happening sometimes, in the form of isolation and detachment.

Joseph was the closest one as for his liking to befriend with Tibetans. But I could be said the last one he came across from those more than 10 there and that at the end of my stay there. It happened as the closer ones of his had left somewhere else for jobs or with some higher hopes. He had a red old car (four seater) parked off the building on the roadside parking lot. It was one day he gave me a lift through a Tibetan, one of his close ones. As I happened to be standing on the landing on the ground floor, they were dismounting steps to go to the village town down. Even if the Tibetan guy confidently asked me to join them as I had got to go there as well, I was going to find later by studying Joseph’s gestures and the Tibetan guy’s making fun of him in his loud broken French. It meant he couldn't take me as his wasn't a free taxi. The Tibetan guy made fun of it by pretending to call by cupping his hands upwards the building as we were a few steps away from the sloping side part from the door with broken handle. He meant to call more for the ride. But Joseph was saying something back all the time but rather playfully. As I began to feel his unwillingness and lagged behind, he called me at last. And so there was the second time but accidentally called by another Tibetan with whom Joseph had closer friendship.

Joseph’s room was on the third floor. Through his close Tibetan friends I had learned he was bachelor that he took as his only regret. ‘Celibataire ca va pas,’ he would say. He was from Italy and he was proud to be Italian. He was said as coming to France when he was 9 with his parents and other siblings. As he was the oldest among the siblings (three sisters and a brother) he had had to work hard to help his parents. He said he was handsome with a playboy touch for having many girlfriends. But he hadn't been able to get on with one as a life partner till it was too late. It was his only regret. He said he had helped his parents and younger by working hard (menial jobs) as he was strong. He was 59 now, decrepit with swollen feet with sores. He would show the swollen feet to us. He would lament on them, curse them. His hair grizzled, well maintained, but not bald. He was always in a striped bright shirt and dark trousers. But with this regret of being single he still maintained this blunt vanity: he was obsessed with his hairstyle, the clothes he wore when going out, showy chivalry when meeting a young woman by greeting ‘Mademoiselle’ and complacent gestures thereafter.

Later when his closest one had left with only three of us for the time we became closer. I had had time to go to his room when I was at his closet, whose room was just next by on the opposite side over the corridor. But I hadn't had time to stay longer than the last one when I could see his clutters inside. He showed me his foot almost thrice. He asked me to find someone who would buy his old TV. I could sense the irony. He said the old TV placed on a stool next by the door was better than his new one before him on a wooden table. He said the old one had such good sound quality. There were those stacked (almost five) aiwa cassette tapes, black oblong with tuning switches before, on a low stool at one corner of the walls beside the new Samsung LCD TV. He said they were great stuffs now unavailable. There was a grass cutting hand-tool with long wooden handle leaned against the wall next by the door. It was new to me: the long curved blade like a big sickle and the horizontal wooden bar almost one foot long set into the handle at its mid-upper level. It was like a relic for him, a memento of his past hardships, to be cherished or less bright.

In the middle of our conversation covering global politics, as from the playing TV program (a news channel) with international news (the hype about Snowden in Russia and the controversy: if he is a whistle-blower or not), he happened to be struck with rather sudden irrelevant thought—like the impact of his being single was obsessing like a haunting nightmare. It carried on to his rating a girl to be loved. He was after color. I had to get much from his body languages. Even if I want to write his dialogues in direct speeches, I didn't get them with confidence. At one time he showed a white paper after a moment trouble of finding a visual example for me, he pointed at it by observing my gaze. Then he said he liked such skin. He pointed to it and gesticulated twice or thrice one after another by puckering his lips and the gathered fingers tips of his hand touching it lightly. Thereafter he released his puckered lips to opening his mouth in a slow motion and at the same time releasing his gathered fingers in the same motion down. And all the time his eyes were actively engaged like the prime sensor of the feelings besides casting observing glances at me.

A little later the Tibetan guy appeared in his room, who was his oldest friend as he had been here for more than a year. Yes, there were Tibetans, now left, who had been here for more than 2 years but they hadn't got on with. Now I had got chance to get out. I was feeling bit suffocated in his room, cluttered over being small. So like passing over the chain of his seamless talks over to the Tibetan guy I retired. I was leaving the place after a week, the lovely Hayange.

For the first Anniversary

A year landed flat,

The residual ebullience flattened

As the rawness and dumbness conflated

Into an abyssal dungeon of darkness

Like how everything began

By groping into calling darkness.

The minimum spark, then,

The beguiling tail of flight,

Now smirks, sneers,

Savoring the euphoric betrayal

Inflicted, yet, on a modest heart

Not meant for such cyclic movements.

                             

‘You aren’t the one for such’,

The axiomatic voice deafening now

For its precision at the bruised point;

Presumptuous yet sensible so far

As long as it falters further along

Self-redemption expedient yet pathetic.

A year landed flat,

The self-discovery yet unconvincing—

The crazed one yet readies for further,

But, no, fed up! Now the haunting portal,

Yet another romanticism, a dreamy land,

Could there be such golden gate?

Could there be such velocity—

The flight of transportation

At the flick of the free-will,

Now merging into schizophrenic frenzy

As serious as the looming queasiness—

Nothing I own, nor do I belong to this vibrancy.

If landed, masochism should

Like the intoxicated reverie!

Atsara

Web source: Atsara with a Bhutanese lady in traditional garb

The morning was nippy with the translucent veil of haze gliding downwards. The silhouettes of the towering pines tops around could be seen as the most visible. It seemed to suggest the day was going to be hot from the speckles azure sky like a vast blue canopy. It was past 7.30am. Their time there was almost over. They had to leave to catch a taxi back. As per Dadol’s recommendation it was better to be there on the road before 8am. Dadol asked Tsamchoe to find the present for Ngodup. She fumbled into the square wooden cupboard under the table and took it out. Dadol took it from her.

‘Here it’s for you my boy. Your sister Tsamchoe knitted it, a nice cap,’ said Dadol and handed it to Ngodup.

Ngodup took it shyly and looked at his mother who was smiling. It was a green knitted cap of size for Ngodup. Dadol let him put it on. She said it suited him so much. Ngodup took it off before leaving. As Tsamchoe had works to do, Dadol walked them up to the road.

‘Now, go well. You Ngodup, be a good boy. Learn well,’ said Dadol with her arms akimbo and one foot set apart before the other. She looked up with a beaming smile. Ngodup caught it only.

They waited a little before a jeep arrived.  It looked tight inside from before but the driver, a young guy in a checked Goe and jeans, got off and showed them the rear seat. Two room there; Ngodup had to sit on his mother’s lap. The old Bhutanese couple on the opposite seat was busy with chewing Dhoma all the way long to Thimphu. The views on either side of the road were blurry as of the veil of hazes got thicker and closer by skimming over the skin with the chilly yet bit itchy touch. Ngodup saw a truck parked at one corner of a runnel with a stream cascading down the dark stony rut. A topless guy, seemingly driver, was having bath like an alien one to the wonders expressed by those in the jeep. Ngodup could hear those in the front were expressing in different self-entertaining tones that dragged on till leaving back two runnels.

‘How possible such sight? Is he really a man?’ The old man mumbled out by sparing red saliva mixed with grinded Dhoma to slip out from the angle of his moving mouth. He thereafter languidly wiped it with the end of his right palm and looked at the smeared part of his palm before wiping it on the end of his old tapestry Goe.

The old lady didn’t say anything. She kept on chewing. They looked like from a remote village, more remote than Chujakha for their grimes, smell and the way of chewing Dhoma without pause. Their cropped hair was grizzled; their weathered dark red faces puffy and stout builds spoke of their aging lassitude and imposed leisure. But they appeared to be having a free time out for the capital. At every bump the old man extended his hand on to hers on the lap and took back slowly after looking at her fixed expression.

It was around 9.30am when they were dropped at the same bus top in Thimphu. The time had to be saved. After paying the driver they headed to the photo studio. It had been just opened. The fussy smart guy was at the counter. He smiled as the sign of recognition. Dolma smiled back. Tsomo smiled too but not at him. Ngodup looked at those framed B/W pictures on the walls. He was impressed by the poster on the partition board, an Indian film poster like comic piece: those sizes of heads above the cube fat letters in ocher-yellow that had the tapering backs. The poster was like a relic in his store. The care was given to let it occupy the most noticeable place just straight from the entrance. Ngodup had never watched a cinema, an Indian cinema as could be heard talking about in low voices at school by those students who wanted to narrate every movement of Hero and Gunda fight animatedly. Ngodup had wondered about how it could be like viewing such cinema. He had thought it wasn’t for him. Now he was before a poster. He couldn’t make out or guess who could be Hero and Gunda as they had thick moustaches and dark glasses on; holding a pistol, a sickle, an axe, a cutlass. He saw them funny.

‘Let’s go now, my boy,’ said Dolma. The guy was seated at the counter with the same smile. He had been paid. He didn’t seem to have fussed today. He seemed relaxed.

The return journey in the same bus was bit learning from a talkative group of elderly guys at back. The bus was full but not that packed. The aisle was free. They had their seats just near the mid part from the exit but on the favorable side with valleys views, not on the head-reeling side with the speeding back natural walls at close-up range. Again Dolma had her advantage to observe those rolling back views. Ngodup happened to give ears to those ones at back. They were in the middle of talking about Paro Tsechu, one of the major annual events of gathering, entertainment and commerce on the strip of lawn buttressed up with stone-built high walls just beginning from the flagstone-paved Dzong front yard on the lower level. It was a traditional mask-dance event, the showcase of monks’ skills and moral teachings for the devoted public through performances on the paved square floor just outside the old two storeyed building with two doors for appearing from both sides and retreating back in queue before the ones in front performing bit longer. Ngodup remembered attending the event with his mother a couple of years back. It was on the last day his mother had introduced him Lha Karchung (the human size one in white handsome mask crooning elegiac song in high melodious intonation) as the savior angel for heinous sinners in purgatory, Ashang Choegyal (the grand almost 12 feet high cane-woven hollow effigy draped with heavenly outfit and set with the grand ferocious red mask; it was to lift and walk around languidly) as the hell general, Atsara in red mask with long bent nose and in ocher-red outfit as the buffoon. Those are the prime characters he could identify at the later event. He was also interested in Cemetery Dance by athletic four wearing dark outfits drawn with human skeleton in white as the owners of the cemetery. His mother had introduced the piece of dark cloth and cube dark wood they carried and set on the floor were for chopping corpse. The story was about heaven and hell, the option to an individual conscience.

Ngodup remembered the Atsara role when one of the two buffoons was sent to look for a bride to a king or any. He noted the Atsara encountering the moderator of the sort and asking him if the bride had fat thigh by gesticulating with his thumbs and index fingers stretched-curved and holding over his raised thigh. Ngodup got the meaning that fat thigh was favored.

They were rather noisily talking about the cultural background and its significance.

‘Now, these days, many don’t know the true meaning of such Tsechu event, which is just taken for granted like a merry making event or for commerce. Who knows the true meaning behind for Shabdrung Rinpoche’s bringing forth such divine means of teachings through movements and portrayals? It’s also turning into a vanity fair as well. Such sad thing it’s,’ said the one in a maroon Goe at the far back. His voice shook first.

The serenity in his voice, or his position among them, caught them mute for a while before resuming in lower voices. It came like a direct thunderbolt from their taciturn mate behind on what they had been embroiled into fantasizing the event with more mundane self-interests besides touching briefly on its history. Now one of them tried to retrace the history like a child reciting a chronicle.

‘How it could be first like when this significant event came into being? People must be so poor but kind hearted and contented,’ said one.

‘Oh, but it could be hard for those living far off like at Sasam Chorten,’ said another.

‘What, there could be hardly any dwellings at Sasam Chorten then. I told you to give mind before speaking. It’s about history, not sort of guesswork,’ said the younger one who had been the noisiest and funniest.

The taciturn one behind, an elderly guy in his late fifties, gazed out sternly through the gap of two bars. Ngodup was eager to hear more from the last speaker. But it was about to reach Paro now. He found him ebulliently funny, not like Yangzom’s pranks. 

The Oddity of Our Time

What syndrome do these attributes indicate: kowtowing, genteel fed by self-centered avarice; growling internally (the possibility for trampling to nullity) but fawning externally like a cat (for those outsiders); being at the nadir stage of a commoner but skilled in making glib adorned with grandiloquent greatness (in the name of faith); no criticisms in the name of free speech that spares only 'praises at the best' and 'circumlocutions at the worst'; finding nuance to interpret superstition at such comic degree by lip serving the greatness of the ultimate reality--the emptiness (negation of independence) nothing other than interdependently connected (no place for irrelevant miracles here); for harder meaning 'placed in mere name so namely existent' nothing other than 'the interdependence of the name, for its coming into existence that's namely, with relation to its to be named' (no place for a commoner's instinct of taking this and that name as inherently or independently within what to be named) but 'the name' in its mere form exists with relation to its to be named there, the subtle thread of causation; the hardest is said as knowing the possibility of every related activity (by the relation between the name and what to be named) even in mere name (for example even if Pema, someone's name, is in mere name, the possibility is there to be able to say that Pema eats, sleeps, laughs, etc. but not by an independently existed Pema)?    

Within Your Hands Reach, Old Chenar

A view from my window taken during another moment

Looking out through the window glass next by the wash basin with the water tap running both hot and cold water, thanks for French government’s kindness, I have rather poignant views today different from my last post (You Old Chenar). The day has been drowsy, overcast and dribbling wet as the fallen dried brown-crisp leaves saturated, supple like infused leather could be. Yes, they are sticky too. I have to make sure to rub my boots well on the door rug (an oblong dark holed rubber patch set on the grilled part to make level with the floor) just inside the glass door activated by the magnetic device with the given keys. Now I find, as I have found, the new bald patch isn't

just like a scar of ringworm but a long strip. It has turned out to be like an afterthought-plan of road making connecting the major busy road. The stripping for the strip, broad enough for double-lanes, forms an arch more curving at one end at this side where I stay than on the other end beginning from the major road down. I take the usual road (Rue Jean Jaures) that runs by the simple dwellings on one side. It connects the upper point where the two directions meet just by the wooded rising part with the glass paneled bus stop cabin in the middle of the triangle part just down formed by the road diverging into two parts on either side of the raised part that seems to be rocky and connecting to the adjoining road with paces distance between. It is formed by the adjoining upper road closing the Y like diverging road. The cabin was always deserted but with a few heads so seldom. I can see a white bus parked just by the wood, maybe school bus of the high school nearby, on the adjoining road that ends its one direction up to the high school at the foot of rising wooded parts around. The other direction leads further to private dwellings at the bases of those wooded parts. But I don’t have to take the road to the upper part with the woods and parked bus but down towards the major road, which runs above the modest concrete steel structure and my road runs below it with the round concrete colonnade on either side supporting the structure.

Yesterday one more sophisticated machine arrived to strip the trees clean to make this view that I can see now. It had four large wheels, tractor wheels with ridges forming deep grooves, which carried the pyramidal glass cabin for the driver to monitor the gearing devices before him to operate the tusk like cutting device with the well-oiled supple joint working like a giant monster hand. The sophistication lay in this tusk like device, its top part especially like the most ferocious part. Its giant fingers could clutch the trunk of a tree from its base part, those whitish stubble now like white disks stuck on the dark muddy strip, and cut it clean in a second before chopping into feet long pieces. It snatched a trunk down like an elephant could do the branch of a tree with its tusk. More amazingly, it had other blades to clear the twigs on the upper shaft of a trunk. The cut pieces of wood were stacked on one side and the twigs with leaves on other side. The slippery machine sounds could be heard when its top robotic part swiveled for the right grip and switching blades.

So today the cut pieces of wood and twigs are no longer there.  The muddy dark strip now gives me the definite idea of its plan to connect between the major road down and the usual road up at the meeting point by the woods.

But what I see today isn't just the desolate view of the dark arching strip and white stubble of the cut trees. What I see today is the revelation of more simple dwellings that have been hidden till today. I can see the pale-brown tile-roofed dwelling by more down there from my window on the fourth floor. The dwelling was simple with no glass skylights as others on its ridge-roof with steep gables but a small chimney stack at one end of the roof-ridge. Its back part was just by the dark strip barricaded by the ragged hedge. There are two back windows with wooden shutters open suggesting the living quarters as the small one suggesting the kitchen. As I look closer, I see a man in a dark checked shirt and light-blue jogging trousers was walking on the small patch of lawn, which seems to be well-maintained, next by the dwelling. He looks like a boy in a cap but looking at his walking sticks, one whitish metal and the other dark wooden, he must be an old one with arthritis or rheumatism. He walks back and fro in a teetering gait. There was a young fir tree at one end of the green lawn. Its branches begin right from its base; must be for marking Christmas celebration.

The view is like a surprise to find such modest dwellings just nearby. The busy major road runs on the raised part just off the more simple dwellings now revealed. The glossy billboard on one side of the major road displaying changing images of glamour seems to be luring the hidden-revealed dwellings to come out. So they can’t hide now from its direct influence. But there is this quaint touch, as per my impression, as played by the one dwelling next by with a tail of pale-blue smoke rising up from its chimney stack hidden from me. The quaintness I find is not just the tail of smoke but its movement from the setting self-contained that reminds my childhood memories of seeing such signs from the roof tops. I tend to associate it with warmth despite the struggles within.