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.