The Lonely Cashew Tree

Like those antique mango trees in the yard,

Thou art decrepit, thy limbs stiff-rough

As the coarsest example could be—

The askew trunk dehydrated like a sheet of dried leather,

Like an aged man with arthritis limping his way off.

But, when then, thy limbs strong with lush green foliages,

The heart-shaped ones glistened through timely transpiration,

Adorning thee with an air of urbanity and vanity.

And the mouth-watering fruits laden at the other times,

Green dull to crimson tinted with yellowish thin strips,

Thy true glamour like the essence of thy existence

That tantalized us, the hungry novices, into desperate leaps,

The anxiety obsessed leaps and pelting to get one plucked

At the cost of getting caught by the sturdy aged one,

Who was like stationed for such thieving, us,

Who was the caretaker of the simple shrine by thou.

And now, in retrospect, wistfully I evoke thee

Next by the simple shrine that had nourished my thoughts

As you had nourished my imaginations—

Now a true calling I can hear to do something for thee,

A word of remembrance as not to be ungrateful

That I am not. Could I be the only one hearing thy call?

With the maturity of my mind and intellect,

Though suffered much thru discriminating flurries,

I find a moment now for thee, a healing drop it’s.

So healing thy memories with the simple shrine,

So special thou art ever to be cherished,

A bridge that connects to the moments innocent

To the formative years, so needy for now,

The struggling entity to feel at ease for a moment.

And so the chapter began

The best souvenir that speaks

And so the chapter began,

So drastic as the preceded rubbles,

Amid shards, dust, soil and scraps—

Where to point but to ourselves, the fated ones.

Not to a single cause,

But a sequence of negligence,

How a dust-blinded one could see

How the sudden gust got him inundated thus—

The traces gone in an instant but mere blind speculations

Like the yonder wild-fire devouring in vain.

If the failed characters of the story,

In their ghostly tableau to the fits of piercing emotion,

Could be resurrected,

They would have gained ours back this instant,

For, if not, what their return for?

But the savior we have,

Whom we count on by that many complacent audiences.

The ill-fated yet worth-exposed we are,

Yet, even in our handful, why we falter—

From practical hearts in him to such deeper senses

That matter now, this instant, and on ever.

Not flattened yet rumbling

Oh, our true senses!

Oh, our greatness!

Oh, our oneness in both joys and sorrows!

Oh, this so needy self-awareness!

Blind not by a brocade-draped pride,

But, yes, remember ever!

And so the chapter began,

So drastic as the preceded rubbles,

Amid shards, dust, soil and scraps—

Where to point but to ourselves, the fated ones.

Interregnum

Paro, Bhutan: Paro Dzong over the river and Tadzong (the watch tower) in the far background

As I've commissioned myself in writing a scrap, the first draft ever, I am afraid to let you, my beloved readers, know that I am going to frequent here even more seldom. The following is like the prelude. The purpose of posting it here is to share with you the gist of 'why I have self-commissioned so?' I wish it may grow more fervent that leads me to an end. It's like an autobiographical fiction work. It's like 'whenever you fall short of what to write about, go back to your childhood.' :)

The sickening tendency of getting obsessed can be the most unbearable thing at the given moment like tuning oneself to an infernal noise, hunger, thirst, addictive substance that one doesn't have at the moment, etc. It only exacerbates further. And so through such personal malaises one can find an instant conducive solution as the best for the moment. It’s nothing other than diverting or learning to divert one’s attention to something better way possible. It does work as I have tried the same like finding a ready made gift. Like, at this instant, the infernal noise of drilling machine on the above floor challenges me as I am applying this magic antidote. It works.

And so a sprightly will matters the most to be there at the lair of one’s wish or dream, or at least to test oneself as the situations present themselves to face on. And I have lacked such a will so badly for the thing that I have wished to try on, to write a story. I have to have it and with such one, even if not fervently spontaneous, that craves for the same thing I feel how I react rather practically now rather than just letting pass fleeting wishes into darkness and come back so at sporadic moments dotted over years. I would catch it and let it work so far as I have this will strong enough to content myself at least. There you are, the snotty village lad and you have managed to live on through oddity after oddity that remains as the core of my tickling interest patch to begin with.

Even if my initial desire was to begin from my parental native place Dromo in Tibet by scraping off everything my memory holds what I had heard about there and their lives, I have to let go of this urge for the purpose of dealing with what I know and what I am best suit for as I think I know myself better. It’s like if I can only go that far about my own childhood times, how I can manage to get beyond and get them in proper order. How possible I could give serious ear to their repeated but broken pieces of narration about the goodness in our own country before it was occupied by Red China and the flows of lamentations plus adventurous flight to the initial acute hardships in getting settled at Paro Chujakha, Bhutan. I was so small and I was only 10 when I had to leave home for the journey reserved for this odd sibling of the four. It was like getting parted by space and time but not by mental linkages that still hunt there, the first stable footing in exile for them and my sisters. Especially I was born there, the odd sibling. Ngodup was sitting at the end of the bed and lost again thus. 

On Thy 78th Birthday

With the clasped fingers of my hands in lotus bud form placed at the heart of my chest, I do, with due respect and prostrations, wish your Holiness a Happy Birthday! As for the dire need of your presence at such time so critical I do pray wholeheartedly that may you live long ever as the beacon to clear the darkness we project and guide us along thy illumined path to 'Life worth-spent' to 'Warm-heartedness'; 'Universal responsibility' to 'Beyond Religion'! We need you ever and ever! Thus, we do pray, never to leave us behind as blind, whimsical and vulgar as susceptible to be hypnotized by every brunt of cold-heartedness and perversions at glance reach!!! _/\_ 

For My Dear Friend Yeshi

Nothing worth-hankering than the gone days

Gaiety there even in an argument at thin air—

I remember such happened twice or thrice fair,

But the cemented friendship grew on to bay…

Even now, with this cherishing thought so lively,

I feel we share a great deal each other,

 Even if not privy in mere mundane sense,

As our tie was knotted by the golden thread.

But the partition to the yonder unknown,

The realms we destined to step on,

The play of a chasing curiosity or sense,

Created a frail barrier as it’s in fact.

But the vicissitude has this gift for us,

To cherish on with each funny memory—

The gone ones are golden in true sense,

The dreamy nature soothes, teaches…

The sought struggle now,

The betterment in any,

Can’t mimic the gone ones,

The gold wrapped up in tattered cloth.

In your quirky gesticulations,

In each languid movement,

Your fastidiousness in a piece of narration,

Your smiles,

Your touch of tidiness,

Your way of facing…

I know them so well.

From an alien land

I call thy name within

Coz that I've time now,

But in later turns

Wish they aren't cruel

Letting me blot out those sweet memories

For the menial chore ,

The self-levied burden.

Dear friend!

Do remember me in your prayers!

And take me as ever in your pristine heart!

And I hold on…,

Would never let go

The destined bondage in clear light.

And today, at this moment,

I happened to make out this odd piece,

The popped up thought’s wish

To paint even with an unskilled hand

To leave something for thee, my dear friend!

And feel only from those odd lines,

No place for artistic beauty to be observed.

Just try to trace my feelings!

And I feel and pray ever!

Your true friend Norsang

From Hayange, France on April 4, 2013

Taken by me with my phone camera during one of my initial times here in France

Reflection

It may be common for most hearing the other one inspiring you or expressing his or her own regrets by saying, ‘Why life then if such and such coveted pleasure-spices can’t be tasted? It’s to be brazen enough or diligent enough in pursuing and having the same to quench the burning desire.’

The innocent yet silly heart had the times to take it in overdose, bloated and digesting thus so far. But the starvation obsessed.  

Yet, through the folds of life patterns and backed by the tiny learning, I've now a concrete answer for it. As to test what he had, I asked the guy beside me, ‘Do you think such as the time now we share in leisure with something to drink and broach over simple matters at ease as a happy time or what is called happiness?”

He shook his head sincerely. He must have had far fancier teeming before his chasing thoughts. So I told him that I had expected the same response from him. He showed a faint pensive smile.

In gradual process the answer somehow conjured up thus, ‘Then what to be devoured as you wish? Since the infinity of time back and ahead on must be or to be the same or worse. Then what to feel seized away or missed?’

As a Tibetan saying goes on, ‘The wine (homemade grain wine) prepared by oneself has to be taken, even if it’s too sour.’  The insightful irony teaches me what lies ahead, the same monotonousness as what I do and give way to…

Dear Mother

As my age advances on amid plodding feelings ruefully apologizing for every failure, especially the core failure as against your only wish for what I to be, I am yet palpable of your even such tiny piece of advice, the astute way of taming me, relating to what we saw en route for Paro Bazaar from the school. After crossing the rickety ancient bridge roofed and plank-floored, walking alongside the asphalted road lined with short-fat-trunked willows on either side and leaping over the gutter by the road to take the foot path between the road and the head-high compound wall of the palace, you pointed to a guy urinating into a pond by the road on the other side and taught me through frightening yet impressive story of how such misdeed like urinating in water would be punished in the hell.

‘Ashang Choegyal (Uncle Dharma Raj), the inspector general of hell, would command you in his heart-shuddering tone to sieve away urine from the water,’ she said with motherly love to teach me through her way. It’s a sort of riddle for me then. I at once got the maze-work, when I was almost 7. I wondered how one could strain urine from water like solid things or skim it like cream from milk. It’s the impossibility or the heavy conundrum that made me dread more than the school annual examinations. So since then I’ve best avoided doing so.

Through self-inflicted pains and quasi joys I have come to be able to forebear an obnoxious grimace from a complete stranger taking it as the reaction of his pains and desperation…

Through indolent high-will I've come to accept with resignation that even such will, though latent, matters before pettier messes.

Through such folds of oddities I can make it present what lies ahead or in the end.

But through the incorrigible deceit of this conceit, the rooted notion of independence, I do confess that it’s the prime stronghold in close-hand-tie with biased self-love that overpower and shroud the latency estranged alien like something preposterous.

Yet, those pieces of yours interspersed amid such messes glisten, heal, inspire—the only source of prop up, a push forward. They’re my jewels, my life-breaths to brave ahead an inch in sound way that doesn’t mean what it’s taken as ‘able’, ‘clever’, ‘reputed’ in the way coveted or what life is interpreted to be or should be. And a piece of yours:

A corny soul flutters over fusses

A solicitude unfelt aloof muses—

The sour-joy burden taken numbed

For insomnia those wiles chaff-wounded.