Monday, October 21, 2013

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. 


Monday, October 14, 2013

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. 

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

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. 

Saturday, August 3, 2013

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.


Friday, July 19, 2013

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.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

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. 

Friday, July 5, 2013

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!!! _/\_