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. 

You Old Chenar!

Oh, you, old chenar tree!

You have cheated me for being new here

Letting me take you as an old maple—

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

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

Littering around you like fallen grey hair proving your time.

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

Bear your litters over their being bleached rooted like to prove

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

But your short trunk bearing three prime branches looks robust,

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

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

The bright yet yellowish glowing lamp lighted up your vicinity,

An emphasis on your skeleton by lighting from below.

Oh, sorry, you fume for being that revealed,

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

Leave the uncertain upcoming.

And the queue of those stationed old sputtering cars,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By letting the engine vibrate like ignoring you.

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

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

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

The sacrifice of life for such simple yet complex joys.

An alien one, I, cast several peeks down

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

The movements, the subtle caring nervous quivers.

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

Such accidental revelations tonight, a rare time.

The overcast night sky that spares vanishing patches of clearness.

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

Hidden but your milky lights couldn’t be hidden.

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

Especially, what I spot down there?

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

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

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

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

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

Within short period of time, morning till afternoon?

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

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

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

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

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

The monster fangs with such infernal noises.

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

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

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

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

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

The odd vegetable bed untamed but unused lawn,

The odd play ground set with a small trampoline recently

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Must have been brought here for fresh use

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

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

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

I quickly shut the window to brood inside alone. 

A Herald

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No, mother.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘How about the monasteries in India?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.