The Parrot

The first time i slapped her, hard on the face, she placed her palm on her cheek and looked at me through her hair. How dare you, i could read her eyes. I felt great after that, completely lifted. The bad energy had drained away. I felt the weight which i don't know how to write about was also put aside. I felt calm and composed. Like if an airplane dropped next to me i would just take a chair and sit there and watch the people crawling out of the plane. Maybe some will burn too with the plane. But i would be sitting there watching them burn- i felt that kind of calm after i slapped her for the first time. It was in the bathroom. The mirror broke because she broke it. Then she took the toothbrush and threw it all over the floor. Then she cried. Wailed and moaned. That day her favorite parrot flew out of the cage. It was kept in the balcony. The parrot in the cage. She had taught the parrot to say "i love you" and each time i entered the room, the pareot would litter the atmosphere with its never-ending "I love you". It felt cute at first, but as time went by i wanted to break that bird's neck. But that day when i slapped her the parrot flew away to leave behind the desolate cage. 

That night we removed our clothes and slept together. The mirror was broken, the toothbrush lying on the floor and the parrot that could say 'i love you' flew away. 

The fall

The summer heat made its presence felt and Tanu laid herself on the bed and watched the dangling fan from the ceiling rotating in its full speed. As she watched the fan, she wondered, what would happen if the fan was to lose one of its screws and fall. Would it fall right on her and chop her head off leaving her body in a pool of blood oozing out of her neck while the head is motionless at the corner of the room? Raw and fresh blood splashed on the white wall. Or the rotating fan would fall and cut of one of her limbs and leave her in pain. Maybe she will die of excessive bleeding before any help reaches her. Or right at the moment when the fan is at the verge of falling, the power would just go off and the fan would not at all fall. But it doesn’t solve, because, when the power is back it would definitely fall. Or maybe just as the fan is about to fall, her friend would knock on the door and as she attends it the fan would fall on the bed, precisely where she was laying and her friend would be credited for mitigating the mishap by knocking on the door at the very crucial moment. Maybe words about this friend would go around and people would hail the friend a hero. The religious ones would probably say God came down in the form of a friend to save her.

But the truth is we will never know until the fan loses its screw and falls.

'Bakwas' person.

I am a 'bakwas' person. My friend tells me. And he is right. I look beyond reality to seek something beyond it. I look at world as though i am dreaming. I can't live with a lot of people around. I cannot. I cannot attend weddings. I hate weddings. And birthdays. And social gatherings. I do not wish people on birthdays. Very rare of me wishing them. I cannot love people. They die anyways. I am not a romantic person. I am insensitive. I instantly stop chatting with people if they dont show as much interest as i do. I can't  tell people that they are beautiful because i fear they might think i am just telling it just for the sake, while i am not. I don't know how to respond to a thank you. I cant handle when people compliment me, i dont know what to do or say. I have a lot of questions about how gods function or how they don't. A lot of people dislike me. Sometimes I stop and talk to random people. One time I asked a stranger lady sitting at the clock tower if she was going through anything and would want to tell me. I told her I wouldn't judge her. Tell me all and i will listen, i said. She looked frightened at first but she ended up crying. We did not exchange numbers because that's not me. I took her to a coffee shop and she stopped crying. One time I saw a man walking with a bag over his shoulder and i offered to drop him to wherever he was going. He looked confused at first. I gave him my phone and asked him to call someone and give that person the registration number of my car. He was more scared. I told him i am only trying to help him. And so i dropped him safely at his place. Trust is earned they say.

But sometimes i want to speed up my car and crash it on the concrete wall and see what happens. I think the bonnet and the windshield will break. The engine will give out white fumes like in movies. Or maybe i will get hurt too, but how will i know with certainty what will happen if i dont do it. It was last year at this time. I wanted to do it but i didnt. Now i dont want to do it. The cost of repair would be lot and i dont have money.

But hey, do tell me if you have an old car and you want to to crash it. I mean just in case, i would love to do it for you. Of course for free.

2 minutes

Right at this moment, right  now just as you started reading this the following things happened somewhere. A child is born while someone just took his last breathe. Somebody just got fired and someone just got his dream job. Someone bought a new car while someone just crashed his car. Someone just meet a new person who would be the love of his life while someone just signed his divorce papers. Somebody smoked his last cigarette while someone else just tried for the first time. Someone just frowned while someone just smiled. Somewhere someone just cried of sadness and the other just cried tears of laughter. And somewhere, someone just lasted for two minutes. Two minutes. What a shame for my money lasts longer than that.

Uncle Gupta

Nobody exactly knew when uncle Gupta  came to Bhutan. Now of course the elders knew but nobody discussed uncle Gupta and  i or my friends could never overcome the fear of asking about him hence we never knew much about him. But from amateur sources i learned that he had come to Thimphu long before i was born or in fact long before any of my friends were born.

Uncle Gupta was a man of very little words. He always wore the same shirt and the same pants and went to work with an umbrella in his hand- summer or winter. He seldom spoke to anyone. I heard he works in the bank, but what work, nobody knew.

He lived alone in the flat below ours, in the first floor. He would go to office in the morning and come back in the evening with a plastic full of stuffs which I assume were veggies.

There was nothing we knew about him except one thing: he was tired of his house being a favourite spot for burglars. The burglars had visited his house for three times in last one year. He hated this the most. And i could see it in his brown eyes. The burglars too seemed to be fun loving people for they would not take anything from his house. They would only toss and turn his belonging. Everything would on the floor. And nobody had ever seen someone entering or leaving his house. No one ever even heard a sound from his flat, yet it happened for third time in a year. So it was anyone's guess how stressed uncle Gupta was.

Now one night, for reasons we never knew why he was up, at around midnight Gupta saw from his bedroom that a man was climbing the sewage pipe and trying to reach out the veranda of the first floor of the opposite building. Just as he saw this he realised he was the sole witness to a burglary in happening. A voice deep within told him this man trying to climb the sewage pipe was the reason behind all his distress. His blood boiled up. He turned red with rage.

He rushed down to the ground floor and and saw that the man still climbing the pipe. He then picked up a fist-sized stone and shouted a " hey you!" And hurled the stone at him. At this point everyone in the neighbourhood woke up and came out.

The stone exactly hit the head of the man. And he fell down on the concrete ground below from the first floor with a loud thud.

Nobody knows clearly about what happened after that. In the ensuing days, it only turned out that the man wasn't a thief but he  had actually lost the keys to his flat and was trying to climb up to his room silently without disturbing the neighbors at the pinnacle of the night.

You are yourself.

It's 1.31 am as I start writing this. I am at a small parking space in front of the food processing unit in Jungshina. I have parked my car here and I have decided to call it a night here in this car for tonight. I just returned from a birthday party and I am hit by subtle consciousness.

The party was great. We danced and sang. I met new people, new faces and new thoughts. There was laughter and there were smiles. There was music and there we sang together. As the party ended I dropped some of the new acquaintances to their homes.

And at the end I returned. All by myself with only my radio in the car singing me songs.

I don't have the audacity to knock on my sister's door at this hour of the night. So I take refuge in my car.

This triggers my mind on a voyage to understand life. I don't know if I will decipher anything before the sun rises. I don't know if I will ever fathom life, but here I am. All alone. All by myself. Where is the laughter. Where have the smiles gone? What's that thing that is eternal and if there is ever such a thing, will I ever find it?

I am consumed by reality of life. Every now and then, when the sun goes down and the street lights are lit, I am hit by the reality of life. All that you think is there in the universe for you is an illusion. When night comes up, you will find yourself again all alone. You will find you.

And tonight I endeavor to find myself a little closer than yesterday.

I am myself.

If you ask me, if I am doing anything tangible, then let me say this again: I do nothing. I am neither employed nor a graduate. I am neither student nor unemployed. I don't have any work yet I don't stay idle. I dont earn but I stay alone, cook alone, eat alone and sleep alone  But what am I?

I am myself. I am loving myself. I am talking to me in the kitchen when I am cooking. I am talking to myself when I am driving around town. I say to myself what I am and what I need to be.

This I have found is a therapy. It heals my soul. Talking to myself, i have found is a balm. It's looking at the mirror. I love how the tip of my tongue touches the upper palate of my mouth where my upper front teeth is embedded to the jaw and how on each touch I pronounce a syllable. And how I can say "I am happy!!!" without the tip of my tongue touching the upper palate. Only the lips meet.

Sometimes I untether my mind and let it fly. It drifts back in time. It goes to the time when I was very stressed. To the time how each day was a year. Then it drifts past this time and halts to the time when was a stupid imprudent boy.

And I call my mind back again to the present and I find myself in the sofa. Palms sweaty, armpits wet. Blood rushing and heart beating like a drum. Then I walk to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of water, drink it down. The cold water moves down my throat and as it reaches my stomach I cool down. It cools me. And I go to sleep.