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.

Travelling and discovering self.

I out of blue travelled to Gomtu. It was a wonderful journey. It was my first time driving to Phuntsholing and Indian plains although I have driven on the plains of Dehradun.

The enormous road narrowed down when we started ascending to the top of chapcha and once we reached the peak we descended again all the way to chhukha then to Gedu and finally in the plains of Phuntsholing. It was beautiful, driving through fog and mist. And when we reached the plains, warm air greeted us with its own manifestation of spring. The spring in Phuntsholing was strikingly different from spring in Thimphu for Phuntsholing offered warmer and dense air while Thimphu still retains it's cold and only allows few flowers to grow and puts all its efforts in reviving the natural gold. Peaches and plums are seen in its pinnacle of beauty.

While the plains had different to offer. The air was warm and dense. It was noisy. But it rekindled the days from Dehradun. There were Teak plantation and as I drove on the road that cuts through this plantation it felt as though I was in Dehradun. Same air. Same vegetation and of course with it brought same melancholy.

Gomtu, however was vibrant. It never slept. The factories worked its engines all through day and night. The air was dustful and a layer of smog had settled above that watched the Gomtu town carefully of its happenings.

Its already end of March, 2018, and I have already travelled to several places. I believe this year is the year of travelling and discovering the places around and finally discovering myself.

Banning myself from being social.

Social networking sites, I have realised,  have robbed me off all my time which I could have invested in doing good things in my life. Social media has created a hole in my life so big that it sucks all my time into its abyss and leave me no good time for other progressive events in my life.

A little time I get I take my damned phone and spend hours on Facebook that reaps to nothing but lose the prospect of being able to achieve my goals. In fact Facebook have blurred the distinctiveness of my goals. All my time was used in reading the pointless news feed on Facebook that I had very little or no time to myself to think and layout the plans to grow myself nearer to my goals. 

The platform that Facebook has provided has become a battlefield of comparison. You compare your life with the people who have cropped out the sour edges of their life and showed fragments of their almost sweet life in photographs. You see they have been visited by friends or the other friends are going home. Or the other one has got a job. The one who failed the ninth grade has a baby now. Then you see how the shy girl who studied with you in tenth grade and had no prospect of her being even uglier grown into a fine model like lady in the college. Of course all in photographs and when you finally accidentally meet her in person how you realize that she hasn't actually changed much and you were only being deceived, altogether by the lady, the photograph and social media.

But this isn't the reason why I stopped using Facebook there's even more bigger picture which you might not have realized. Mark actually trades your time with the advertisers and gets himself paid. Have you ever wondered how he makes money? You see Facebook is free for anyone to use but you also know that Mark made billions of dollars from Facebook. But have you ever wondered how he makes money from Facebook? Well let me burst the bubble for you. Facebook takes all our information and makes statistics of it. Like the region, our likes on pages, our activactiveness and so on and he sells this information to the people who want to post their ads. Based on statistics produced from our information he sets the target for the ads and earns billions. Let me burst a bigger bubble to you, he makes money from your time on Facebook and your information. Each of us spend a lot of time making money for him. 

So I am am keeping myself away from social media now. Also it would help me to find the solitude I need to listen to the inner voice. The-gut-voice some people call it. Let me be a little selfish, because from my act of being selfish some learned the beauty of solitude, isn't it? So trust me it's all going to reap good. I trust my gut.

The Person I Did Not Want To Be

People always said that they have figured out whom they want to be but it was different for me for I had, even as a kid, figured out whom I don't want to be. I knew whom I don't want to be. It was distinctly clear whom I don't want to be.

I did not want to be a person without purpose in life. I did not want to be someone who was at the verge of failing out. I did not want to be person who is being robbed of the prospect of him making others happy. I did not want to be someone who was a wreck. A wreck who is being formed of pieces of feeble hopes. I did not want to be a person with a abyss in his heart which can never be filled. I did not want to be a person who wants to run away to a secluded place. I didn't want to be a person who seeks solitude and often soliloquy in loudness in absence of someone else. I did not want to be someone who is lost.

But you see, I thought so much about whom I don't want to be that I exactly became whom I never wanted to be.

Solitude seeking

all the means of reach, he abolished
and now in a room of only walls
he has chosen to be,
often soliloquizing
and it's a therapy he has found.

all it might be well with you, he hopes
also the change in his demeanor
he thinks, you will forgive.
to be together again by a fire
and share one's tale,
it's just only in months.

Remembered.

Several years after completing high school, one fine morning, I wear my uniform, put on my cape and wear my leather boots that expands till above my ankle and walk in Norzin lam. That is where I work. I manage the traffic. I put on white gloves on my hands and I stand at this cemented round shed and I wave my hands to signal the drivers to either stop and let the other car pass by or just drive off. That's my regular job. I am replaced by my other fellow working colleagues when I experience fatigue due to standing for prolonged times.

This is all I do for an earning but why do I recollect the fine morning several years after middle secondary school? Why am I fond of it you may ask but this day brought with it a change in my mundane and monotonous days.

That day as I resorted to managing the crossroads for pedestrians, a black car stoped by to let the crowd cross the road in the Norzin lam. It wasn't the crowd that amused me nor was it the black car but it was the man behind the wheels. I instantly recognized this man with very less effort but he seemed very less conscious about my presence there for he seemed lost in his own thoughts. His forehead furrowed by what I don't know. The eyes are the same. Deep and sunken. Specks of beard seemed to have grown. The music in his car was loud enough for me to hear and it was the same old song he used to play several years ago when we were at high school. I want this man to look at me. I don't know if he would look at me. And even if looks at me  will he seem me familiar and would he say I look familiar to him. And if he does say I look familiar, what do I tell him? It seemed that he was looking at the crowd but my presence seemed to have escaped his notice. Or has he forgotten me? The sand of time buried his memory of me that he no longer recognises me and has no memory of me? Or is he just ignoring the fact that I stand there: a familiar face?

In the midst of these thoughts he began to move, he would accelerate and drive past me in a few seconds. But I do something which I didn't know I was doing. I ask him to pull over by the side. I whistle at him to pull over by the side. He is confused now. He was only waiting for the crowd to pass by. And it is what he is supposed to be doing. With a puzzled look he pulls over by the side.

I then hurriedly walk to him. It's just few steps. Then as I approach him by the driver's door, he looks at me with a confused face which turns bright and glows with each step I take towards him. And as I near him, he is seated on the driver's seat with the music turned off.

He smiles at me, and with the voice of a man he is, he asks in full familiarity, "what's the matter, officer Yangzom?"

And I realised I only stopped him to see if he remembers me.

Death

Death. A word that is often heard but ignored more often. You have heard death a lot of times. Death came to you in lot of forms, the plant you planted might have died of dryness. The hobbies you had might have died because now you don’t feel like playing a guitar or play a sport. Other times death might have come to you when your dog died, or when your favorite cat died. Or it came when a neighbor faraway died. That must have been how you knew death, but to me death came silently one morning and took my father right from the grip of my hand.

Death is cold. First it made my father’s legs cold. Then it made the hands cold and finally his heart. Then his eyes froze. Just right in front of me the person who loves me the most in this world died. The person who will walk the world if it means an iota of happiness to me died that day. Nothing could hide him from death. My world crashed and fell down. But I didn’t shed a tear, for I have cried so much from within that my tears dried a long time before he died that day.

To be continued…..

To be or not to be, in queue.

I have always been told to think out of the box, bedifferent, and be myself. I have been asked not to follow crowd. I have been asked to question the events that are unfolding in front of me, but like always I chose to remain in my comfort zone not paying any heed to whatsoever said. Of course all these advices had been in the back of my head buried somewhere in subconscious graveyard. But a small incident that occurred last week at an ATM really kept me sleepless for nights.

I am a very lethargic and introversive a combination which is deadlier than the venoms. Last week I was in the market with a friend of mine. I had to withdraw money from one of the ATMs of Punjab National Bank in that area and after strenuous search I found one with a long queue outside. I also stood in the queue and I noticed that there was actually another ATM installed there. So I asked the guy in front of me if the other one was working or not and he said that it may not be working because there was no queue outside it.I nodded and waited for a moment. Since there was no one behind me on the queue I walked to this ATM and viola! It was working! I went in and withdrew my money and walked out like a boss while people looked at me and started queuing outside this ATM.

That day I learned firsthand how I might have had missed opportunities in my life because I never questioned anything and always stood in queue everywhere. I always did what others were doing and I followed the herd. Later that night as I contemplated over what happened during the day, I realized that this is my call for change in life. I could no longer be a passive follower of societal norms and live a mediocre life. I need to start questioning about possibilities of ways of doing things and solving problem. I need to be on my toe tips and push myself forward.

Change

all the means of reach, he abolished
and now in a room of only walls
he has chosen to be,
often soliloquizing
and it's a therapy he has found.

all it might be well with you, he hopes
also the change in his demeanor
he thinks, you will forgive.
to be together again by a fire
and share one's tale,
it's just only in months.
Soon he shall see you again,
until then, you be safe, sound and happy, he prays.

Little awakening at the ATM

I have always been told to think out of the box, be different, and be myself. I have been asked not to follow crowd. I have been asked to question the events that are unfolding in front of me, but like always I chose to remain in my comfort zone not paying any heed to whatsoever said. Of course all these advices had been in the back of my head buried somewhere in subconscious graveyard. But a small incident that occurred with me last week at an ATM really kept me sleepless for many days.

I am a very lethargic and introversive a combination which is deadlier than the venoms. So last week I was in the market with a friend of mine. I had to withdraw money from one of the ATMs of Punjab National Bank in that area and after strenuous search I found one with a long queue outside. I also stood in the queue and I noticed that there was actually another ATM installed there. So I asked the guy in front of mine if the other one was working and he said that it may not be working because there was no queue on it. I nodded and waited for a moment. Since there was no one behind me on the queue I walked to this ATM and viola! It was working! I went in and withdrew my money and walked out like a boss while people looked at me and started queuing outside this ATM.

That day I learned firsthand how I might have had missed opportunities in my life because I never questioned anything and always stood in queue everywhere. I always did what others were doing and I followed the herd. Later that night as I contemplated over what happened during the day, I realized that this is my call for change in life. I could no longer be a passive follower of societal norms and live a mediocre life. I need to start questioning about possibilities of ways of doing things and solving problem. I need to be on my toe tips and push myself forward.

A crack in monotonous days

Only a couple of days have passed after I along with my roommate and few other friends gathered in chilly evening at Som’s room and discussed how mundane our days are passing. Going to college, coming back, cooking meals and retiring to bed was all that we were doing. Since it was in the midst of a long stretch of holidays, Som promptly suggested that we venture out on a trip that very night. Everyone agreed in excitement and planned the logistics. My roommate has a car and after arranging for two more bikes, eight of us ventured out at midnight to a place called Mussoori, which is 50 kms from the place of our stay. It’s a very popular hill-station which has been conferred with Queen of the Hills. The road to the hill top maneuvers through thick forest with numerous curves and bends.

I wore the toughest from my closet that can withstand the pre-wintery cold. We started the journey with me being in the car and others on the bikes and car equally with soulful songs played in the background to subside the hearts beating high on adrenaline. After having travelled through the city, I volunteered to ride one of the bikes, and I say this with immense happiness that it was the best ride of my life here in Dehradun. The cold wind slapped me with its icy hands as I maneuvered the bike through the curves and bends of the road. I felt elated and alive. How I wished the journey never ended but before I knew we had reached the hill top. We parked our vehicles and ascended to the peak of the hill on foot which was strenuous in the thin air. But we walked in the dense of the night taking photographs of ourselves in the light of street lamps. The little city of Mussoori perched on the hills was silent and tranquil with only street dogs giving out soft howls.

After half an hour or so of trekking uphill we reached the peak which locally is called as the Gun-hill point. The view from this point was splendidly picturesque that we couldn’t stop ourselves from taking photographs. The city below spread in the slope was illuminated by lights which looked as though the night sky adorned with twinkling stars had fallen on this hill to form a breathtaking picturesque as a treat and delight to our longing eyes. And in the far end, the city of Dehradun radiated itself in mystery; unfathomable to a busy man.

All the hard work of ascending to this point was to, at the break of the dawn, watch the sun rise. But we had ample of time before the sun rose so what followed was a photo session in myriad of pose and posture. Jokes were cracked and humorous one lined insults passed which prompted in hysterical laughs with no alien to hear but the cold air. After an hour long wait the sun finally rose spreading its virgin rays on the peaks of the silhouetted mountains. It rose from the mountain like a vast golden ball all by himself in the sky determined to retire in the west.

By this time the locals; particularly the early risers had filled the paths and roads: some jogged, while some walked their dogs and others were students going to school. The tea vendors were I street and after drinking a cup of hot tea each, we returned back; to live the same mundane and monotonous life.  

The Dawn

The clouds darkened

And the sky roared.

Lightening struck

And rain pattered, hard.

Wind gushed and leaves fell.

But in minutes it subsided

The rain, the darkness and my sleep.

The business-lady

I was attending Forest Business Management class one hot afternoon and the professor was talking about entrepreneurship. Since the class was right after lunch and it was hot and dry, most students were dozing off. Their eyes were burdened by sleepiness and I was no exception for I had almost dozed off while taking notes. So the professor clapped his hands loud and to arouse interest and diffuse out the sleepy air he ventured to tell us an amusing incident he encountered which could more or less could be said to of an entrepreneurial type.

So it goes out that in the midst of city of Mumbai, just outside a Hindu temple which is flooded by clamoring crowd of devotees, a cow stands in the shed of a papal tree. Now the devotees being Hindus who worship cows, they feed this cow in the pursuit of gaining spiritual merit. So the cow stands there the whole day while being fed by thousands of devotees and goes to sleep in the evening, happy and bellyful. Intelligent cow, right? But the interesting thing here is, it is very inconvenient for the devotees to carry grass and fodder to the temple just to feed this cow, so seeing a potential business opportunity a lady has opened a fodder shop. So devotees just buy fodder from this lady and feed the cow. Interesting right? Not yet!!!! The most interesting part is that this lady actually owns the cow and milks it every evening, earning money from everything that she does. This lady is putting all businessmen and entrepreneur to shame.

All that ensued was claps after the professor narrated this incident, but to this day I wonder who was being clapped in appreciation, the professor who narrated us this story or the lady who raised the business benchmark by folds.

The Face

The soforific summer has decided to take leave for the year. It has started withdrawing its presence in all forms from nature. The intense scorching summer heat has subsided and instead colder winds blow from the north. The leaves have started fading its natural gold. The mornings are moist with cold crisp air that seems to cajole you back to the bed. The mirrors are fogged while I stand at its front in my bathroom. As I look into the mirror, a solemn, forlorn and forsaken face glares at me as though to say I haven’t been on good tracks for long. I try to smile but what I see on the mirror is just stretched lips with it saying me “Go, you darn thing. Live your servitude life.” I take a palm full of water and haul at it. The mirror is flushed and the water descends down to the base of the mirror but the face with deliberately stretched lips stays. It moves while I move. Its eyes are sullen, buried deep in the skull. Eyes shadowed and bounded by darkened skin. The cheekbones protruded. The nose dominantly the chief feature. The cheeks fleshless with pecks of beard confused whether to grow or not. But among all, the eyes are worth staring at. It’s perturbed and shines in nervousness. It’s fragile and weak. Feeble. But it has a lot of tale to tell. It has seen things beyond comprehension. In its vastness was pervaded the deepest of secrets, regrets and myriad of other feelings. Truly it was said, he thought, eyes are the windows to soul.