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.