The Photographer

The ringing phone knocked me out of sleep. With my squinting eyes, I fumble my phone among a heap of camera, chargers and winded wires. Without even looking on my phone I put it near my left ear and groan, "Hello?"

"I am sorry to disturb you at this time, but Sir, you have a visitor. She says it’s urgent." It was the concierge.

I put on the bed light. The digital clock beside my bed read 7:30 am with a HOTEL DRUK monogram on it.

"Note down her number and address and tell her I will meet her in the evening at.."

"She stresses, its urgent."

"Fine, I will be there."

I curse the concierge. Only if he had waited an hour he wouldn’t have blown me out my sleep. But it’s not his fault either; the woman might have forced him to make me a call. But I wonder what was so urgent.

For waking me up before my scheduled time I just wonder if I should meet her all tousled in my night dress, but I shake my head in disapproval again for I am a professional photographer. I must be professional.

I wore the best from the wardrobe and called the concierge again to tell him I would meet her over the breakfast.

Just as I walk down the stairs, the concierge sees me. "This way, sir" he points. Then he takes me to the table at the corner where a woman is sitting fondling her phone. When I reach near she stops to look at me.

"Karma Choden." She says.

"Suvaraj Acharya" I say and shake our hands.

She sits down and opens her bag to place her phone.

She is wearing dark-framed glasses. Her long black hair that has eventually started growing grey at the temples rests till her shoulders. Her fringes are long enough to cover her eyebrows that seem virgin to clippers. The dark wrinkles at the corner of her eyes are visible and I don’t see a tinge of make up on her face. Strange I thought. Not the way that she looks, but the way she seemed not to be bothered about her looks

"I have heard that you have high definition photos of birds. Can you let me use one of them in the cover page of the book I am currently writing?" she asks me with her genuinely pleading eyes. Yes, I would have said it instantly looking at how humbly and innocently was she asking me but I had to make it look professional. I don’t say a word and stare at my coffee as if to say no.

"Please?" she asks again almost clasping her palms.

I smile and nod. Her face glints. I than take my phone out and pass it and show her some photos and ask if one of them would work. She scrolls down and passes several ‘wows’ and ‘they are amazing’ to me.

She picks one and shows me and asks how much would that cost.

"Keep that as a gift"

What! How did I say that? Was I insane? Why should I gift this woman a precious photo of mine? Can’t I say I changed my mind and it cost a thousand dollars?

But she was glad. I give her the photo. She fishes a check book from her bag and hands me a cheque singed a hundred thousand ngultrum.

She places it on the table and says "don’t mind the amount, it’s a gift." I refuse but she insists. As I extent my hand to receive it, I hear a familiar ringing of bell. I pause to listen. I have heard it somewhere.

Just then I sprang on my feet. Holy shit! It’s my alarm clock that’s ringing. In an hour I am suppose to pick Yeshey Dorji from his place of residence and go on a photography expedition to Gasa. I rush into my bathroom cursing my life of a driver.

PS- the above is inspired from Yeshey Dorji and his blog but is a sheer piece of imagination and also is not intended to promote or defame anyone.

Dear Ministry of Education

Dear Ministry of Education

Sorry for having called the ministry ‘dear’. You might point it to be an inappropriate salutation to address a big organization like yours a dear. But I am helpless. I have been to schools which are under your ministry that now I feel the ministry a very dear one. But you know some people right under your ministry call the kind of education system you have, useless. Some people say they sent children to school to get educated but they come out after thirteen years of education as a donkey. A week ago I met a frustrated graduate who said that he got government scholarship to do a four years course outside and after he completed the course and came back to Bhutan, government didn’t have job in Bhutan related to his course and now he is placed as a teacher. A frustrated teacher he is he said. I have many other stories of such kind to tell but today I have something different to bring under your notice.

Firstly, the English text has four sections- short story, play, poem and essay, which are expected to be learned. But sadly, I didn’t get to learn some of the poem and essays. It is because of fact that during examination, no questions are asked from essays and poem that we learn in class but asked from short story and play only. Hence, some teachers omit this part and never teach essay and poetry to the students for no questions are asked from these parts. And the ministry might have noticed that in English II, students perform very poor in essay and worst in poem whereas the same students perform well in the play and short story. When a teacher never teaches what a poem is, what its components are, how to comprehend them and how to write them, I think it’s not fully a student’s fault for having not performed well in English paper. If you wonder how not doing well in poetry hampers the result, I must sadly tell you, it does.

Secondly, you might have heard people saying, “…he has completed class twelve, and he still doesn’t   know how to write an application..” I have an answer for this one, well, the English book doesn’t have a well framed grammar book for class twelve and other classes as well. And students prepare for grammar looking at the type of questions asked the previous years, but every year students see new patterns of questions asked in grammar. Students don’t know what they need to learn. And also students are never taught to write official letters other than leave applications which is also taught in lower classes only. Students are also never taught how to write references and mention the books that they used while writing assignments, which is most needed after class twelve in colleges. I personally think that lessons on how to write references and official letters should be given to class twelve students. 

I hope I didn’t bore you writing all these to you. If you hadn’t known about these, I have told you, now that you are aware of it, I will be waiting for a change to come but if you had known all the matter mentioned above, you are just another chair warmer and a chicken in power. I bet on that one.

Have a great day!

I have a friend called coffee.

Not paying tribute is yet another feature of us human. It’s funny how we are helped by all that come along and to very little we feel a tinge of gratitude. That too we sum up in us and never let them know. I am not an exception here for as long and far as I remember it has been to very little people that I have actually articulated gratefulness. And that’s bad, I say.

One simple thing that no one ever has thanked might be coffee. I am being serious and I am talking about coffee that one gulps down the throat but never thanks it.

Coffee has been a friend, if you take time and think. It might have been a reason for you to meet someone. Haven’t you ever met anyone-friend, love, over a cup of coffee? Admit it sometimes coffee was the only excuse for you to ask your loved one out. When you desperately wanted to meet someone but there were no reasons you should meet, didn’t the coffee become the reason and you just said  “Let’s go out for a cup of coffee” or “lets meet over a cup of coffee’’?

Also coffee accompanies you a lot. Just as you feel low, you make yourself a cup of coffee and let it run down you, it feels magical. It feels as though your body has been lightened. You feel calm. Relaxed. But how inhumane of us to never pay back at least in words.  

Although I was told by a friend of mine that coffee actually wrecks our brain (true?) but I take this last sip of coffee and thank coffee for being a friend and not bothering if it really does.

PS- I actually thank everyone who has been producing coffee, for without ‘em coffee might have been a tale.

  

Why let a glitterier go?

                                                         

A day in the past, I recall,

Nineteenth of third it was,

But of twelve of twenty thousands

The day of union and thus,

Begin the journey of miles ahead

A point in time, said you

‘A jerk existed, make me feel miserable’

‘And?  ’ further it went

‘Trash, he met fate of!’

A hearty laugh it exploded.

Hence I ponder, not so far,

But to this day,

Was one imprudent for one to let it go?

The most dearly glittering thing to pass by

Hard I work, never let a day go

Without it to pass through,

But never I glimpsed a part of it

And oh, how you let it go

From the tips of your fingers?

how did it happen?

It had been a dull day

With nothing for me to do.

I sat there, self conscious, as others did

But then he had to come and ask

“Can I sit here?”

Remarkable he was

As his stories unfolded,

Of his survival-the accidents and death

And with that earned him another name.

Not more than a month passed

There came in two other idiots to join-

One had been devoted to shyness

For he talked less and worked more

And prayed like a monk

But at heart, had gold  

And another, much the opposite.

He cracked but jokes, of sofy,

Seven bananas and a monkey

But dear, he entertained.

Still we had another, one so peculiar

For he stood in the corner

And produced the weirdest sound,

And metal from him stood in the middle of the class

To which we looked and laughed.

Oh, well. They had been dear.

Thus, it started, the journey together

Into another year of learning, to turn the stone unturned

And to reach the other side.

THE STRANGER IN THE COFFEE SHOP

The following is a poem that I penned during an ‘open poem writing’ competition which got splendid response.

                                         THE STRANGER IN THE COFFEE SHOP

  

                                                                   

Glued in the chair I stayed 

For the coffee I ordered                                              

Among the folk

A minute or two ago.

There came in a stranger

With a smiling face and bald head.

Nothing remarkable he wore

But a red shirt and a plain short

Gently with the pace of breeze

He walked to the counter

Took the ears of the lady behind it

And whispered a word or two

And with her head nodding

The matter seemed approved.

He turned to face us

And to address,

“Ladies and Gentlemen, one may come and one may go

But today, I shall go forever.

For never have I found a reason

And a meaning of my existence

Never could I do anything remarkable.

Hence, I must finally go

But not a coward’s death

But a death of a hero

With this last act of mine! ”

He took a graphite-black pistol

Placed its cold muzzle on his temple

Took a deep breath

And with that smiling face

Ended his life with the pull of the trigger.

But to this day, I ponder

If his last act be a hero

Or just another imprudence?

Not only had he been a stranger

For a day in the coffee shop

But a stranger for eternity.

being bhutanese?

Few years back, early in the morning my dad had received a call that a man had died in a nearby village when a falling stone hit him during the construction of a new lhakhang in that village. Such news were hot for we lived in a small community and such news were rare. I knew none of my friends at school would have heard it and that morning I had something hot to tell to my friends.

During the interval I went to a group of friends who were basking in the sun and started narrating the incident but to my dismay they weren’t even interested in it. “It happened in your village” I said to Sonam, but he wasn’t interested either. “why the hell should I care when people die in my village. When time comes everyone has to go!” he declared.

It was strange. Of course you also need to go someday, but when somebody dies in your village you got to wonder who that person might be. Someone you knew? Or your neighbor perhaps. Even if you cannot do anything you could say a little prayer instead. But he had an attitude. Who-the-hell-cares type. But I tell you, that attitude isn’t good. Common, we are Bhutanese and by default we are not suppose to have that attitude. And even if one is not a Bhutanese, one is human, be human.

But later that afternoon Sonam had sent a leave letter to the class and left for his village, which read “…..have to go home due my father’s death…….”