The New Tenant

And then god finally decided to do something with my mundane life and blessed me with multiple tight knots on the string of my life. My other friend with whom I had jointly rented a house decided to leave the house because the house owner has a certain set of rules and notions about the tenant which my friend found highly unreasonable and illogical that he chose to leave the house. I on the other hand have been very accustomed to such rules and I decided to stay in the house occupying the smaller room and paying half the rent with the other room empty. And yesterday evening the house owner dropped me news that made my very night sleepless. The other room would be rented by a lady and I will have to share the bathroom and the kitchen with her. But it isn’t what you are thinking that my night became sleepless. It’s a needless thing to say to the people who know me well but let me admit that it’s just and just in front of a girl that my knees become weak and I shake shiver and tremble. I become nervous. I am highly allergic to girls and that reasons out why I have never had a girlfriend and close female friends. It’s just another thing that I speak to girls who are my classmates and this new tenant lady is a junior of mine who studies in the same college that I study in and this thought of having to share the bathroom and the kitchen is what kept me sleepless like an owl.

But on the other hand I have a feeling that god bestowed upon me this situation because He wants me to drain out this weakness of confronting a girl and he knows it well that it’s just by facing the fear that one will stop fearing it. Well that’s the only solace. 

Doon in Spring

As a Forestry student I am obliged to tell you an amusing fact that Sal trees deviating from the normal protocols of nature, sheds its leaves in spring. Before I came to Dehradun, I had only heard that the Sal tree which is called Shorea robusta sheds its leaves in spring but I have seen it happen.
There is a rocky trail that snakes through the Sal forest and reaches college. It’s a delight to walk that trail to college in the spring kicking the dried Sal leaves knowing the spring has come and everything around will be back to their life. Walking through the Sal forest with its floor carpeted by dried leaves takes me back in time when I was just a small kid in Gorsum village, Lhuntse. The winter there used to be harsh with its cold hard winds blowing against our rosy little cheeks. The morning and evening were comparatively colder with the need to warm the room with bukhari. Hence, to meet need of firewood we used to swarm the nearby oak forest to collect the dried branches and wood from the felled trees. It was then that I used to walk the forest ground filled with dried oak leaves that was shed in the autumn. It was a joy beyond bound to walk ahead of the group and burry oneself in a heap of dried leaves and rise with a shrill cry from the ground as the group approaches near, scaring them to their bones.
Seeing the same kind of forest floor here, sometimes, the little child in me which I have with outmost care and patience kept hidden from the world tries with all its might to come out but I have grown up big enough in strength to always hide it within.

Other side of the street II

Two days after I explicitly wrote about the lonesome house at the other side of the street which belongs to an elderly Tibetan couple which rests behind the silhouette of guava and pear trees opposite to the house I have rented, it was a holiday, hence I decided to wake up late to compensate all the sleepless night prior to which I had invested in preparing slides for a presentation on wildlife and human welfare. And as I was sleeping that morning I could hear people shouting and repeated thuds as though someone was hammering a blunt wedge on a dried log. There was surely a commotion outside and even before I woke up from the bed that day, I cursed people for interrupting my sleeping hours with their noise. I tried to cover my head with the pillow and sleep again, that didn’t work. Finally with my squinting eyes, I lazily extended my hand and fumbled the corner of the curtain, drew it apart to see what was happening outside. My jaws dropped at the sight of it. The guava and the pear trees which I wrote about just two days back were being cut. Two young men were cutting the branches of the trees and the two young girls dragging it to the backyard to be chopped down to fine storage-able length. That fine morning I felt like those elderly couple had read my write up and they didn’t like a bit of it and as a sign of protest they are cutting down the trees for I am a forestry student. Otherwise why would they even cut those trees? Because those two girls spent more time in the shadows of those trees playing the hand-patting-game? Or because they see me as a thread to the existence of the whole Tibetan colony and since they have nothing to do all day, they decided to watch all my moves clearly by cutting down the trees and not through the small spaces between the trees and leaves. Whatever be the reason, but I didn’t like them cutting down the trees, not because I am forestry student and I am by default the guardian of the trees and plants but because my veranda is nakedly exposed to them and now I cannot disguise myself to be reading a book in the veranda and actually watch them. But I keep a little light of hope burning in me to be at good terms with the elderly couple one day and ask for sure why did they actually cut the trees. Until then, I guess, all I can do is weave some obvious conclusions and think about a new way to watch them.

Other side of the street I

Across the house I live in, at the other side of the street, behind the silhouette of the Guava and the Pear tree rests a desolate house belonging to a Tibetian couple whom I assume is not less than seven decades old. The house is bounded by walls at all its four sides and the only entrance is the low gate just opposite to ours. The house lies next to street that I walk on my way to college.  Nothing guards the house, but loneliness and an old dog whose cheeks has lost its youthfulness and is hanging below his jaw line. I have a feeling that the dog has miraculously survived and is as old as the couple.  Sometimes it barks at me with its toothless, protruding mouth but as I near him from outside the gate, he drops its tail between his legs and pees. It barks few coughs to the bikes that ply the street. Basically he barks at anything unfamiliar to him. That perhaps must be the technique he must have derived after much contemplation as to how he should maintain his worthiness in the eyes of his owners; by barking with all the little energy he has for if he don’t, he has learned the human way of thinking and knows that his owner would forget how sleepless nights he had guarding the house when he was young and replace him with another youthful dog who later would be bestowed with the same fate.

Every morning as I walk to college the elderly couple would be sitting on a chair each with a table in between in the veranda of their bungalow, fumbling crimson beads and reciting prayers. You do not hear the prayers, only murmurs. The table in between would be loaded with eatables of mango and guava. Two cups would also be sitting on the table. Two little thin and pale girls with their skin tanned by the heat of the sun, who must be in their early teens perhaps either from Bihar or Nepal is assigned to attend to the needs of the couple even before the old couple needs the need. One fine Sunday I sat at the veranda of the house that I have rented and attempted to finish reading a book, only to find myself looking across the street  the whole day to see what happens. Nothing really happened. The girls do the laundry, cook for the couple and do the dishes, clean the house-interior and the exterior and at last if time permits and they have little time at their disposal, they sit together under the shade of the guava tree and played a game that involves patting each other’s hand until one of the elderly couple needs something again. I wondered how the old souls couldn’t see the girls playing and needed them time and again a minute.

I only assume that many years ago the house had been a home and that when all the elements of a home ran away due to the untamed old soul which persisted to hold on to each particle of its soil, it finally became a house. Otherwise why would a lovely looking house remain lonely with all its empty rooms when it has the strength to shelter three generations and still have room for the air to enter and leave?

Dear Payal, waiting for you to walk.

Payal,

I have seen very few people that exhibit your personality. I have never seen you utter a hard word or something prickly that would pinch others heart. I have never seen you talking ill about another person. I have never heard you doing something that you are not meant to be doing. All that I have seen is you walking around with that beautiful smile that lights up every little heart. Your sparkling eyes and your smile always spoke the same language.

I have seen that you are a beautiful and a strong person. That wavy hair suits you the most. That mole by the side of your nose adds the extra charm on you. And as you cover your mouth as you laugh, I always wished you never did that. Perhaps that might have been the only bad thing you did- you hid your smile with your hand. Otherwise you are flawless.

So it hurts to see you in the ICU fighting for your life. It hurts that a beautiful soul that never did any harm is resting on a bed and fighting the worst of worst time. It hurts to see how your injured shoulder has to carry the heavy weight of pain. How your sparkling eyes have closed since the day of the accident. How your lips hasn't moved even an inch to smile. How your eyes have swollen. It hurts to see how many tubs are inserted at different parts of your fragile body. Seeing you, how I wish I could carry your pain.

Now i only wait for the day when you would be walking in the college corridor with that wavy hair fluttering in the cold breeze. I wait to see you smile again and roll your eyes as you talk to me. I wait to see you jump in excitement when the afternoon classes are cancelled. I just wait to see you walking to college.

Get well soon.

Lone I Long

Lone I long
For that is it brings
The mood and the air
To hunt one self
And to dig
One's dream, love and life.

Show me your visa.

Discrimination, a cuss word it is, I must say. Just at it's utterance, all the peace and tranquility that one had summed up for ages drains out. Every single hair on your body suddenly becomes alert. So now how would you feel if I say i face it everyday?

Studying in a soil away from one's own is completely different than the kind you imagine it would be. Given the kind of experience I had upon my year long stay here, with a heavy heart i say, India is not the place you would love to study. But again many factors, I believe, is involved. We are just four(Bhutanese) in our college, three men and a lady. The other two guys are my seniors and the lady my batch mate in the same department. We are neighbors as well.

Folks at college, most frequently and of course jokingly ask us with sarcastic smile and with a hidden intend(i suppose) to show their dislikness, our Indian visa. "Or you came here from underneath the fencing wire(demarcating the national boundaries)" they say and laugh hysterically.

Once, a fellow with an unkempt hair called one of us in a group discussing football tactics, 'refugee'. I looked around and saw that non of us were refugee. Three among us in the group were from Arunachal, two from Manipur, and I from Bhutan. Only when he pointed to me and said "You, you" I learned he was calling me a refugee. I was taken aback as to how ignorant he was that he didn't know Bhutanese aren't refugee.

Well, should i narrate you more incidents, you would be bored, but remember, its time we make an image for Bhutanese in a global community, after all i believe you wouldn't want to hear them saying "we feed them. Close the supplies and their population will be halved to 400,000 people within a week." I have heard them saying it and more and I must tell you that in no way it sounds rosy. They know we are too dependent and that's an evil tool in their hands that can cause colossal damage to our nation.