A trip of a lifetime

I stood on the pier just outside the airport, struggling between dream and reality. A pier besides an International airport seemed ridiculous to me as my eyes darted around to locate a taxi. "There comes our boat" said one of my friends. Perplexed and flummoxed, I gaped at a speed boat shaking wildly on the waves. I gaped extensively and could not believe that I am standing on a kilometer long island that made up of this airport. Someone nudged me from behind and I fell in the line dragging my baggage. One by one we were hurled into the small speed boat. On our seats were tiny striped life jackets and we were asked to wear them. I struggled and struggled with the ropes and rings and finally managed to get the darn thing on, only to realize that I wore it inside out. The man in uniform helped me and my colleges were also struggling with the jackets. We took our seats and I decided to sit by the side where I noticed a metal bar on which I could cling when the speed boat zoomed and roared over the mighty waves.

Sure enough, the boat roared to life and like a machine terribly gone wrong, zoomed out at sea. The long flight and now this was incredible. In the semi darkness, I looked around and saw my friends looking worried and hapless. Few minutes later, I was literally dying as the boat hit the high tide and the big waves. The man behind the wheel clearly looked like a deranged maniac whose hobby, was to crash speed boats on the waves. One friend shouted to me from the other seat and swore that the maniac is none other than "Speedy Gonzales". Even in the midst of life and death I could not help a smile.

Thankfully, after an hour of death defying ride, we caught the sight of a light on another small island. I was beyond caring and was palpitating like a man about to have his seizures. The mad boat slowly slowed down and a sense of relief invaded through the boat. I heard my friends whistle in wonderment. The boat came near another pier and we were hurled off the boat with our baggage. A man at the pier pointed to a lighted house and told us that this was our hotel.

The time was almost 2 in the morning when I was finally shown my room over looking the Indian Ocean. I was beyond caring, too tired and completely shaken up, but I did not spare the tropical fruits with a welcome note handsomely written across the plate. I took out my small scissors and like cut the ribbon.

It was already 7 in the morning when a huge White Sea bird decided to sit on the verandah and look for his bride. I washed myself and took a stroll on the serene beach filled with small crabs skittering about in stolen abalone shells. The tide during the night has deposited a lot of small shells and amazingly, every shell was occupied by a crab. The calm beach and the wonderfully refreshing breeze made me feel so good for a while.

By 9 in the morning, I was again standing on the pier looking like a wreck. My friends did not look great either. We were waiting for "Speedy Gonzales" to shake us one more time and sure enough, I caught the sight of his speed boat racing towards our direction splashing white water in every direction.

A hunt that misfired

I must confess here that I had no idea what night hunting was about, till I set my foot in Khamdang village some decades ago. Alien to the land, its custom and language, I looked more of a tsagay gesticulating my way around. The villagers were shy and my effort in trying to talk to them in their local dialect made them more uneasy and shy. I was one of the groups of graduates who were sent to the east to help the villagers build a cannel from Buyang to khamdang. We were 12 of us from different professional back grounds.

While work was just supervise the project, many of my friends took to gambling to pass time at the work site and back in the barrack too. There were just three of us who neither gambled nor cherished “Ara or Chang”. The smell of egg fried and mixed with “Ara” was awful and hits you more than the smell of sulphur. To compensate our gambling skills, three of us befriended a Basic Health Worker (BHW) who happened to be from Trashigang. Because one of my friends was a Doctor, the BHW was more than willing to so any errands.

One silent night, I was woken from my slumber with a gentle tap on my shoulder. The doctor was there whispering to me and muttering when I repeated asked him what was that he wants of me. “Let’s go for night hunting” he muttered sheepishly. At first I declined to accompany them, but they eventually convinced me of the delicacy of the forbidden fruits. Even though, I was still apprehensive of this unplanned adventure, that too in a pitch black night, I did not want to miss the fun or whatever it had to offer.

Equipped with flash lights, three of us trotted down the slope with great agility and anticipation. But to be honest, we did not even know where we were headed to. The BHW kept on muttering something and I was conveyed that he was mentally tabulating a list of potential victims of our raid. We might have trotted about 4 kilometers down to the valley, when suddenly the BHW disappeared from our view. I just heard a loud shrill cry of anguish from the same directions he disappeared. Two of us suddenly realized that our mentor, our only guide had fallen off a cliff. Hell broke loose there after. After about twenty minutes, we managed to find our way at the foot of a great boulder from where our guide had jumped. He was down there…sobbing uncontrollably and in great pain. We found that he had snapped his ankle and it was looking awfully twisted.

Our night hunting trip, the first and the last ended two of us carrying the huge BHW back to the BHU. It took us more than three hours of hard labour to finally put him on an empty bed in the BHU to the amazement of the sister in there.

Nostalgic Goosebumps

One hot summer afternoon, my bus pulled at the then BGTS parking area in Phuentsholing. The old bus coughed a lot of smoke and finally came to a halt. Everyone in the bus hurried out to look for the night’s lodging. I picked my duffle bag and followed the weary travelers in search of a room.

A bleak looking Hotel then called Pemba hotel down the lower market was the only one that I could afford with my scanty resource. A fat old man, whose abundant roll of flesh which made him look as if he was wearing an assortment of inner tubes beneath his shirt was at the counter looking very grim. I sat in the lounge and asked for a cup of tea. Just then another pleasant looking man entered the lounge and sat near me. He looked and smiled at me. It was then I found out that he had no tongue and was interested to engage me a lively conversation. The smell of his armpit was so strong that I had to immediately take flight from that seat.

When the waiter brought me the tea, the cup clearly bore the autograph of my predecessor whose “doma” stain imprint was unmistakable. Nonetheless, tea was tea and I gulped it down carefully sipping it from a different angle. The hot tea and humid spring weather makes one’s underwear scoot up every crack and fissure and they clung to you like latex and you have no idea how uncomfortable you can feel.

After the tea I was ushered into a dingy room and to my utter horror and dismay I discovered that the bed, judging by its fragrance and shape, had been recently been vacated by a horse. The dent on the mattress was so severe that I could get out of the bed by splaying all my limbs to their widest extremity. It was like lying flat in a wheelbarrow. That night I had a terrible nightmare and squirted urine every step of the way not able to locate the bathroom.

Held Hostage for 50 Chetrum

Talk of being poor and a destitute and there I was, a cherry faced idiot. Though, I never stole a pie, I did run errands for better placed friends for a grateful cup “Zoa or kapche” to sooth my ever empty stomach. Everything was uneventful till one fateful Saturday, when a maniacal urge seized me to get my butt off the bed and go for a football game some distance away. After a three hour game, Sonam Dawa my close buddy and I went back to the school through a short cut, while the others headed to the town for refreshments. Halfway to the school, our eyes feasted on a shiny 50 Chetrum wedged between two stones by the side of the road. When we don’t own a single Ngultrum, a shiny chetrum wedged between two stones was the most welcoming sight. With the precision of a master craftsman, my friend picked up the coin.

Equipped with a 50 Chetrum, we turned back and headed to the town. By the side of the lane, we know of a small restaurant where the yummiest “bonda” was sold for 25 chetrum per plate. We headed to that restaurant. The old lady in the restaurant ignored the two ubiquitous paupers with acerbity. Nevertheless, with confidence, we ordered the sweets flashing the 50 chetrums to her. We sat on a rickety bench after handing over the money . Feasting on the sweets after eons of sweet starvation was pure heaven.

It did not take more than a few minutes and we got up to go back to school when the amnesiac old lady asked us to pay for the sweets. We tried our best to convince her that we paid the money and she denied to have taken it. Both of us were in trouble. There was no way to get money from anyone and the old hag would not let us go even after begging her for mercy. After a good ten minute shouting at us on the top of her voice, she asked my friend to get the money by any means and that I am kept as hostage.

I knew I would be dead before night fall for my friend would never find the money nor come back to rescue me. I too, would have escaped minutes after my friend left, had not the old lady kept me pinned down by holding on the collar of my only shirt. Time stood still and I was dying of shame as the old lady proudly announced to a group of my school girls that I ate her sweets and did not have money. I kept my eyes closed not to see, but heard them uttering “awws” and “aieees” instead of rescuing me with a 50 chertums loan.

It was almost nightfall when I felt the grip on my collar loosened and that was my chance to escape or die. With a sudden cry of war, I straightened myself and jerked free of the hold. I ran throwing glances over my shoulder to ensure that she was not running after me. The lady did not even move, for she was thrown completely off balance by my sudden move. Half way to school, I realized that in that moment of life and death, I left behind my only shirt’s collar in her enormous hand.

Entangled with destiny

There was not a single cloud in the brilliant night sky and millions of stars twinkled down upon the tiny hut in silence. Unknown to Dorji and his wife, in the far eastern corner of the sky, a tiny star twinkled for a brief moment and then exploded lightening up the sky even further. At the very moment, the cry of a new born in the hut shattered the silence of the night. Did nature play havoc with human lives or is there a connection between us and the stars. The following story is not a fiction but is about the same boy who was born that night. A boy whose destiny was written that night by the star that twinkled for a moment before it finally disintegrated into a million fragments.

Sangay joined the monastic school at the age of seven. He was a very handsome boy and his presence in the monastery was envied by every other novices. The teachers marveled at his intelligence and by the age of seventeen, he had mastered the most of the books and excelled in astrology. His calculations and deductions while practicing astrology amazed even the most learned lama in the monastery.

When he was eighteen, he got the news that his father and mother had died in a lightening accident. He took leave and rushed home in a state of shock. After four days of hard walking he finally reached a small hillock over looking his hut. It was almost nine years that he had not been home. The long difficult journey had kept him from visiting his home. His sister must be thirteen years old and now she was all alone in the hut. He dragged his tired limbs and soon he stood at the door step. He peered inside the hut and his eyes caught the sight of his tiny sister bent over the hearth looking into the fire. He then dropped his huge bag and ran in and hugged her. He cried along with his sister and for a long time, they did not speak.

Sangay looked around and to his surprise there was nothing in the hut except for a few rags and some battered pots and plates. He asked the little girl to boil tea while he brought in his bag. After tea, he asked his sister about their parents and amidst tears the little girl narrated the horrible story of how his parents had met the terrible end. She also told him how the villagers gathered and cremated their bodies and later brought provisions for her. He felt grateful to his neighbors and again cried for not being there at the time of the creation.

That night he comforted his little sister and long after she slept, he got up and started his prayers….a recitation from the book of dead. He concentrated hard on the prayers and prayed that his parents hear him guide them in their journey through the unknown realm. It was dawn, when he finished his prayers. He was filled with emotion when he realized how thin and frail his tiny sister looked in her sleep. She was dressed in rags and her beautiful face covered in sooth and rashes. Even as he made breakfast, he vowed that he would never leave her alone.

A year later, the head lama had sent monks from his monastery asking him to come back and join them. He declined the offer and stayed to look after his sister who was then suffering from a strange disease. Almost every night she suffered violent convulsions and often she went in coma. He prepared different herbal medications for her but her condition grew worse with the passage of time. He went around the village looking for other medications that might help his sister. It was during one such tour around the village that the village headman’s wife laid her eyes on him. She invited him to her house at every opportunity and soon the villagers suspected the woman’s fidelity. Unknown to him, the headman plotted with some villagers to get rid of him and called a meeting. Sangay was also invited to join. During the meeting, a selected group of people accused him of having an affair with the headman’s wife. An altercation took place and in a fit of anger, he stabbed a villager to death. He was caught and beaten up and later tied to a post near the headman’s house. Some villagers were sent to call the police. Like an animal to be butchered, he was kept tethered to the post for two days till the police came.

The court sentenced him to eight years of imprisonment and while he was in prison, he heard that his sister too died the very same day he was arrested. He cried his heart out and cursed the twist of fate. After serving his term in the prison, he went to his old monastery to practice his astrology. He was welcomed by his old mates and was asked to stay there as the caretaker. Two years down the line, Sangay was again arrested for theft of antiques from the monastery and sentenced to another three years in prison. While working in an open air prison worksite, he met this beautiful girl called Dema and secretly got married. After release, he set up a small hut and started practicing his astrology once again. The small income that came from his practice was not enough to feed his wife, one child and the in-laws; therefore he started working as a carpenter in the dzong construction. A little over a year, he was again arrested for stealing one of the country’s most priceless antique and was sentenced for life. So much of turbulence all compacted in his tiny frame.

The child whose cry had shattered the silence of the night when the star was exploding in the far eastern sky was fated to leave his blazing trail in the kingdom of Drukyuel.

That night a star fell

Peeping from my blanket I saw a star fall into my backyard. I was sacred at first and did not move. The stillness of the night was broken only by the rustling sound of the wintry wind brushing through the bamboo groove and the occasional tingling sound of the bells from the ponies grazing nearby. Below me, the tiny calves sneezed in their sleep and the mother swine with her litter groaned in their sleep. Every thing looked weird and unfamiliar in the darkness.

I kept on staring at the place where the star fell, my mind racing till I could hear the sound of my own heart beat drumming against my tiny ribs. There was no way, I could tell the time, because my time, our family rooster was in the seventh heaven dreaming of many beautiful hens in the other cattle shed far way. Watches were then unheard leave alone seeing one. I nudged my brother who was sleeping with me. He groaned and moaned as if he was dying in his sleep. I kept on hitting him with my elbow till he asked me what was wrong. In hushed whisper, I told him exactly what I have seen. His eyes twinkled as he heard me speak about a star falling down in our backyard. I pointed to him the direction where the star fell. My brother thought for a while and then said…hmmmm gods must be smoking up there. I believed him because there was no way a star would have fallen down like this.

In the darkness of the night, we crawled out of our shed. The sky was brilliantly lit with millions of stars and the scene looked spectacular with not a speck of cloud in the sky. We walked a little further away from the shed so that our parents could not hear what we were plotting. We squatted near a big boulder and fervently whispered to each other what we will do if we found the star. We decided that we will hide it under a stone that night.

Slowly with calculated steps, we inched towards the location. We searched everywhere but found nothing. No star and no light. My brother caught my collar and said he would strangulate me for luring him here for no reason. I swore and pleaded that I saw the star fall. That night we did not speak further.

The next day while I was gathering my cows, I noticed a huge red round thing tossing in the wind. It was in the same area where I saw the star fall the previous night. What ever it was, it was massive and moving. I ran towards the shed and summoned my brother once again. He threatened to pull my ears, if I was joking. I showed my humblest and meekest face to convince him that I was telling the truth.

We marched in line, I bringing up the rear ready to bolt at an instant. The object was still there and still tossing in the wind. My brother halted and gaped at it. No sound came from him, but my touch on his body told me that he was shaking with fear. We drew our daggers and stood firmly poised and ready for an encounter. Besides the constant tossing, nothing happened, so we lunged stone after stone at it till one of them hit it directly. Boooommm!!! came the sound and both of us fell flat on the ground. The object was gone and in its place were shreds and pieces of the same red object. Satisfied that we killed it, we approached nearer. As we neared the shreds, we noticed another square one just behind the bush and it had a rope tied on it. With cautious steps, we looked closer and to my amazement, I saw an english word clearly written on the side of the square box. “ made in United states of America” I read out the letters loud and clear and told my brother that it is from America. The red object was a massive weather balloon and the square box had a lamp in it. The balloon was acting as the parachute to the lamp and that was my star which fell from the sky. We collected the shreds of the balloon and used it as my play tent during my vacation. The box was gifted to my mother who used it was a table to keep the only brass kerosene lamp of the family.

(When I think back to all those times as a small boy wandering with my cattle through the deep southern forest of Samtse and Dorokha, I can not believe that those were the most wonderful period of my life. Most amazingly, I am baffled how this weather balloon reached this side of the world and unto my laps………. )

Non existent for 24 hours

I flew from LAX on the 1st September and landed at Bangkok Airport two days later. For me there was no 2 September and where it went I did not know exactly. For all I know is that for twenty four hour period in the history of my life, I did not exist. Vaguely, I remember crossing some International Date Line but it still had me goofed beyond imagination.

Even though I vaguely understand the principles involved here. I can see that there has to be a rational line where one day ends and the next day begins, but when you cross the International Date Line some thing of the starkest impossibility occurs. However hard you focus on the time, the food and the numerous walks down the aisle, you are never going to get so fit that you can cease to occupy space for one day. And like wise, when I traveled the reverse way, I lived the same day twice and reach my destination even before I left the location. wahhhhhh