The Morning Yoga

School and training days have taught me to clear my bowel, or “clearing the bathroom” as it used to be called, early in the morning.  They said it was healthy.  I cannot vouch whether it is so, but I can surely say that it has lot of advantages and conveniences.  Creature of habit that I am, I have become a slave to this habit.

Another habit that I can’t shed is my addiction to having something to read while I attend to this business.  For the life of me I cannot help it, even on emergencies.  The newspapers and books, forgotten and abandoned after I am through with my business, strewn all over the place, especially on the bathroom shelves, irritates my wife to no end.  But old habits die hard and I don’t seem to be improving; only my immunity towards her ramblings has improved so far.

Little Known “Ara Phunmey”

The tradition of  ”Lolay” in the Wang (Thimphu region) and the “Deepawali” (sorry if I have misspelt it) in the Southern part of the country are similar, in that people, the children in the former and all age groups in the later, go around the village visiting houses and singing the lolay and doushiri.  The house owners are supposed to offer these visitors money, food, rice and even flowers, in return for which they pray and bless the household.

                Equivalent to the above two, there is another one that is being practiced in the east, (at least in Pema Gatshel).  I am not sure if it is practiced in other eastern dzongkhags.  It is called “Ara Phunmey”, literally meaning, begging for drinks.  The men folk would go around the village, singing songs.  This is done during the Losar (New Year) and Thrui (Blessed Rainy Day).

                Though it is called “Ara Phunmey”, it is not only the drinks that they are offered.  On top of the drinks they are also provided food and meat.  The group would go around the village, visiting every household and singing songs, some of which I don’t hear any more. 

                “Ara ma ga nain bu

                Singchang gala drik pey

                Tshering Tshomo lu la yang chey ru ru

Bjangchuk shing go patra

So yala tsemo lha shing shokpu ruru…”

                A rough translation of the song goes something like this, “Even if you do not give me ara (locally brewed wine), it’s alright to offer me bangchang/singchang (equivalent to a beer)…”

                I am not very sure if this little tradition is still observed today, but I don’t hear the song being sung these days. 

Little Knowledge is a … Funny Thing?

My father used to work as a caretaker of a little government guest house, which then used to be popularly known as IB (Inspectors’ Bungalow), in a little town that neither had electricity nor bus services.  But it was somehow connected to the outside world through a rough and narrow road that remained blocked most part of monsoon.  Since there were no hotels then, the guest house used to see a lot of guests, both the official types and the private visitors.  There used to be a lot of ‘philingpa’ guests (white people) too.  Through such interactions my father, it seemed, have learnt a bit of spoken English, which he was proud of.

I remember a Mr O’Brian, a Canadian volunteer teacher, who stayed at the guest house for about a month as there was no accommodation at the school.  Like all ‘philingpas’, Mr O’Brian was also very curious to try on many Bhutanese things and ways.  Seeing us eat a dish of chilli he wanted to try it and so he did.  I don’t remember what he exactly said but, I do remember him literally locking himself up in the toilet for the next two days. 

Naming Them

Bhutanese are getting more resourceful when it comes to naming; be it a person’s name or a name for their business entities.  In the eighties and early nineties there used to be a shop by the name “New Ideas”, located at the heart of Phuentsholing town.  Lots of criticisms were directed at it, accusing it of not conforming to the traditional name.  To this effect an article even appeared in the opinion column of kuensel. 

But today the trend seems to have changed drastically.  People are getting lots of “new ideas” and they are getting more imaginative by the day, when it comes to naming.  One noticeable change is in the moniker of people, which are getting complicated and some of them even sounding like tongue twisters.

Losing the Roots

I come from a small village, located at the South Eastern part of the country.  Back in the late 70s it used to be a small village of just 15 households, where everyone knew everyone.  Except for two huts, all houses were made of stone and mud.  All of them looked similar - dark and ancient, in an imposing way.  The roofs were either wood shingles or slates.  The attics were used as granary cum store room and the ground floor housed the cattle.  The family lived in the first floor, which consisted of two rooms.  The outer room served as the kitchen, dining room, drawing room and the inner one housed the altar.  The whole family shared these two rooms.

Ours was a large family, perhaps the largest in the village.  My grandfather used to pride about this very fact.  Today we are 116 members, the progeny of our grandparents. Then, we were seventeen dining members, including us, seven grand children.  One uncle used to be away most of the time, either for ‘woola’ (compulsory labour contribution) or ‘druk dom’ (labour contribution for a year by a person for every six able bodied men).  Another used to tend the cattle and the supply of butter and cheese never seemed to exhaust.  My mother and her sisters used to do the household chores and weave clothes for the entire family.  Life used to be a simple one then.

Taken for Granted – Making Security Our Responsibility

“The only time we ever think about breathing is when we have trouble doing it…” says Marty Klein, of Palo Alto, California.  There are some things we take for granted and never notice it till it is lost or endangered.  Security is one such thing, in the list of a Bhutanese.  It has been presented to us on a golden platter and we made it our right and never realized how we got it and what it took to get it and even more difficult, what it takes to maintain it.

Happy Clogging! – My Losar Greetings

New Year, as per the Gregorian calendar, is just over and it’s time for another of the few new years we, the Bhutanese celebrate, in different parts of this small country – Lomba in Haa and Paro region, Chunipa  Losar in the East, Dasain in the southern part and the Daw Dangpa Losar.  The immediate one due is Chunipa Losar, popularly known as ‘The Sharchokp Losar’. 

And it is time for another round of greetings – sending wishing cards (on the dwindle now), calling up friends and families (the order of precedence here is intentional; friends are always dealt with first, especially friends of the opposite sex type, after which comes the family), sending text messages (sms), which is the most popular form as of now, and finally through social networking sites, the most popular being the facebook ( I can’t imagine how we would have managed our lives without this facebook!).

Of Marriages and Infidelities

There is a slight rain today, a drizzle actually.  The remnants of the Thrui Bab (Blessed Rainy Day), my wife says.  I am sitting at the patio of my house, which is directly facing the great old gulmohar tree.  It amazes me to no end to see this great tree, standing strong and firm.

            Today a majestic looking hornbill couple has appeared from nowhere and they are sitting on the topmost branch, at the dome of the ‘big green umbrella’, of this great tree.  What lovely birds!  Elsewhere, they are an almost extinct species, it is reported. 

            Birds, they say, couple for life.  They remain faithful to each other throughout life.  There are stories of how one partner commits suicide if the other dies or gets killed.  I cannot vouch for its truthfulness, but if so, we humans have a lot to learn from these gentle creatures.

Who am I?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

 The famous lines from Shakespeare, probably read and will be read by countless people generations down the line.

Of late I got this strange feeling of wanting to find out who am I.  My name, the inheritance from my late grandma (May her soul rest in peace!), is what I am known as and called so.  But, what and who am I really, inside?  This has been nagging me for some time now.

A Dialogue with Generation Z

By any standard I don’t think I will be termed as old and I don’t feel so either.  Neither can I be called young any more.  A bit of rigidity has set into my joints, though I can proudly say that I am physically very active.  But the remarks of my son, while we were discussing birthdays, made me feel my age.  He said, “Dad, but where will you place all those candles even if you celebrated your birthday?”  I was telling him about my lack of interest in celebrating my own birthday.

Scratching an Old Wound

Death, they say is a great leveler and it is also the final and ultimate step through which all beings have to pass, which is a proof of the impermanence nature of life.  But, however natural occurrence death is, no one looks forward to it and everyone mourns the demise of a beloved one.

Night Hunting – The Other Side of the Story

The practice of Night Hunting has been popularised, or rather disreputed by many articles and reporting in the media.  They made the practice look dirty, male chauvinistic in nature, and et al, except good.  And I tell you, nothing is farther from the truth.  I may be wrong but I have my side of the story to tell.

This practice has been there generations before and was a socially accepted thing.  It was the accepted courtship ritual in the villages and they still are in many parts of the country, still untouched and unpolluted by the so called modernisation and westernisation.  It got a bad name, when the villainous outsiders, usually the visiting government officials, took advantage of the innocent damsels, sired children and left them to their own fates.  Many fatherless progeny were left behind this way.  Thus, this practice came to be labeled a notorious practice.

Difference in Perception

On his recent visit to my place, my dad was shocked to find, or rather not find a phallus outside my house.  He insisted that I should display one, either outside the house or hanging from the door top.  He had an explanation for why my wife was always sick; that evil eyes are on us since we didn’t have a phallus to guard against them.

            To please him, I asked a friend to make one for me.  The artistic, nasty practical joker that he is, he made one that looked obscene, pornographic and indecent.  It did not resemble the ones back home, which were a simple one, in fact a symbolic one.  The one he made had all parts, including the throbbing veins and nothing was left to the imagination.  I must admit that he did quite a good job.  Had this been for some other purpose, other than hanging above my door, he did really deserve applause.  Since I did not have any choice I hung it from the door top.  That silenced my dad.

            A few days later my children’s friends came to our house.  They are all below ten kids.  They did not seem to be bothered by the new “item of decoration” on my door.  Curiously I asked them what it was.  Without blinking an eyelid, they replied, “Uncle, chu tang ni gi eembay”, meaning that it is an object to urinate with.  They knew it by its basic functional utility and beyond that it’s just another piece of anatomy.  Ah, the innocence at its peak!

            But it’s a different story with the adults; visiting friends of mine and my wife’s.  They grin, giggle, pass comments, some even pass sexist remarks.  I heard one friend of mine saying, “the one eyed monster taking its post!”  My wife thinks that it is disgusting and wants to throw it away.

            I was looking at a picture of a gold chain and a locket, strung around the neck of a lady.  The photographer has intentionally shown the cleavage of the model wearing a sports bra.  The face was left out.  I must confess that more than the gold chain and the locket, my attention was drawn by the cleavage of the lady.  I showed the same to my friends and even they saw the cleavage first.

            I showed this same picture to my three years old son and instantly he replied, “Sung koed (sacred thread strung around the neck) eembay.”  He took the chain and the locket to be a ‘sung koed’.  He did not notice the cleavage, which we adults did before anything.

            The difference in perception is glaring.  Children see things as they are; in their pure unadulterated form.  We, the adults, see things in a different light, beyond its basic meaning. Ours is a bit prejudiced by our “adult” minds.

If only: Reflections on Life and Living

I am sitting under an old gulmohar tree (delonix regia), that resembles a large green umbrella, that is a part of the boundary fencing between where I live and my neighbour’s house.  The tiny leaves on the stems are neatly arranged like the plumage of a bird giving it a very gentle and peaceful look.  The mild breeze on them creates a movement like ripples in a pond that has been disturbed by a falling pebble.  I wonder how many tired souls this particular tree must have helped rejuvenate under its cool shades.  If only it could talk…

A Dying Art

I belong to a time when letter writing was the only means of communicating with people at distant places.  Other than sending verbal messages through people travelling to places, letter writing was the only means of communication.  There was a place called “Wireless Station”, but I was not clear how it delivered messages then, and people did not use it to send love letters.  So it was the good old post office that we turned to and a fifty chhetrum stamp was enough to get a letter going, to whichever places in Bhutan your letter was destined.  But it took ages to reach its destination.  I remember once, receiving a letter that took forty five days, from a place where it today takes eight hours by road!

Impractical Fool

As I barely sat down to write something that has been bothering me lately, the door bell rang and simultaneously the door opened, revealing a massive head, with a crew cut hair.  The face beneath it looked weather beaten and riddled with potholes.  The nose looked like a genetically altered over-sized carrot.  The traces of curls in the short cropped hair spoke of a wild curly hair, if not attended to on a regular basis.  The bulge in the mid-section of the trunk showed signs of prosperity, as we, the Bhutanese, say, and the shiny brown Hush Puppy shoes confirmed it.

Bad Hair Days

Existence of barbers or professional hair cutters does not feature in any history of Bhutan.  I suppose it is safe to assume that such professions did not exist in Bhutan.  From the time I remember I saw people cut each other’s hair in the villages.  Mothers cut the hair of their children, though the first haircut of a child was always done by the maternal uncle or a big lam, the reason of which I still do not know.

Parenting – An All in One Task

God asked him “What were you while on earth?”  He replied, “I was a parent, God.”  And the God said, “Such multi-talented person!  You must have had quite a time.  You may rest here.”  God sent him to heaven.

Going Under the Knife

Except for a greenish gown that has seen better days, which the hospital provided, she wore nothing underneath. As she was wheeled into the Operation Theatre (OT) on a gurney, she looked so vulnerable. I have never seen this side of her personality. She looked tiny, naked and vulnerable. For the first time in our twelve years of married life, I realised how tiny and frightened she looked. My heart went out to her. My wife was going under the knife for some minor surgery.

Sunday Evening Blues

I hate Sunday evenings.  It is a long story.  They bring back a lot of memories of yore school days.  Those were the days when teachers used more canes than words to teach and discipline the students.  It was sticks all the way and no carrots.  Some of our teachers and seniors were really merciless, a few of them going even to the extent of being sadistic.  Sunday evening meant a lot of things; end of the weekend or the beginning of another new week, which meant facing the canes of our great learned teachers and a host of other things that were not necessarily pleasant.  Ever since I hated Sunday evenings; this dislike have got into my system so deep that even today and even when I am on holidays, I still get this creepy feelings on Sunday evenings.