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.

Writing

Many people told me to write.  They include mentors, friends, colleagues and acquaintances.  And I want to write.  Write, but on what?  What should I write about?  All possible topics I can phantom have been written about.  Equipped with a pen and a paper does not make one a writer, I realised.  I am a voracious reader and I read anything that comes my way, including the classified ads and matrimonial columns in the newspapers.  Reading makes you feel that writing can be an easy job, but when you try to pen down your thoughts you realise that it is easier said than done.  It is the ability of a writer that makes you feel so; the magic is created by the writer.  Hats off to those writers who make the readers feel so.