Yesterday when I returned home after a tiring day I saw a naughty smirk on my four years old daughter's face, it was so evident that I just couldn't ignore that and so I asked her," what's up?" I shouldn't have asked because what followed next was the same episode that has been running in my house since two years ago. She held out a five hundred note with that same naughty smirk," Phuntsho gave this to me." I went closer thinking that six years old boy surely must have taken it out of his mother's purse without her knowledge and with scolding well rehearsed in my mind. I drew close only to realize that it was a fake note that children often find in their sweets packet.
Phuntsho and my daughter met long before they became such kinds of friends. I was seven months pregnant with her when this Phuntsho was a toddler and his parents came to Paro on transfer. I became good friends with his mother and every time she came to my place, he would accompany her. Pointing to my bloated tummy he would say there is a girl in there. My husband who wanted a naughty little boy to play with used to hate this boy for saying things against his wishes and would snap at him," what makes you say that, there is a boy like you in there," and he would grin sheepishly at the mother realizing the hurt clearly written in her face. But by the time I delivered my DAUGHTER, Phuntsho's father left for studies and the mother son duo had to go back to Trashigang to put up with his maternal grandparents in the absence of the father.
After my daughter became two years old, Phuntsho's parents returned once again to Paro to become my neighbors. Their bond clicked immediately. Although my daughter was a late learner when it came to language skills, I found them communicating effectively and understanding each other so well. She would reply with mono-syllables to his never ending queries and it always astonished us how perfectly they mingled. They didn't have any other friends save each other for company. It was as if dawn rose just so that the two could get together and as night crept in she would dread having to let him go home. The same story came from his home too. Our houses would seem like childless homes, for they didn't shriek and jump around like the other kids in the neighborhood. It was as if they were savoring every moment spent in each other's company, every chance they got.
Then, Phuntsho started going to school and life became a huge void for my daughter. I could see an ache of missing him in her eyes for every half an hour, she would ask me," mama, when will school finish?" I wished I had given birth two years earlier than the time I did, at least they would have been in school together. I felt the pain along with my daughter. After school too Phuntsho would be locked in for hours on the pretext of studying hard for his academic excellence.
But yesterday with their exams over, Phuntsho had come over to our place and the two of them had been together the whole day. When he left he had given that note to her. To any other it was a fake and worthless bill but for my daughter it meant the world of happiness, how do I know this? Well, the way she put that note in her purse after holding it through out the time and falling asleep holding onto that purse and telling me all the things she was going to buy with that note.
I slowly slipped that purse out of her grip. As the purse slipped through her sweaty tiny hands, I saw a smile cross over my sleeping daughter's face, perhaps in her dreams she was already going to town with her Phuntsho by her side to buy the world of happiness with that note.
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