The other side of me

I sat in front of my laptop, unsure of my next step when my hands had already typed Druknet.com and before long I found myself enter the chat room. Chatting in this site is always a mixture of embarrassment with the touch of naughtiness gripping in one’s heart. I hardly visit this site but after I came to know few nicks of the people whom I know I have started frequenting this website in search of my friends who don’t show up in our regular site. On this day, the upper side of my lips twitched as if going on a verbal spree but I tried to reason out against the urge to believe it. Not finding any of my usual friends I was about to click myself out of it when I saw a “hi” blinking on my screen. I could have easily ignored that message and saved myself from the embarrassment but my boredom won over me and I found myself answering back. The next query that was thrown to me was about my nick, I never knew the kind of nicks you chose for yourself mattered, I mean I’ve been calling myself by various names and never has it had anything to do with my being. But when this man( I don’t know he said he is a man) asked me about it, I felt as if somebody was trying to uproot me from the place I belonged to and I casually told him I am from eastern Bhutan. I could have easily lied and got away with that but no, I had to be truthful to this horrid two faced (or may be hundred faced) being. Then tumbled all the things we hear about the sharchops, ara thungmi (as if it is only the sharchops who wallow in the whirlpool of booze), our curries that is more of water than the vegetables, Marrying one’s own cousin, blah blah. I took that as a joke in the beginning but he kept on going with the never ending blah blahs about the people of eastern Bhutan. I gave him a dose of my anger and after much heated argument; I left my laptop fuming with anger.
I sat outside my house, cold winter wind slapping my face as if angry with me for those verbal accusations. The more I thought about that the more I loathed the idea of having gone ahead with the chat although to ignore that would have been the most sensible thing but how was I to know that it would turn to such tone. Rewinding the argument I saw myself like that same two faced being I had quarreled with. He accused me all the things as if being sharchop was life’s biggest mistake and I did the same in response to his words. Tears swelled up in my eyes acknowledging the person in me I had never imagined dwelled within me. I have always told people not to be prejudiced, that was the quality that I’ve loathed in people but after that heated discussion I felt the same in fact was a part of me too and I felt miserable. That day I cried, not because that person called me names but because he brought alive in me a kind of a person I’ve always been against.