He came running after me. I slumped in the dark cowshed, sobbing! I don't know why I cried...was it tears of joy? tears of relief? or simply tears of ominous ugly twist waiting for me?
"I know you suffered a lot," his voice shivered. I didn't recognize the voice for I had never heard him talk to me. We parted ways when I was a toddler, for my maternal uncle had decided to take him with him to give him education.
My mom would tell me about my elder brothers whom I had never remembered. She would tell me that her boys would become 'dashos' after their studies and take me with them and give me a life in the town. I never tried imagining a life in town for I didn't know what a town even looked like. For me, home meant being in our shanty bamboo hut which leaked during monsoons and sent cold winds right into our blood during winters.
"Ata, are you a 'dasho' now?" I asked drawing close to him now that I knew my life was going to change. He laughed. "I am not a dasho but I earn enough to have my family with me," he assured me.
Riding in the rickety old truck with 'my family' which consisted of my father( I don't know if I even felt like addressing him with that after he played dead in my life after my mom's demise), his new partner(whose stern eyes pierced holes in my whole body merely by sitting near me); my lil brother who was a toddler now and my eldest brother who drove that truck.
He turned some weird looking knobs in his truck and soothing music lulled me to sleep. I heard my mom singing to me. Just when mom was about to pat my head with her gentle fingers,suddenly I was awakened by an uncomfortable rumble in my tummy that forced my lunch out of my body. I shook as the last of the tasty morsel left me with its bitter taste in my mouth.
First the tears and now soaked in my own bitter saliva,Was I gearing up for something more torturous? Only time had the answer and in the meanwhile I had to fight another urge of sour vomit pushing its way out!Eew!
One month in my brother's house(it was no better than our village hut.Well! what can you expect from a truck driver's income!sigh!) and I knew my sins were still grinding itself in the laundry machine. With my stepmom as the incharge in the house, the chores at Am Lhamo's house seemed like a child's play.
She was a typical stepmom of the fairytale period(I guess the readers would have understood how she treated me and my li'l brother).My father's role had not changed much, he went missing from the time he opened his eyes and came home dead drunk to notice any thing in the house except his shambles of a bed that took his foul stinking body in it.
What about my elder brother? He was out for most part of the day in the name of his work and when he wasn't working I guess he simply went out of the house so that his family could have the space to themselves in his house.That was his moral responsibility.
Each day my stepmom taunted me with her ugly tantrums and unholy thrashings. I never cried when she did that to me but there were times she pulled my li'l one away from me while in the process of beating me and started hitting him. Maybe she didn't have a heart or maybe she wasn't even a woman underneath that mathra kira, for no woman with her heart would do that to a lil one who did nothing but ask for his food.
But the worst came to the worst,my heart shrieked as I heard them talk...my father was acting sober for the first time and sitting beside him, my stepmom had a huge plaster of smile on her face. My brother sat across them as if caught unguarded and I heard him say," apa and azim would never mean any harm to me so it's a YES from me."
Sitting in the 40watt lighted kitchen, I repeated the YES!YES!YES! of my brother as if I knew that meant YES to another calamity in my life.
(.....to be continued)
write
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
My Life, my story!(The Beginning )
NEW YORK! Dream place of many- the land of dollars! Well, I am here but neither did I ever dream of this place nor did the green notes lure me here. I believe its my destiny that drove me from the frying pan into the fire.
How I ever landed in this place so faraway even for my uneducated mind to fathom is a story that is born from the unknown swerving life's ride took. Before I tell you my life here, I need to tell you how I got here in the first place and even before that I ought to tell you where the tussle with this absurd fate began from.
Third born and the only daughter in a family of a drunkard could have been a livable situation if only my mom had not chosen the wrong timing to make her exit out of our lives. My two elder brothers were away in the land where our Dzong was while I witnessed the final closing breath of our petite(yet!who had weathered the worst with my drunkard father) mother. My frail one year old brother wailed in my tiny arms as if he knew he had to make that loud wailing sound like the time he made his entry into the world. He took a second birth on that day with that same loud wailing, only this time I was to be the mother and not his Seven years old sister.
It never bothered my father that the woman who kept the embers of his home burning was gone forever. He continued drinking as if his whole existence depended on the daily dose of booze. It was on the seventh day of my mother's death ritual, some of our neighbors came with more bottles for my father to gulp down.
Am Lhamo, the rich lady who lived in the gigantic two story house about two acres of maize away from us looked at me with pity filled eyes. That look gave me the courage to touch her feet and I literally begged her for some kind of work in her household.She glanced at the tiny life bundled up on my back and I knew what she was thinking. "Am Lhamo, I need no money for the work,just give us food and shelter," I begged holding my li'l brother knowing he was my responsibility.
With my li'l one I left my mother's soul (if she was in that house at all) and went to live with Am Lhamo. But the kind-eyed Am Lhamo too seemed to have left her soul with my mother's death ritual. She gave me the dark corner of her kitchen to make a tiny nest for the two of us. However I was thankful to the maize flour that she provided the two of us for our meals. The coarse maize flour eroded the tiny esophagus of my li'l one but atleast he had something going into his tiny tummy.
I raced with the cockerel to get up in the morning and went to bed when the last of the owl hooted. My ever hungry for some other meal than maize flour brother didn't ease my condition. Strapped on my back from dawn till dusk, I knew he longed to be set free on the ground sometimes but that would only mean more hours of chores for me so I thought it best to keep him strapped.
The tendons in my neck wanted to stretch from being curved and bent over the chores in the house ranging from winnowing the cereals;milking the cows; sweeping the dusts from all the rooms in the big house and not to forget the tiny life adding weight on my spine.
How a little girl like me could perform all these tasks does sound kind of a hard to believe tale. But add a dead mother plus a drunkard father who forgets you even exist and a dilapidated shanty bamboo mat of a house. This addition equals to the miraculous strength that one can muster to work for a lady who means business when it comes to feeding two extra mouth in her household.
Two strenuous labor-filled years later, I was summoned to the front courtyard of Am Lhamo's house. At first I thought it was a dream. My father had never looked this sober and nor did he look this youthful. Upon staring at the figure who stood tall infront of my eyes, I realised it was my eldest brother. "Ausa, I've come to get the two of you."
I darted to the cowshed. Was it a hallucination?Was I being liberated?Were all my past life's sins washed in two years of hard labor? Had my ill-fated destiny taken a ride away from me?
(to be continued....)
How I ever landed in this place so faraway even for my uneducated mind to fathom is a story that is born from the unknown swerving life's ride took. Before I tell you my life here, I need to tell you how I got here in the first place and even before that I ought to tell you where the tussle with this absurd fate began from.
Third born and the only daughter in a family of a drunkard could have been a livable situation if only my mom had not chosen the wrong timing to make her exit out of our lives. My two elder brothers were away in the land where our Dzong was while I witnessed the final closing breath of our petite(yet!who had weathered the worst with my drunkard father) mother. My frail one year old brother wailed in my tiny arms as if he knew he had to make that loud wailing sound like the time he made his entry into the world. He took a second birth on that day with that same loud wailing, only this time I was to be the mother and not his Seven years old sister.
It never bothered my father that the woman who kept the embers of his home burning was gone forever. He continued drinking as if his whole existence depended on the daily dose of booze. It was on the seventh day of my mother's death ritual, some of our neighbors came with more bottles for my father to gulp down.
Am Lhamo, the rich lady who lived in the gigantic two story house about two acres of maize away from us looked at me with pity filled eyes. That look gave me the courage to touch her feet and I literally begged her for some kind of work in her household.She glanced at the tiny life bundled up on my back and I knew what she was thinking. "Am Lhamo, I need no money for the work,just give us food and shelter," I begged holding my li'l brother knowing he was my responsibility.
With my li'l one I left my mother's soul (if she was in that house at all) and went to live with Am Lhamo. But the kind-eyed Am Lhamo too seemed to have left her soul with my mother's death ritual. She gave me the dark corner of her kitchen to make a tiny nest for the two of us. However I was thankful to the maize flour that she provided the two of us for our meals. The coarse maize flour eroded the tiny esophagus of my li'l one but atleast he had something going into his tiny tummy.
I raced with the cockerel to get up in the morning and went to bed when the last of the owl hooted. My ever hungry for some other meal than maize flour brother didn't ease my condition. Strapped on my back from dawn till dusk, I knew he longed to be set free on the ground sometimes but that would only mean more hours of chores for me so I thought it best to keep him strapped.
The tendons in my neck wanted to stretch from being curved and bent over the chores in the house ranging from winnowing the cereals;milking the cows; sweeping the dusts from all the rooms in the big house and not to forget the tiny life adding weight on my spine.
How a little girl like me could perform all these tasks does sound kind of a hard to believe tale. But add a dead mother plus a drunkard father who forgets you even exist and a dilapidated shanty bamboo mat of a house. This addition equals to the miraculous strength that one can muster to work for a lady who means business when it comes to feeding two extra mouth in her household.
Two strenuous labor-filled years later, I was summoned to the front courtyard of Am Lhamo's house. At first I thought it was a dream. My father had never looked this sober and nor did he look this youthful. Upon staring at the figure who stood tall infront of my eyes, I realised it was my eldest brother. "Ausa, I've come to get the two of you."
I darted to the cowshed. Was it a hallucination?Was I being liberated?Were all my past life's sins washed in two years of hard labor? Had my ill-fated destiny taken a ride away from me?
(to be continued....)
Saturday, September 24, 2011
ALL I want to be
I want to be
the song you hum
when mirth stretches
your pursed lips!
I want to be
the tiny flutter in your tummy
when cupid shoots
his first arrows in your heart.
I want to be
the heart drawn on the sand
before the waves
washes it back.
But I know
I shall be forgotten
like that song you hummed;
the flutter of first signs of love
and the heart drawn on the sand.
Yet! I want to be
only these and nothing else
for even if momentary
I know it would make you merry!
Thursday, September 22, 2011
If Marriage was a two years contract!
One lazy summer lunch break hour, the five of us,sitting in the dark staffroom shifted our talk from students and funny instances in the class to a serious issue-marriage! Tshewang quipped,"If only marriage was like a few years contract!" Without a seconds delay Namgay added,"say, it was two years contract and we could renew the marriage or just get another contract with another woman!"
My immediate answer was on a defensive side(being a woman and not to forget being happily married!,"Men will always find an alibi to get access to several women!" and I dragged the doma packet and started to talk about the changing rate of doma,just to steer the topic to a much cleaner one.
Today, sitting all alone during lunch I remembered the lunch hours I spent with my friends and as I sat thinking about those good old days, I remembered this particular incident. Seriously delving into it,if as wished by my male colleagues, if marriage was a two years old contract, what would the scenario be like?
No man would ever think of renewing their expired contract(I say this with full conviction of truth that dwells in our society) and they would not stay without another full term contract. So that means after every two years if a man marries new woman, given the size of our country and the total population,there is a possibility that the whole country might land up being one big extended family(this assumed based on the assumption that the man will have a child with every marriage,which is biologically possible). Just come to think of it!
A big smile spread on my forlorn face. Many a times I can have such silly thoughts stomping in my mind and I would enjoy it as if that was some major discovery. I threw the remains of my lunch in the trash can but the absurd thought of whole country being one big family couldn't be erased from my mind that easily. So this silly woman kept on smiling throughout the day instead of weeping for having missed another THRUE time with my family.
My immediate answer was on a defensive side(being a woman and not to forget being happily married!,"Men will always find an alibi to get access to several women!" and I dragged the doma packet and started to talk about the changing rate of doma,just to steer the topic to a much cleaner one.
Today, sitting all alone during lunch I remembered the lunch hours I spent with my friends and as I sat thinking about those good old days, I remembered this particular incident. Seriously delving into it,if as wished by my male colleagues, if marriage was a two years old contract, what would the scenario be like?
No man would ever think of renewing their expired contract(I say this with full conviction of truth that dwells in our society) and they would not stay without another full term contract. So that means after every two years if a man marries new woman, given the size of our country and the total population,there is a possibility that the whole country might land up being one big extended family(this assumed based on the assumption that the man will have a child with every marriage,which is biologically possible). Just come to think of it!
A big smile spread on my forlorn face. Many a times I can have such silly thoughts stomping in my mind and I would enjoy it as if that was some major discovery. I threw the remains of my lunch in the trash can but the absurd thought of whole country being one big family couldn't be erased from my mind that easily. So this silly woman kept on smiling throughout the day instead of weeping for having missed another THRUE time with my family.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Sad but we ought to face it.
"Mama, can you put off skype now?" she pleaded. My heart tweaked a bit with a surging pain,yet I had to ask,"why?" "I want to play some online games now,"replied my daughter nonchalantly. Felt like a quiver full of arrows struck my heart at the same time. But I saw an intense need of games more than their mom who missed them like a lunatic. So I obliged, more out of understanding her need than my sadness.
After I logged out of skype I realised I have not been any different from my daughter. I never missed my own mom more than my friends and I never felt anything wrong with it.After meeting my husband and having two daughters, my parents were shoved far back in the corners of my life's priority.
Today I put my daughters above all else, eeven above my own life but sadly for now her online games counts more than my presence in skype. This is momentary, she will ask for me when she needs a new dress for her doll or maybe new games. But as she grows up her friends will occupy the place in her heart while I will be called into that space only if there is any serious adult intervention needed.
Then like any grown up girl, my li'l girl will meet the man of her dreams and I'll find no vacant corner to put up my bundled heart in her heart. With gray hair and wrinkled dreams, I shall sing of the olden days when I was young and feel all the love I felt for my li'l ones while they will snuggle in the warmth of their lives set in a different setting from mine.
Alas!that's the sad tale every mother lives.
After I logged out of skype I realised I have not been any different from my daughter. I never missed my own mom more than my friends and I never felt anything wrong with it.After meeting my husband and having two daughters, my parents were shoved far back in the corners of my life's priority.
Today I put my daughters above all else, eeven above my own life but sadly for now her online games counts more than my presence in skype. This is momentary, she will ask for me when she needs a new dress for her doll or maybe new games. But as she grows up her friends will occupy the place in her heart while I will be called into that space only if there is any serious adult intervention needed.
Then like any grown up girl, my li'l girl will meet the man of her dreams and I'll find no vacant corner to put up my bundled heart in her heart. With gray hair and wrinkled dreams, I shall sing of the olden days when I was young and feel all the love I felt for my li'l ones while they will snuggle in the warmth of their lives set in a different setting from mine.
Alas!that's the sad tale every mother lives.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Atlantic Ocean...My first time
"Are you serious? You never seen an ocean in your life?" she stared at me wide eyed,her false lashes curving higher up,almost touching her brows. I would have drawn the whole geographical setting of our country alongwith the political and social history if only my ears had not turned red with embarrassment.It's absurd how we humans look down on somebody merely based on what they have seen or done in life and I represented another set of the same race who baked red in embarrassment over the opportunities one has missed in life.
However, she was kind enough to take me to the beach. ATLANTIC OCEAN! I remembered the lessons in geography classes, the map with a wide span of blue and the black letters spelling Atlantic, but I found myself staring right at it.It took my breath away. I had tried my first swimming lesson in the Methidrang in my home town and have crossed many other rivers(oh!shouldn't forget the Brahmaputra experience in Guahati).But the Atlantic was a new and never imagined experience.
I stared deep and inhaled the salty breeze. "Go, take a walk." She taunted me with her slender sunscreen-smeared hands."All alone!" she added as if I would ask her to accompany me.
I took few unsure steps,"what if the waves lashed hard on me in took me in its embrace?"raced through my nervous brain. My Methidrang had not given me enough swimming lessons to keep me afloat in this huge mass of water.
However, few seconds into the wet sand and I fell into the role of all the leading ladies in Nicholas Sparks' novels. Just as in NS novels, as I walked all alone, lost in the sand and the salty air, a dog(wish I knew what brand that was,lol...but certainly was a big one) appeared from my back and licked my finger(maybe I was waving it in my sheer nervousness???).It frightened me and my surprised shriek double-frightened him. Just then a man, nah! a boy in his early twenties came running and apologized for his dog's behavior. Well! if only it had been NS' book, I would have fallen in love with that dog(or maybe the owner?blush!blush!). But this was no NS tale, so I(an old lady) smiled at the boy and he scooted away before I could finish saying,"that's ok."
The dog's episode made me stop my legs from taking any further steps. So I shifted my position and faced the ocean. As I stood looking at it,sadness enveloped me. I thought of thousands of Africans who were brought here by the waves of this same ocean burying their freedom in the sun parched homeland enslaved to work on foreign shores. I pictured thousands bodies floating in this same water, the bodies of those slaves who breathed their last in the ships which was no less than hell sailing on Earth. I felt a shudder down my spine. A big wave knocked me back to my real world as it washed away the sand I was standing on. I jumped away further and sat down. In the sitting position I thought of countless women sitting on this same shore waiting for their beloved to return from some agenda on the other side of this vast ocean.I could reckon the poets singing of lovers placing hopes in the vast ocean to bring back their love.Countless tales of sorrows floated with the empty shells on the shore I sat, with my gaze fixed on the dark green water.
"Why tears?" the same sound knocked. As she pulled me to my feet, I saw many kids giggle with buckets and shovels(perhaps with a sand castle in mind); young boys with their surfing boards and countless ladies attired in fashionable bikinis. I smiled a weak smile and the stories I silently had been listening to in my heart submerged with my first big spoon of chocolate ice cream.
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