My Life, my story! (YET more twist)

A seed once sown has to become a plant and nothing but a plant.I was destined to become an uneducated woman struggling to keep afloat in her own pool of miseries. But a plant too can have their own set of branches and there is no rule of the nature that a particular kind of plant should have a particular set of leaves like all; likewise I chose to finally end my constant struggle with grief in the name of responsibility.

Moreover my burden of responsibility ended with my li'l one's demise. So, I ran away from my brother's house.my neighbor had visitors from Thimphu and they asked if I would go to work for them,there was no need for me to deliberate or ask anybody.I simply took the decision. That hardcore decision of leaving my own people was as easy as finding one's eyes even in pitch darkness. Maybe that strength came from the four animals. I sought truth of their words from my dream and took flight,never to return.

Five years with Aku wangchuk's family gave me what my family could never fathom. I became a individual with her own bank account. They paid me nu. 200 per month but that was more than I could have ever earned in a lifetime bundled up with my tears in my brother's house.

Aum chime taught me the trade that would feed me for a lifetime, the art of weaving. A young weaver,listening to BBS radio I picked many Dzongkha words. Staying in Thimphu itself is a source of education. I found myself using occasional English words too apart from being able to converse in Nepali and Dzongkha.

A young woman's most important agenda too was fulfilled. Meeting my husband was not a looking for a needle in a haystack task.I knew my fate was sealed with him as he sat beside my loom telling me tales from his school and students. So then began my life of happily ever after.

Aum lhamo'a daughter sonam told me many fairytales from the books she brought home from school. All these stories ended just after the princes and the princesses got married. She never told me what happened after that and I could never ask her as she would religiously close her book as if that was a gruesome task in itself. But my story doesn't end at this point, my story actually begins from ".....and they lived happily ever after.".

Not only was I born with a cursed fate but even my body seemed to have been sent with defective parts. Somehow I couldn't seem to give my husband the joy of fulfilled parenthood. Well, come to think of it, the husband's role is never questioned when it comes to infertility. Too swept by the grief of having failed as a wife I had stopped weaving a year after our marriage. In the initial months of the first year my husband consoled me with his hopes soaring high each month. But I guess his hopes stopped bothering his dreams in the second year for neither did he comfort me nor did he talk to me about it anymore.

One day,sitting on the couch I was staring at the tear-jerker soap opera ,lost in my own thoughts. "mathang!" I heard my husband's youngest of the three sisters yell. I jerked into reality and saw three angrily glaring women . "oh!"was all I could mutter while my three sisters -in-law stormed in the different direction of my house.

The eldest of the three was already in my bedroom throwing my clothes out of my closet while the younger duo took their position infront of me. I guess this is what it must be like in a war front when you are besieged all alone by the enemy team. They threw the worst of their tantrums. All I can remember is staring at the door,expecting my husband to barge in and save me.

"You are nothing but a burden on our brother. You aren't weaving to add the income in the household. My brother doesn't even have a car. He goes to school riding that old scooter while all other teachers,even the women, drive cars now." I nodded with tears clouding my eyes.

"and you can"t even be called a complete woman!" this was the worst and the worst of all accusation. Was it my fault that I couldn't mother a child.

"Get out of our brother's house...."they gnarled at me in unison.

I would have stayed if only my husband had stopped me but even he was one of the conspirators. "I am helpless,I guess my sisters care for me and I can't break their heart,"he stammered.


I picked up my clothes from the floor and walked out of the door of the sanctuary I had learnt to call my home for two years.


(to be continued.................)