A is for Adultery

“ I don’t ever want to get married,” my cousin, who has just finished her degree from Bangalore and is back home recently, proclaims. This statement is a much thought about option after our hour’s gossip about friends who are unhappily married.
“But who lives happily ever after in reality?” I try to put sense while defending my own status as a wife. Man and woman are two species and they can never think alike, I try to reason out with them thereby explaining the reason for tiffs in marriages.
“Man and woman can never think alike but can’t the society have a united thought when it comes to the extra marital affairs? After all both man and woman who commit them are human beings.” That is a valid statement coming from a twenty-four years old unmarried cousin of mine. But I know where that wisdom comes from. She has already told me the story of her friend at least ten times now.
Pelden was in High School when she met the man of her dreams. Both of them were in the same class. Becoming a mother at ninth standard is not something one plans in life. But it happens owing to fate. Pelden decided to stay back home and raise their love child allowing her High School sweetheart Tshewang to continue his studies. Nine years later, Tshewang is a degree holder from Sherubtse and a proud entrée into the job market while pelden is a stay- at- home mother of two kids.
Pelden dreams of a home in Thimphu furnished with all modern amenities she sees and fancies in the movies while Tshewang’s plan is to set up a new apartment with the woman he has met during the Orientation program. The casual flings in college doesn’t count in his list of adultery but for somebody like my cousin, every girl that Tshewang dated is a thorn that has shredded her best friend’s heart.
One story of a friend leads to more stories about some more friends. I tell them of a neighbor who became my friend.
Tsheten was known as the most despicable woman in our neighborhood. I had gone to town with her, a week after I had landed up in the place. “Is she your friend?” a colleague of mine whom I had met the other day asks me with a dirty look on his face. Later I learnt that statement was challenging my integrity too.But I saw in Tsheten what others had failed to see. I saw the heart of the woman broken many times by her contractor husband who was always on the move with different woman each time. “Initially it broke my heart but with every woman he brought home and with every physical pain he inflicted on me, I hated him more.”
“Why didn’t you opt for divorce?” I asked, although I wanted to add,”instead of becoming like him!” but didn’t since we had known eachother for just a week.
“I am a mother of four kids. How can I deprieve my kids of their father?
And this simple statement had become a mantra for her changed life- a life plunged in the depths of adultery, a revenge she as a woman had taken on her husband.
Having narrated Tsheten’s predicament, how many us would actually lift the blame from her head and place it on her husband who virtually threw her in that dark life? But Tsheten and Tshewang would surely be viewed differently and would become a scapegoat of judgement on two different scales just because one is man and the other is a woman.
"No, I won't marry!" This sounds like the final THE END of a movie and I simply laugh at the conviction of my cousin who would tread the path of marital world sooner or later.

The weird shopkeeper

“Go, get yourself a packet of maggi,” I thrust a Nu. 10 note in my daughter’s hand. My sister immediately pulls my daughter’s hand to stop her. “Take Nu. 5 more,you never know how much this strange lady is gonna charge,” and she then sends my daughter who wants to eat maggi for breakfast. I tell my ignorant sister that a packet of maggi costs only ten ngultrum. “You don’t know that aunty,” she retorts and goes on to explain how the lady in the shop across her house charges extra for everything. The things she has to share about that lady shopkeeper is so hilarious that one would really want to hear more.
Everything in her shop costs above the MRP and if you ever make the mistake of taking things on credit, you can be assured that you would have to pay for even those commodity that you didn’t purchase during that particular shopping day.
Not only does that lady charge extra for all the commodity she sells but if the buyer is small boy like my nephew she takes double the amount for one commodity; One from the little boy and second time from my sister when she goes to buy some other commodity. My sister who is normally shy and less of a talker has had a tiff following many such incidences. I had a hearty laugh when she narrated the dialogues that passed on between the two of them. I had to double check on the tone my sister used to really confirm that the shopkeeper lady had indeed infuriated a calm and peaceful person like my sister.
Following the tiff, now whenever my nephew goes to buy his snacks from the shop, that lady sends him empty handed. Now he goes all the way over to the lane below their house just to buy a packet of chips because the lady wouldn’t sell them anything, not even a pin!
It is not just my sister and her family who has to bear the brunt of that shopkeeper’s way of conducting business. My sister’s upstairs neighbor who is a bachelor had gone to buy a phone voucher once and guess what that shopkeeper did. If you said “didn’t sell the voucher!” then bingo! You are right and you know why she didn’t sell the voucher? “Bhai never buys anything from my shop despite being my neighbor, so I don’t have voucher for you.” Isn’t this simply intimidating?
I wait for my daughter to return with her maggi while the upstairs angay walks in my sister’s place with her grandson dangling by her arms. Hearing us talk about their neighbor shopkeeper, she has many such incidences to add. Let it suffice to say that the lady does all what I’ve mentioned above to many of her neighbors that’s why we hardly find anybody going to her shop.
My sister shares another anecdote about another very weird shopkeeper. My sister’s friend who is a teacher in this place had shared this experience. An elderly couple had the only shop in one of the remote places in Chukha Dzongkhag. That elderly couple would not sell any of the items on the shelf if there is only last few last pieces of it. Even if one pointed to the commodity on the shelf, they would insist that the customer buy something that is abundant in stock and turn deaf ear to the customer’s plea for the commodity that is near exhaustion in that shop.
The three of us roar with laughter over this. Just then my daughter returns with a packet of maggi and two centerfresh chewing gum. The lady had kept the whole of the ngultrum fifteen we had sent through my little girl. And the readers can calculate the cost of one maggi and two chewing gums keeping that woman’s calculator in mind,lol.

A woman and her life

“How long will you be gone?” shouts her ama as soon as Syelma informs her mom about her wish to go out. She almost screams,”Tashi came home at 3AM only; did you ask him about his whereabouts?” But very calmly, she says, “an hour!”
Syelma is a busy working woman who has recently chosen to become a mother. Blessed with a healthy boy added to her successful career, her life ideally has to be what many crave but sadly it isn’t. She feels strangled by the pressure of being a fulltime working woman along with being a full time mother. Every day is a new battlefield for this mother cum office goer.
Rocking her insomniac son to sleep, she finally gets to call it a night only after midnight. Heavily doused with sleep, she immediately falls asleep. Come dawn, a new race begins.
“Your mom gets up before you to cook breakfast for you, why do you fuss so much?” Tashi asks his wife who is fumbling and feeding their son before washing and getting dressed, making herself presentable enough for work. What the husband sees is the kitchen clatter and the ready breakfast after a rested brain with fulfilled whole night’s sleep. What the husband doesn’t see is the emotional outburst from a woman who has had inadequate sleep (five hours of sleep at the most) and is ensuring that the child is well fed so that she doesn’t have to rush home before the stipulated feeding hour. Who likes looking at stern face of the boss and unfriendly glares from colleagues because you get to go home after every three hours to feed your child?
“You are paid to work!” she hears this line every time she has to seek permission to take her ailing child to hospital or take leave to attend her sick baby. Getting her office work done, preparation, presentation, meetings are juggled besides ensuring the house is well stocked for the whole family. Entertaining the guests and the weekend cleaning and dusting and washing is an unnoticed chore that Syelma carries out.
The house is neat and clean; presentably draped and the larder well stocked. The baby is healthy and well fed. All is well in the family. But the minute Syelma decides to claim an hour just to pamper her stressed out self, hell breaks loose. Her own mother allies up with the rest in the family to question her integrity,”what about the baby?”
Don’t they see that all of them in the house get their full beauty sleep and just carry out the manual chores while the poor woman is shredded into pieces with stress at work and home? The husband who is either found lazing around the computer or TV screen doesn’t even care to give his wife the unclaimed stress unwinding hour. How dare he claim he love his wife when he doesn’t realize the stress he has left his wife buried in?
Syelma mentioned above isn’t just one woman, Syelma here is every Bhutanese woman who silently goes on multitasking and ensuring that her career and her home are sparklingly taken care of while she herself drowns deeper and deeper into a machine like monster who the others don’t even consider human enough to deserve a break of an hour.
Do you think there will ever be a moment when the man in the house will look in the eye of the woman he claims he loves, and say, ”Darling, today I’ll take care of the kids and home, you go, take a break.” And actually send her to just spend some time without having to carry the baggage of what the kids might be up to? Or plan what to cook for dinner? Or think of a face to put up in front of the boss while seeking permission to take a day’s leave from office?
Will such a day ever dawn in the lives of the modern day Bhutanese woman? Will the mother in law ever realize that her daughter in law who has worked full day in the office is too tired to even lift her limb forget about fulfilling her dream of cooking the meal for the whole family? Will the husband who talk about stress at work realize that his wife who is a full time wife and mother also goes to office and has work pressure just like him?