My classmate who had dropped the school after attending the sixth standard was in my car. Karpola was his name. He had his own dark flashback in his life. He was coming for the first time to Thimphu, the capital city of Bhutan. All his life, he was married to his village, Labar, Pema Gatshel. He had been sweating over to keep his dependents alive. Doing farming, carrying heavy loads, and living in the dark home as much for his dark face in contrast to his name Karpola, which means white, he was living a mundane dark life. The main reason for dropping his studies was financial problems. Over and above, he was living with his old stepfather, who was an alcoholic, and bet his mother over again and over again. He had to take over everything as the sole survival for his mother falls over him. But for me, I had studied and had a job now. We met after seven or so years. My parents’ house was on one lone hill and his over the lone hill. We were not overnight friends but infant friends. On having talked, he agreed to go for the break from what he said, ‘over cowly life’ in the village to Thimphu with me. Visiting Thimphu was his life’s dream and this could be his dream. He was bubbling over with excitement.
We traveled one of the longest journeys, and most of the time he slept inside the car being ill from dizziness. On the way, he over and again said, “You overdrive.” But I overruled him, 50-60 kms/hr was overall an average speed. On nearing Thimphu’s city, we washed our faces fresh and I asked him to be watchful of his dreamland. To had a better view of Thimphu, I drove him from the Semtokha road. He opened his mouth, his tongue was stuck out as he ran his eyes over every corner of valleys, down the big lane; hundreds of cars pass by, hundreds of crowded buildings. He pushed out, “Oh, over cars, more than cows in my village.” i laughed. We just then cross Lungtenphug and saw the whole face of Thimphu. He looked at the city with his poking eyes; he craned his neck through the car’s window. He looked arrestingly overwhelmed. “This is over beautiful.” He noised in the air. “You have misused preposition, we say, the most beautiful.” I laughed and corrected him. “Anyway, this is over beautiful,” he muttered. “We can see this place very beautiful from the outside, let us check inside,” I fawned over. I liked to lord it over my friend. We entered the town; we pulled over to the side and parked the car at the side of the road. Now the man from the uptown world was roaming the downtown world. We reached over the farmer’s market, I tried to paper over the cracks, but he had a habit of drooling over every nook and corner of the market and that was where he got petrify, somewhat allergic to his dream. He had clouded over his face. The shift of scene had cast a shadow over him. “This is over dirty. Beautiful buildings, clean people, clean cars but over dirty drains, over smelly, over wrappers, over papers whatnot all over the places.” He did me over as if I had handover this. I once again corrected with some sense of responsibility and shame of the place I was fussing over, “You can say dirty...”
My far cousin lived in Changjiji. We slept over for some days while I had my spinning administrative works in the Education Ministry. Karpola seeing all kinds of people in the place felt happy to mix in the mixture. I wanted him to experience a city’s life. One night, we went over with a bang to be a part of a discotheque. We saw gangs of youth drunk, hauling over the coals, and soon breaking out into a fight. “This is over dangerous,” he cried. I lost my words. My intention was to show him another side of life; comfort, beautiful, and internally peaceful co-existence but it turned all over. Karpola habituated use of ‘over’ put me in thinking.
The other night, I lied down on my bed and mulled over the word ‘over.’ I doubled over with a hearty laugh thinking over it. But this wasn’t a laughing matter. Was it? I came up with so many reasons for the word ‘over.’ One could look externally very beautiful but dirty interior. The word between ‘over’ and ‘normal’ was like having two faces of a person. Everything overly over is bad. Over and over trying makes success.
After a week’s stay, he decided to go to his home because he had a sort of hangover for his village. “My village is over normal.” He seemed to be head over heels in love with his countryside. I drew a veil over the subject. Karpola’s eyes glazed over as if he was over and done with Thimphu’s vigor. He got over with his dream, a rather betray dream and he went to his village. I didn’t think he would be happy to spill over the news of his visit to his village mates. I reached him to the bus station while I had to return the next morning to Gedu.
