Sometimes

Sometimes, darkness can be too dark

Not having a single spark

Dingy, long unending days

Seems no light at the end

And all things look empty and vain

Things fall apart

There, I wish hope.

Sometimes, silence can be too silent

Without any rustle or any breath

In a lonely place, and alone

And feeling and sensing so down

Feeling so diffident and so forlorn

There, I wish love and joy.

Sometimes, stresses can be too stressful

Without any prospect of solution

When troubles are troubling

And things are all in a hotchpotch

There, I wish peace and homely beauty.

Sometimes, love can be so hurtful

When a wounded heart breaks into pieces

Spread; all round me everywhere

On the carpet, on the sofa, on the pillows, the beds

Everywhere

There, I wish a truelove

I wonder why I am the only one at fault

Alone, bearing all these pains

My mind goes over the brink

Where will I set the foot?

Where will I rest?

Why do I get sucked into this tunnel?

So often

So dark, so indistinguishable

I try to hide

But especially from myself……. DARKNESS.

Uniforms to Help Financial Crunch

In this what is called the financial crunch or crisis, one must be ever careful of the cash transaction. Money has become tight now. One must know what to buy. The boiling desires of want one has been reduced with the economic inflation in the country. With no increase in salary and slashing the government budget in all developmental activities, money has become really hard to get now. The real problem is rupee shortage against our Ngultrum. The government report shows a scary picture of taking some five or more years to recover from this financial crunch. Millions of debt are still to be cleared and on the other hand, millions of our paper are floated in bordering towns, now useless. I was told by one storeman in Jaigion that these papers were said to be eaten by rats inside their cupboards. That’s it. I don’t really understand. Now the cost of everything has skyrocketed. On the other hand, millions of the rupee are earned every day from power export.  It is difficult to comprehend the economic situation now.

At this juncture, some schools in Bhutan have come up with a good idea to help themselves, and to teach our people how awfully bad it is to spend our money across the border- buying more than what we need. Teachers' dress have widely become popular in schools for instance. Darla MSS is the living example; teachers have come up with wearing a dress during their working hours. Excellent! It helps; it helps not only individually but also financially. It helps one’s family, it helps society, and it helps the government. The help may be a tip of an iceberg, but it still makes difference. Our ladies workers have kiras comp. anywhere. They tend to buy very expensive kiras and tegos almost every month to show off to their friends. It is expensive. To curb these trends and not to have many kiras useless as one useful dress, this uniform, I think is a good idea. But there are again personal rights, freedom to choose, freedom to wear but that is another side of the coin. Our male workers are done with five or six ghos in a year, and they don’t need to dress as such. They have dresses already. Their ash-white or ash-black or blue ghos are enough. There is one Lopen in Darla, who always wears ash-white gho a whole year-round. That is too much. And there was one southern Bhutanese (my) math teacher in Jigme Sherubling HS, in Khaling who had just one whit-ash gho for two years. I remained there for only two years, I didn’t expect he would have continued with that one gho only, but I was really struck when I saw the school magazine of one of the schools (name withheld), seated in the middle with his old white-ash gho, that man has become principal! He is a sucking calculating man, I guess. He really understands plus and minus.

Hyped-up, I counted my ghos. I breathed; I have not been a real jerk on ghos. Within eight years of my earning, I have 16 ghos staffed inside the cupboard’s shelf. It barely filled the whole step of the shelf no. 1. Not so much I thought poor, I have given many old ghos to my people. I remember clearly, I have given almost seven or more of now. I am not a gho freak. I have only two very expensive ghos; one Lungserma, given by my parents, and Sershog gho forcefully bought to me by my wife. These two expensive ghos are staved and bedded inside the suitcase. I hope they wouldn’t lay eggs and double. The last time she gave a look at them, there were some bugs creeping in-between. Soon, they will make a home out of my precious, but useless ghos. Like all men, my favorite ghos are plain ash-blue, ash-white ghos made from across the borders. I have five or more ghos in these colors and I am afraid that some people may feel that I have learned from my math teacher of Khaling.

The Dead Days

Except for a little travels, I had have been on a long break from this mundane world, the break was not as mundane as it should have been like before. But now, I have still a time enjoy the break and I will drink the life to lees. I had done nothing productive til now. I just wanted to see how life passes without doing anything and the life did pass. I didn’t have any big thoughts, dreams, works, or projects in my mind. It was simply empty, and I wanted to make my mind as empty as a newborn child. So, I slept, ate, drove, watched television, talked, drank, and did nothing.  Useless it may seem, and it was so. The truth is there is nothing meaningful as such as we think. Everything is useless as stink food. Time passes, life moves on to decay. Nothing exists.

The weather outside was very cold but not so inclement. From time to time, I went outside and watched snow-capped mountains and took photos. It was beautiful. But the nip in the air was it as I have to roll up inside the blankets or be seated near the Bukhari (Bhutanese heater/fire) all day. Winter is cruel and it is rightly said. My son and I have to fight to keep ourselves warm. Most of the time, he would have fully engaged in playing games on the computer. My wife got exercise with her kitchen chores. I assisted her a lot. She would bundle up inside her several clothes when she is cold. She would have worn around seven to eight shirts and a jacket at this time of the year.

There is a kitchen garden near our kitchen. It has some vegetables, mostly radishes, broccoli, sags, big turnips, and coriander. It is so a natural product. Now we love nature, everything from nature in this artificial world. That is what we cared about.  I dug the garden and even extended it. Even after extending the garden, our garden grew into a size of not more than a spacious bathroom.  We sowed seeds; maize, beans, cucumber, potatoes, etc for the coming months. Hope to have a bountiful harvest from this red soil. Yes, the soil was as red as rose, and we needed to spray dung as thick as fingernails. So we got different dung; cows, chickens, horses to have a bountiful harvest. Let’s wait and see. Hope.

Apartness

Life swings;

Between joy and sadness

And togetherness and loneliness

Today,

Now, I hold out

But succumbed.

It’s gone

Compressed in the same room all alone

I’m not really fine

Inside, all I’ve is missing of love

My heart deaden with dazed glimmers

I’ve drawn to these cold things

My soul numbed and apart

All alone with this apartness;

All I do now is to talk myself

So wretched and trapped
Betrayed by myself
to those terrors of my life

Each step I take make me think back

To the days of fantasy

But the only thing that keeps me breathing
is having a hopeful wish;

These thrills will come again

And never leave part me.