The Surreal ending

The sky loomed dark, shrouded by the nimbus clouds over Brangzungla peak. The wind beat against the hut threatening to blow it away. But meme Penjor had known from his long experience that the hut could not be blown away no matter how relentlessly the wind thrashed against it. The embers in the grate were sizzling away as he kept on chanting his evening prayer. He gulped down the last mouthful of suja from his zaabshing phorp; his only invaluable belonging and a talisman of good health, wiped it with his gho sleeve and put it in the basket behind him. He lay down to retire for the day, satisfied with the days’ work as usual.

Meme had not gone to school in his time. As a child he had not known much about his parents. He was brought up by his foster uncle Dorji who had treated him cruelly as a child. Uncle Dorji, a widower with a son, lived very far away from Khaling hamlet. The bluish scar above meme’s eyes revealed uncle Dorji’s insanity. He told his herder friends that his uncle had attacked him with the blunt end of the axe in a drunken stupor. He had been looking after his uncle’s cattle in the mountains since he was six. Thirty dour years had passed amidst the daily adversities as a herder in the bamboo forests. Scolding and beatings were the smaller part of the hardships.

One winter his uncle asked him to take the cattle to the northern knoll were the bamboos were untouched and the place less visited by other herders. He complied as usual without any protest. It was a new adventure and he enjoyed the day loitering around in search of stag horns and dead animals. It was snowing that day making his first visit sacred as believed by his elders. In the evening while returning home at sun down after the cattle he slipped and fell into the rocky crevice. The cattle left him alone. Unable to clamber up after repeated attempt; for two nights he spent the night in the crevice sleeping on the dry mosses. He yelled for two days in vain, until he got tired and fell asleep in the warm hole.  He ate snow when thirsty and chewed mosses when hungry out of mere necessity. When his uncle and other herders found him on the evening of the second day Penjor was half alive almost frozen to death. His uncle nursed him for two days with a bigger bulk of butter melted in his tea and salted wheat cake. It was one of his good times as a herder.

On the third day, at early dawn, uncle Dorji woke Penjor unexpectedly; ‘ Penjo! You good for nothing,get up now and tend to the cattle. What will you eat if you do not work?” He stood up leaning on all fours only to fall back into the bed. His uncle became furious and kicked him on the side, “ Aren’t you going? Go now..” Though weak and sick, he staggered out to the cattle shed weeping sadly. There was no one to turn to for consolation however brutally he was treated. At times he longed to run away into the mountains but his uncle knew all the trails like the lines of his merciless palm. He knew that he would not see the peaceful valleys and people behind the horizon about which his friends told countless stories. As uncle Dorji did not talk much about his native place or about his wife and child, Penjor had no reliable way to know anything about his parental history.

When Penjor was twenty, he lost his uncle mysteriously. His herder friends told him that a tiger killed uncle Dorji when he returned from the faraway valley where he had gone to sell butter and cheese. Uncle Dorji always returned in a weeks’ time; however that summer he never returned back from his sojourn. The herders even told him that the last remains of his uncle were buried by the herders on a Throwa La , a mountain pass one day away. Penjor asked his friends why his uncle was not cremated as natively done only to be told that summer rains prevented cremation.

Although he felt sad about the unfortunate disappearance of his only family he was relieved with a queer sense of freedom which made him braver to face the new challenges for next twenty seven years. One some nights he had nightmare of his uncle beckoning him from the bamboo thicket to follow him uphill as he walked ahead without looking back.

As years passed he had thirty three yaks. He either sold or bartered most part of whatever he produced from his cattle. His liabilities to the cattle kept him away from women. He took some butter to his late uncle’s widow and son Tashi in the Khaling valley, occasionally too. The first time he visited Khaling valley, some seven hours walk from his pasture, was a year after the death of uncle Dorji.

Years passed swiftly like the incense smoldering unnoticed in his hectic work of a yak herder from season to season. Senility gradually wrote early wrinkles and grayed his hair before his age. He had asked His nephew Tashi to tale his rightful place to inherit his fathers’ properties.The previous summer other herders had helped him when shifting to the new pasture downhill. Many winters and summers passed and another summer was approaching again. He worried if he would be able to shift with the others this time for he was sick and old then, without anyone to look after.

Though tired, he could not fall asleep that night. Penjor’s only companion was his blood hound KhaiLaa, a type of German Shepard. KhaiLaa howled unnaturally that night running around the hut as if chasing an intruder. He had hardly dozed off when he heard someone coughing outside the hut; then there was a gentle tap on the bamboo mat door. “Who is there?’ meme Penjor called. He was scared that his enemies had come to rob him off his earnings. He had heard of herders from the other side of the mountain who robbed some of his herder friends in recent times. The hound barked evermore incessantly. “ Penjor, my nephew, I am here..” It was the voice he had not heard for twenty seven years then. He could not believe his ears. “Uncle Dorji died a long time ago..’ he played his pranks on the intruders more to scare them than to hide his shaky voice. “No Penjor, I am alive,” The hoarse voice broke in, “the herders have lied to you. I have been to wonderful places over the horizon. I am a rich man now’ I came to take me with you now.” KhaiLaa yelped and quieted. Meme Penjor shriveled in the darkness…. An irrepressible urge dragged him to the door. Before he realized what was happening he had the door bar removed and door opened wide. To his amazement uncle Dorji stood there just as he had left, not  day older. An air of sternness filled him feeling childishly overpowered like the old days. “Oh, you have become old,” uncle Dorji stared coldly intohis eyes, “come let’s go, it is time…” Meme Penjor wanted to ask where he was taking him but his lips were numb. Like a somnambulist meme followed him few paces. He turned and looked back at his old hut; it was nowhere to be seen. “ Uncle Dorji, the hut’s blown away by the…”He was alone staring at the bamboo thicket in front of him.Uncle Dorji has vanished into the thicket too.

Around midday the following morning uncle Dorji’s son Tashi arrived at the hut. He had come to stay with meme Penjor as a herder, after the demise of his mother few weeks ago. When he arrived at the shed he saw the cattle still tethered. He yelled for meme. Not getting reply he wondered if meme had gone to fetch water. Not even KhaiLaa barked. He knocked on the bamboo mat door and pushed it open. Meme Penjor expressionless face welcomed him. His eyes were staring at him not seeing anything as he stood at the door frozen. Aghast from fright he leaped out of the hut screaming senselessly. Before he came to his senses he was running down the mountainside heading towards Khaling valley in a dazed state.

Transition-An unanswered reality

Lopen Jangchub turned around when he heard a thunderous sound of metal crashing and crumbling in his ears. His mouth opened wide and eyes became still when he saw two vehicles embracing, growling as if in annoyance. He was panting after jogging for two kilometers down town. The sun had not come up yet. Incredible scenes began to unfold before him: right out of a fiction novel.

A tipper truck loaded with cement to the ceiling and an azure Land Cruiser Toyota seemed to be saying ‘good morning’ to each other in an unusual way. Some cement bags lay split open on the road. Its white plume of dusts lingered over the scene. The Cruiser’s bonnet was crunched and twisted mercilessly like a beer can. Its engine was steaming. The windscreen of both vehicles broken into pieces were scattered over the road. Morning joggers and other pedestrians began to gather at the collision site as if they were detectives drawn towards the scene of cold blooded murder.

The driver of the tipper truck kicked opens the door and jumped out. He appeared furious and confused. He was holding his hankie over the left brow from where warm blood oozed out his face. Lopen Jangchup climbed up from the left door of the truck, driven by human concern and philanthropic instinct, and peeked in to see a child lying in a pool of blood. A pang of total fear gripped him. The head was in a contorted angle and fractured from the left.  A woman lay unconscious on her seat. He silently prayed and jumped to the road. As he sat on the pavement to take a breath some men retrieved the child and woman from the truck to help him. Unfortunately the child was lifeless. The child’s mother regained consciousness and wailed in utter agony. She had a broken arm. The child she said was her first born and just three years old.

Jangchub helped others to pull out the Cruiser’s driver through the windscreen of the jammed door. He cried in pain as they laid him on the cold pavement. Through a deep gash on his temple, a broken windscreen glass protruded menacingly. Lopen Jangchub asked the others not to pull out the glass to prevent loss of blood. The other two passengers were the driver’s wife and a school boy in his mid teens. His wife had a broken wrist and perhaps a fracture in the ribs too for she winced in pain as she heaved while breathing. The mother said his son was sleeping when the accident occurred. The boy’s head was gruesomely crushed from the brow inwards and anyone who saw through the fissure could have vomited or fainted in fear.

Police arrived few minutes after the accident followed by the health officials. They tried to resuscitate the boy on the spot but to no avail. There was absolute anguish in the air; from the stench of warm blood to the chill of horror. Everything, even the azure morning sky which predicted a good day, seems to crumble on Jangchub and upon the serene valley. He realized the swift mortality of man which indicated the impermanence of all things; all death in life, darkness in glory. The invincible force of fate snatched life, their bodies, their ambitions and everything.

One was too immature, too innocent to understand the raw nature of living and dying. The child would have grown up, if assumed optimistically, to be a paragon of success in the eyes of those who would have encountered him, if at all. He would have been the center of love and beauty for his parents as he grew up clambering the ladder of life smoothly. What legacy did the child leave behind, but the memory of mortality and ignorance?

There was other in his teenager who perished carrying with him myriad of fantasy, hopes and anticipation of life. He is another treasure lost. He could have become an important man, a symbol for generations, in this unpredictable world. How do we define the struggle of life and living when death knows no time? The mysterious and bizarre routine it follows is far from predictable to man!

When the first life-giving rays of sun sauntered into Thimphu valley it was the rays of doom that carried sorrow in the hearts and soul of men. That day Jangchub railed against the almighty for creating beings to be destroyed without an ounce of human mercy. Not even the sunshine gave him any tranquility, any halcyon touch of life unlike his everyday spiritual morning walk. Self pity smothered self complacency to tears of repentance for the inability to fathom the crux of everyday life,leaving more questions than answers for him that morning.

 

 

 

A visitor at an undue hour

Time was 10.50PM. “..aaaaah….cheeeew..Ahhh..aa..!” Pema whimpered in agony for the third time. It was a chain reaction which had begun couples of minutes ago. An hour ago,he had gulped down two tablets of aspirin to relieve himself from his rising body temperature. The viral intrusion of cough and cold had been tormenting him for a month then. He saw his two roommates fast asleep. The cypress trees outside his windows were moaning as if in distress because of the wind and rain that was lashing relentlessly in the night. “..aaaaah….cheeeew..aaaaah..ooofff..!’ He cried out in pain as he swallowed what little saliva drained on his parched tongue. Beads of sweat drenched his brow and neck. His cheekbones seemed to protrude out and the eyes were sunken into the sockets. His face was a shadow of the yellow wall.

It was Pema’s first year at Sherubtse College. In the beginning he attended classes regularly but lately he had been missing most of his science classes as his illness worsened with escalating fever. Outside, the lightening flared and thundered reverberated across the murky sky. The lights went off all of a sudden shrouding the mid-May night in total darkness. Almost instantly the college dogs began to howl as if reminding the college electrician for immediate attention. Pema’s childhood aversion to darkness made him cringe into the blankets. He felt that a sinister being was coming towards him and even heard the door creak open. He felt an eerie coldness sweep over his feverish muscles. He called out to his snoring roommate Dorji, ‘ Dorji, dorji; is that you?’ There was no answer. The pitch dark room weighed heavily on him. Pema had become so weak that it was difficult to think logically about any matter.

A minute later, nature call beckoned him at the unexpected hour. Though scared, he did not want to wake his friends and make a fool of himself. He sat up, mumbling an incomplete prayer, ‘Om ah hung benzar guru… Om ah hung benzar guru…” With a blanket shrouding over him he searched for the match box on his disorganized table. He wished he had been more scrupulous in maintaining the decorum of the study table. The search was taking years!  He felt that something was desperately clawing at him from the rear. He reassured his manly presence as he ran his hands on through the table.  When his fingers caught the match box it was a relief of a century. As he fiddled for the match sticks he realized there were only few in it. Lighting the first match stick he quickly walked to the door and opened it ajar. A blast of cold wind welcomed him instantly. The stick burnt into his finger tips. Its last cinders fell on the soggy door-mat. He looked across the corridor just as the lightning flashed to dispel the darkness momentarily.

From the far end of the corridor a phantom figure was gliding towards him noiselessly. He became stiff and held on the door very hard. He could neither bring himself to pull another match stick nor return into the room. His fingers trembled as he managed to light the second match stick for a second.  The figure was still gliding towards him! His heart froze. Million goose bumps rose, wave after wave numbing his sinews. “ The night watch man-” An instinct told him. It was another healing relief.

Another bolt of lightning flared. The figure was no more in the corridor. A nameless fear gripped him again. The sky rumbled like an old dying lioness. “May be the watchman went out of the entrance to his lodge..” he mused, assuring and convincing himself before he collapsed. Striking alight another match stick, mustering his masculine bravery, he staggered briskly towards the latrine at the far end of the corridor. It burnt out just as he reached the latrine door. As he relieved himself from the door he lit the last match stick hoping the blizzard would not put it off for god’s sake. A minute later he was running towards the room with the tiny glow at his finger tips. Closing the door behind him he closed his eyes and prayed again his incomplete mantra. The fluorescent wall clock was the only light in the room. He wished that those green lights could flourish throughout the room. It was just quarter past eleven.

The rain began to stop just as the crescent moon appeared from behind the nimbus clouds. A cool luminescence pervaded Pema’s room as well. He was about to get into bed when he heard a distinctive ‘tak,tak ,tik, tak’ from the corridor outside. “Dogs” he thought. Then there was a irregular disturbance on the door itself, “tap,tap,tap.”  He was beginning to believe what he heard. He tried to wake his friends but both words and voice failed him. “What if it is something stupid?” he said to himself. It was a tussle between ingrained conventional superstition and his academic science logic for place of truth and reputation.

Though weak and perspiring he approached the door and slowly pulled at the door knob. He peeped through the door. There was nothing. This time ‘nothingness’ brought him to his wildest senses! His heart pounded in his chest, hair stood on its end as he felt himself swooning into blackness. His legs stiffened and it would not budge or so he prognosticated. With the last of his strength he turned and ran to the refuge of his bed. It was a battle with death itself as he floated on to his bed in a dazed state. Then silence prevailed thereafter.

“Aaaa…chooow.” Pema coughed incessantly before he opened his sleepy eyes. It was morning. The bulbs were glaring orange. His two friends rose up wishing him ‘good morning.’  Dorji asked him if he was better. He nodded lazily. He sat up and looked around wondering if it was a dream. A reminiscent premonition gripped him when he saw drops of blood on the floor leading towards the door. His friends were equally bewildered. “Where did the blood come from?’ Rabten, his other friend, asked. Pema checked his hands guiltily. There was no injury. Pema wondered if he actually saw and heard the nightly visitor, the enigmatic spirit.  Even as he brooded on it he stood up to go outside.  An excruciating pain exploded from his left knee. “Aaaaooooouuuuuch,” he whimpered, grimacing grotesquely  as the nerves fired the pain throughout the body. Lethargic Rabten sprang towards Pema for help assuming Pema had collapsed. On Pema’s knee was a deep slash wound, swollen purple and coagulated with brown curd-like blood. Then he realized where the injury came from. While fleeing from the spirit of the night,almost swooning, he had hit the sharp edge of the steel wardrobe by the door. Rabten and Dorji assisted him to bed once again.

When Dorji opened the door out to let the cool morning air in, just outside the door, a  sick dog lay on the soggy foot mat fast asleep and near it was a piece of fleshless thigh bone the dog had nibbled on earlier that night much to the curiosity of them all.