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.
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