Happy Birthday zala!

1989 seems just round the corner but it’s past 20 years already. Only tells me this younger brother of mine has left his teens even. And they tell me you need mirrors to know your age. Wrinkles hardly tell you anything. Younger siblings do better. But lets not always mourn one’s age that’s galloping at a very fast pace. Sometimes we ought to enjoy memorable occasions also, like my brother’s birthday.

Well, I have a faint recollection of our elder brother carrying a lump wrapped in some cloth and I had gone “Yucks, that’s some pulp!” But you were beautiful! You must know you were a sport even before you were born. You challenged your mom to a race and you won it because you were born in the ambulance even as it was reaching just half way to the hospital. You were born lucky on August 20, 1989. You were named lucky moon too, Tashi Dawa.

You must know that I was 9 when I carried you as a baby. Our blasted two eldest sisters and brother were studying in boarding school and I and my immediate elder sister bore the whole brunt of a hefty you. Boy, were you heavy! You had a head bigger than your cute body and we would laugh as you involuntarily toppled on one side with regard to the position of your head. You were fun, of course only until you came on my back. You must have wondered why I, being the elder brother, am shorter to you by almost a foot; well young lad that’s because I lost a foot fighting gravity and your insurmountable weight on my tender back. You are taller now because you didn’t have to carry anyone. That’s the charm of being the youngest isn’t it? Well, I too enjoyed being one for 9 years at least.

But I have no regrets. I look at you and see the love in your eyes, I am just too glad I was there. I am just glad you came to this world. You are a changed man now. I can see you have the sense of a mature man. There was a time when you would be scared by clanging of the cymbals, beating of drums and you would cling to me as I would console you. There was this time when you would just go ‘huuuuuuuhhhhhh’ in long breaths and that would mean we have to stop whatever we were doing and carry you to the loo. Oh, I hated it when you did that while we were eating.

Now times are a changing and you are too. You have become more private with your issues and I am just glad about it. It only assures us you can take good care of yourself and won’t be that baby anymore. You must know that your parents are proud of you because you are growing into a fine man. You must know that I am proud of you because you are turning out to be a good brother. You must know that we all have decent expectations from you. Do not let us down!

You must also know that while mom called you this morning to wish you a belated happy Birthday she was trying to sound mirthful while she had tears in her eyes. And she was crying as she put off the phone. Yes I am jealous of that but then I know she will cry for me too as I also leave soon.

Well young lad, I sacrificed a foot carrying you. You better live yourself up to it. Study hard and keep in touch!

Happy Birthday zala!

Having a blast!

Imagine that black lump to be your head and the lit thread your lifeline. Of course that is what is happening to us as every second passes by. Only we do not seem to imagine ourselves as mortals, until we see or hear someone close by expire. Impermanence has been there since time immemorial yet it has failed to take root in our heart. We still find it hard to believe that we are going to one day leave this very world like our friends, colleagues, forefathers, and many others did. The amount of force you blast away with could depend on your present nature.

Yet, why bother about what is inevitable? Life, it seems, can get tiring and we would be looking forward and in fact actually yearning for the final day to arrive. Still, given a choice I ‘ld rather endure as much money problems and wraths of our own friends and enemies alike and yet dream of living long enough. Of course terminal diseases can drive a man to his limit of tolerance and get his wishfully thinking there was an end to it somehow.

Why bother about death when we still have a lot to live to see to cherish. Talk women for instance. Oh yeah, they are very much like the bomb you see. What’s worse, they don’t even come with a timer. The most unpredictable beings that ever walked the planet. And yet, arguably the most delectable of all. Something men could not do without. Maybe gay marriages would have taken shape ages since and of course people could have worked more wonders with test-tube babies and other cloning devices. Still, I cannot deny life would have been miserably different without women; the very epitome of evil necessity.

Not to draw grumpy opinions from the delicious ladies around let me remind us all that whatever we see, think, act or blah blah are a mere depiction of this lit bomb, maybe perhaps in a suitable way. The light could go off midway and the life of the bomb may be extended a bit but it is doomed for a nasty detonation anyway. It’s also about us inclining oneself to a completely solitary and a horrendously boring life. I guess we are better off making things of best use when we all are in one piece.

We all are bombs waiting for their final call. Have a blast before the real blast! Happy weekend!

Shake your Bon Bon! Part-2

And dance we did last Friday night. It was fun! And to think I went around with a bunch of friends I had met through internet. Well, ask about my closer friends and they are dilly-dallying about their better-halves permitting them or family issues taking the precedence. Moreover, I would not enjoy acting hoity-toity pushing them to the dance floor against their will. Of course, it’s not like inviting them for a decent hour of tea and snacks or dinner. It’s actually asking them to rip their clothes off and get crazy in a crowd attuned by a disastrous set of noise that hey call ‘music’ and breathe the same air puffed out of the lungs of the smoking-scores of lads. I would call them Chimneys-with-limbs-that-can-dance. And not forgetting to mention the booze they dip themselves into. A new name yet… Wet-Chimneys-with-limbs-that-can-dance.

They tell me good dancers are good lovers. I look around the room. Mmmm… plenty of lovers, all good ones. I mean the girls. Leave the men to my friend standing next to me, he seems to enjoy looking at the boys dance. Anyway, he’s too drunk to make out guys from girls! The three ladies join us again, back from freshening up. Well, they said they were, but to me they looked like puffed up zombies. But such darlings they are I look through their scary faces and return their smile. The music in this particular place is simply great. No prize for guessing, nor am I telling you which lest I risk being called me and my friends men of poor taste. This is my second time in two months and it is enjoyable as before. And this is my second time too with the same team, five of us; one smart man in me, the other drunkard who can’t make boys from girls, and three puffed up zombies who have to rush to the loo (well they prefer calling it Ladies Common Room) to keep the powder on their face in place.

Well, there’s no Ricky Martin going ‘Shake Your Bon Bon!’ I think he’s run obsolete with time. But shaking our Bon Bon is what we are actually doing. The five of us make a circle, put our drink in the middle and dance around it which takes me to a sub-saharan tribal dance thanking their gods for the cannibalistic diet ushered to them. Each one of us have a cigarette tugged between our lips. I do so since it makes me feel like Clint Eastwood. And I dance ‘cos it makes me feel like Michael Jackson. Yet I look at others, know they must share the same feelings as me, and yet I just see a bunch of rowdy souls. Now that’s not so charming. Still life is not always about being what you have to, achieving always what you what or enacting syllables that have been printed. There’s no charm in it. The real charm lies in breaking a few small rules now and oft.

Talk about breaking rules and smoking comes straight to mind. There’s three of us buying two packets of cigarettes each and huffing and puffing them to glory. Now that’s a disaster when we have to judge health, morale and law wise. But yes, while the clock struck 2 AM, we were still having fun. And as we returned to the cold sheets of our own bed, I am sure I was all smiles throughout the sleep ‘cos I get this feeling I still dreamt this sweet dream of me and my friends shaking our bon bon!

We cannot escape the wordly associates of pain and suffering but we sure can laugh at them at times and dance our way through. Good Luck to you all!

Shake your Bon Bon! Part-1

Such a Drag! A week that was. And the week before. And before that. Bad news seemed to rock Bhutan from all of its internal directions. It’s really tough when the undoing of a particular event, especially a sad one, is impossible. Yet the journey of our life towards the inevitable is indeed plastered by prickly thorns and the beautiful petals alike. Luck would decide where your naked foot steps on.

Most blogs I visit also lament about our present day politicians. Of accidents; sad mishaps. Some discuss philosophy. Many on their veritable thoughts about their own life and persona. We seem to drown ourselves in a deluge of sorrows and unbound sufferings. It looks and sounds selfish to be oblivious of the strangest things happening to a peaceful community, but the ways of mother nature are unrelenting and unbeknownst to us humble being’s common understanding.

So why don’t we put aside the never ending trouble for some time and really dig on something joyful that happens to us once in a while. I can’t pretend I have the best of times every weekend but you see going out once in a while does relieve you of the frequent headaches tormenting you over the week. And yeah, you get a to nurse a few heartaches too. The fat accumulation perhaps is doing wonders to me, I sometimes find it hard to breath. So it’s best I jump up and down once in a while to directly warn the fats from enveloping my prized possession. Did you think I was hinting girls? Well, you could be right there as well. But hey, I am used to heartbreaks. I have had them since high school. The literal heartache of course lets me know its not just how I feel for women, but how and what stuffs I eat. Junk foods, I know. I gobble a lot of them.

Eating, they tell me, also shouldn’t be a problem. After all, we live to work to eat to live. It’s the things you do after eating that should decide your career, more so your life. If you ask me, I just about get up and move to reach the plates to the kitchen after eating. There, enough exercise for the day and it’s time for bed. Only to wake up feeling droopy, dizzy, drowsy with a half-digested food in your raunchy tummy.

Getting carried away, am I? If this was an English test I would lose marks for straying away from the topic. So lets try driving to the point again. Alright, I was trying to talk about exercise. But I am not a gym buff and I have to extract pleasure from what I do (sweating kills me). Eating and sleeping sounds the best of any pleasurable moments there could be in my life. But yeah, sometimes I like going dancing too.

The last line above would be an understatement by the way. I loooove dancing. Only it’s not worth showing off to anyone. You have heard of bathroom singers, but I am one hell of a bathroom-dancer. Now that would be an overstatement yet again, but if anyone must see me attempting weird steps within the closed walls of my bedroom (with only God, a few gods and some demi-gods, and perhaps a lucky voyeur as spectators) they would know I love music more than most souls ever claimed to have.

Meeting the ban

In a rare show of the MPs caliber I had a nice sermon on the television about how religiousness was affected by our consumption of meat. The change of notions and subsequent support before and during the drawing of final decision was amusing as well. We saw a landslide victory yet again.

I read an interesting point raised by the Home Minister in Kuensel. “Religion and politics shouldn’t be mixed as it’ll lead to conflict. The root cause of conflicts and problems in many countries is religion,” said the minister, who is also the chairman of the Chhoedey Lhentshog, (commission for religious organisations). Yet banning of meat sale on the particular months was all a mix of religion and politics.

As long as consumption does not stop and as long as the total killing does not stop momentary breaks do not make much sense. I think the choice of banning will be subject re-discussion again at a later date when MPs with different views take up the seat. After all, it’s not a universal consensus, like agreeing that tobaccos are a danger and prone to health hazards- one area where religion and politicians would undeniably agree.

Ironically religious rituals in Bhutanese homes are stalled or postponed because of the unavailability of meat products. We have people dashing out to the shops on the eve prior to the closing day or month to stock up. We offer it in our altars to appease our gods. Meat seems to go symbolically with our religious practices.

The meat ban was neither on any of the parties’ manifestos nor has it any inkling with GNH because while it makes half smile about the ban, one fourth would be not very happy while the rest should have no comments about it (a dim projection of the fraction which need not necessarily be accurate). The public cannot gain much from this decision. Those who want to eat will find a way to get hold of it, no matter on what days or months.

Yet enough time has been lost on it.

Perhaps we ought to worry about other serious issues, and disaster management comes to my mind of all, especially when we are rankled by the unfortunate Tsimalakha incidence where innocent lives could have been saved. We have issues where each and every Bhutanese soul are united for a cause and each and every Bhutanese can be made to smile because we know the responsible bodies are headed in the right direction.

Besides, discussing saving lives at any instance of time could be far more important than deciding when and when not to eat.