Over and out there

The house above? Oh, it’s my country house, tucked in a beautiful plain in Chuzargang village, Gelephu. For you or any other person, this house is like any other rural house. But to me, it’s so special; it’s engraved in my heart, mind. Because I had spent almost entire life of my childhood there. Like its oldness, uniqueness and its persistent grace, many of my jolly memories of being a kid are tied up in this place. 

A couple of weeks before, I was there. I went around the house and looked so uninterruptedly, so obsessively at everything, even at the smallest things. Images of as a childhood flooded into my mind. Instantaneously. After a very long time, I was home again, staying in my own house, on the soil of my own.

I rested on the wooden bench, outside the courtyard of my house. Lying down on this same bench, some 20 years back, I used to dream of things I can’t remember. Teacher. Engineer. Journalist. Rich man. Superhero. Ah, even marrying a beautiful girl, settling down. And guess what? I had madly loved my neighbour’s beautiful daughter. Oh, my heart! I wanted to marry her. My first love? Infatuation? I don’t know.

The plain, unkempt and shy little children I met here only reminded the way I was before. Since very young, just 6, I started looking after cows. My cloth rain-dampened, in summer, along with my big brothers and sisters, I would be chasing after my cows, about 30 in number. And my stomach would swell and become hard like a drum due to rain and after eating wild mango.

Sitting here, I remembered the way my granny and elder sisters used to narrate the devil stories. After listening to the stories, so frightened at night, I’d always squeeze in between my brothers in the bed. Even I wouldn’t go to toilet outside. And often, I’d bed wet.

And I looked way down over the field, so plain, so soft, vast and shimmered with green grass so fresh, so dazzling rich. I strolled down and sat there on the terrace of field. At the field where I used to run, zigzagging in all directions, along with my big brothers and sisters and dogs. And I used to stumble all along the terraces, behind them. At times, crying; other times, joyously. 

The grass and bush have continued to grow. The bush sheltered birds, rabbits, bees, insects of any kind, butterflies. I was walking in the field, witnessing, and caught up in my own thoughts. We’d sneak beneath the bush, shooting at those birds, slingshot in my hands. Sometimes, we’d chase those wild rabbits, dragonflies too.

And I marched towards the irrigational canals and rivers nearby where we used to swim-frolicking, hungry, fighting the current, soaking up. I can’t explain it but all this felt different-this walking, this witnessing and this nostalgia. All this made me most zesty. You might think I jumped at that point. I did! Ah, because all the old instincts came rushing again. 

I had my camera with me. I took many shots. Then, I raced back home. Smell of fried rice and emdatshi flooded my senses. Yes, my mother was cooking supper for me. I had to blink back tears as I watched her cook. Oh, it took me back in those days where she used to ready the supper when I return from the school and run-rounding, hungry. Whereas, my father would be tuning to his radio. In some occasions, I used to get arra soaked egg from the bottom of his arra glass.

Everything about the end of day excited me. The setting sun was feverishly beautiful here. I sat on the grass, in my courtyard. The sky. At night. The same sky. I’d always try to count the stars and wondered about the moon.

Gracious, it was like I kept turning pages of the book of my childhood. I had surrendered, and I was letting myself feel that deep swirl of my memory, people, animals, place, of time. But I realized something as I watched and reminisced about all this. The tears has found me. They were there, in my eyes. It surprised me. I was not sure why.