A love letter to Thimphu

Dear Thimphu,

I know that you would be surprised to receive this letter from me. I’m writing it to put down my heart’s content for you, in this epistle. And how wonderful it’s to write a letter to someone I love the most! Oh, this feeling of conveying my thoughts to you is simply amazing. It feels so good to sit here in my room, pick up a pen, like this, and to put down my feelings into words, for you.  

I love you, my dear Thimphu! I am brilliantly lost in your mighty bosom. There are many people who talk all bad about you. They say you are “playful”, of “loose morale”, “materialistic”, “crowded”, “expensive” and “cold”. But I don’t care what people have to say. I love you, unashamedly.

Moreover, I always think that I’m in love with the right one. I love you because you care for me, protect me; and above all, love me. I love you that you make me feel comfortable, safe and happy.

Ours is love at first sight. On my part, at least. When I first saw you, I fell in love with you. It was way back in 1999. I had, then, boarded a bus from Gelephu for the school vacation and met you here for the first time.

I tell you that it was the most natural thing in the world when I fell in love with you. I didn’t have to think about or make any choices about. You were a transparent beauty with a pure, sweet and graceful physique.

It’s only since 2008 (after my graduation from the Sherubtse College) that we started seeing each other seriously. After a couple of years, our love jumped into next level, automatically. Without any apprehension, I gave away myself to you and tied this sacred conjugal knot of living with you, for ever. I found a job here.

In the last six years, our love has bloomed into this beautiful memory. Often, I’ve been whisked away on romantic dates, way above Sangaygang and the Buddha Point. We walked hand-in-hand, under the silver lining of a full moon. And you kissed me, on my lips, by that gentle evening breeze. From there, how we admired your stature at night. Ah, at night, you look overwhelmingly beautiful - all adorned with lights, sparkling gloriously.

And you rode me in posh cars, and we stuffed with five-star dinners and shopping in the town. On weekend nights, we stayed bar-hopping, dance partying, and going wild. Sometimes, we stretched out flat drunk in the streets like a pig; other times, made a casual love. I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but all true.

Quite aside from that, I chanced to meet a group of people here who care passionately about books and writing. I’m astonished to have found them, with whom I share same preoccupation and experiences of life. And their wisdoms and literary talents make me gasp.

Every year you treat me with four exciting seasons. You burst into bloom in spring, and how we admire it on notice things walk. Of all, I love peach bloom the most. In autumn, you transform into richly yellow and red vale. And it brings an increased blueness and depth to the sky. Our cheeks turn red with an early chill. We dress in woolen clothes and boots and mufflers and we cuddle all day at home. The valley blanketed in snow during winter is incredibly beautiful and we danced joyfully outside playing snow.   

Needless to say, but let me tell you because I feel I ought to. When I travel to other places or abroad, I get so lonely and start missing you terribly, as if we are physically joined somewhere. I miss your warmth, your skin’s perfume, your breath. And If I had to leave you, by chance, I don’t know how to relate to others. Even I don’t know what it meant to love someone else.

Now spring already gave way to summer and these days, you have been treating me with incessant raining. This evening, too, cold rain was falling silently. When it’s raining like this, it feels as if you and I were the only ones in the world. It feeds my mood, warm, intimate. I begin to wish the rain would keep on falling so that two of us could stay together, like this, happily ever after.

Yours love ever Riku