Living an extraordinary life in a hopeless place

The article below is written by Wangchuk Dema, 19. She has qualified for Sherubtse College and will be joining her first semester this July. She is one of the founding members of the Go Youth Go (GyG), a community group founded by a handful of young people to bring positive social change in our society. This is one of her first experiences as a GYG member and in this article she has talked about it so gorgeously and inspiringly. Read it. 

One afternoon, last month, I visited the Patient’s Guest House at JDWNRH in Thimphu. My friend, Jigme Kuenga, was also with me. The Patient’s Guest House provides refuge to 28 patients, mostly kidney failure patients. And a few are homeless senior citizens. It is one of our first social activities to meet and help patients wash their laundry after we founded the Go Youth Go (GyG).  

                                            Pic: Pema Choki with Tandin Bidha (actor) 

As we went around meeting each patient, I spotted a young girl curling against pillow in her bed. She has a small frail body, boyish hairdo and pretty eyes. But inside herself, she carries a deep well of sadness and uncertainty. I went closer to her. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to know about her story and help her in all our powers that we as a group could do.

Pema Choki is her sweet name. And she is 16-year-old. Just three years younger than me. She is the third child amongst five siblings. An introvert, she has got one of the nicest laughs. But it was very painful to know that she lost both of her kidneys. She was, then, just 12.

However, it didn’t knock her down that time, for she was way too naive to understand about the dreadful fate. She was immediately referred to JDWNRH from her village, Ramjar in Trashiyangtse. Then she was, straightaway, admitted at Patient’s Guest House. She became the youngest kidney-failure patient in Bhutan.

                                       Pic: Pema with Lhamo Drukpa (Actor) and other patients

But when she couldn’t recover as she had so fervently hoped, slowly, she began to understand about her wretched condition. She comprehended that she was living a life so different, mired in hopelessness. Or perhaps more tellingly, a life less dignified-all buried in pain, uncertainty and depression. Her future, too, looks unpromising and uncertain.

It hurts way worse to discover that Pema Choki cannot attend school. She cannot travel out of Thimphu. Even she cannot eat all delicious foods and engage into merrymaking or fun activities. When she first understood that she cannot go to school, she cried, heartbroken. “I cried endless when I first discovered about my kidney failure. I thought I would die right away. I was more heartbroken and depressed when I apprehended that I cannot run, dance, go to school or have fun like my friends,” she said, her eyes glittering. 

Pema Choki is still seeking for kidney donor. The good news is that once she gets a donor and after renal transplant, she can once again live a normal life. Her parents, relatives and friends are doing all in their powers searching donor for her. But it went on, year after year, by the way. There were no hopes this far out. It has been now four years. However, her parents back in village, so earnestly, pray for her.

Today, Pema Choki’s life is solely depended on dialysis. In every four to five days, she is called for dialysis at JDWNRH which takes about four hours. Kidney failure patients like her survive only with the aid of dialysis machine. Pema admits dialysis treatment is “very painful” and she loathes it. She undergoes “an immense throbbing” and gets “headache and dizziness” during dialysis. But she has to depend on this treatment until she finds a donor. 

When asked about her favorite leisure time, Pema Choki replied in a soft tone, “I love watching television. I watch Bhutanese and Hindi serials and films. It keeps me occupied and happy. At times, I forget about my sickness.” Every weekend, Pema’s two elder sisters visit her and help with all laundry and other chores. Along with them, she goes out for shopping in the town. They also circumambulate the Memorial Chorten. Other times, they march way up to Kuensel Phodrang and other nature parks. Occasionally, her parents all the way from village visit her. She finds pleasure so enormously in all this simple activities.

Today, Pema Seldon, her sister, a Class X student attends to her. She revealed, chuckling, Pema Choki has a good vocal. With a shilly-shally smile, Pema Choki accepted the fact of singing but refused to sing for me and my friend, Jigme.

Three wishes if ever granted, Pema Choki would first wish to find a donor and do her renal transplant and once again live a normal life. Secondly, she would pray for all those people that are ill and facing death and work tirelessly to free them from their sufferings. Lastly, she wishes never to become a burden on her parents.

And I couldn’t help making this comparison. Our pain, anxiety, failure and sickness are nothing. Indeed, we’re very selfish. We fight toward our own personal goal, gratification, focused in our priorities. We feel, all time, we never had enough. But looking at Pema Choki, we bask in bliss and plentitude. Yet we cry when our parents don’t buy us cell phone or shoes. We cry when we catch light fever or when someone ignores us. But here’s this young girl, just 16, even when fate buried her in such a wretched condition, she still prays for others’ wellbeing and wishes to live a normal life only to help those sufferings. 

When asked she ever envied those children who go to school, Pema replied, “I’m just happy for those fortunate ones.” She added, “I accept the way I am today. We should be grateful for this life. Indeed, we should earn merits by contributing good deeds, so that karma can play a clean game with us in our next life even if we don’t attain enlightenment.” Pema Choki believes that in her previous life she couldn’t have done so well that concluded her fate of misery in this life.

It hit me by surprise. She is young and has neither education nor the knowledge of the Book, but in the last four years of difficult times she has fully understood the conceptual world of samsara. We’ve a good strength of physical body. But she has a good strength of mind. Pema Choki, in no doubt, is not living an ordinary life. But she is only living an extraordinary life. Because she knew her mind. And this makes her way superior to us. Wiser. Invincible. Compassionate.

                                                        Pic: Wangchuk Dema and Jigme Kuenga

Jigme and I spent the entire day washing Pema Choki and other patients’ clothes and talking to them. Only in the evening we returned home. I left so, so grateful for Pema Choki, for her imponderable wisdoms. I left wishing with all my might that she would be granted a normal life with kidney of a benevolent person.

Like you and me, Pema Choki also deserves a second chance to live a normal life.

Black and white

It’s funny. It’s desperate. It’s honest. It’ll move you. And so, frankly, do I say there’s no going back to it, yet I reminisce, often, with uncontrollable laughter. Yes, I’m going to tell you about my childhood incident. It happened when I was 7 years old. Eh? I’m not sure precisely. Probably it was in 1992. At Norbuling, my village, almost two-hour walk from Gelephu.

I was, then, in stick limbs, burnt skin. But uncommonly alert, bright and resilient lad. I could tell. And I had a handful of friends-all alike me. Unkempt. Rowdy. Lilliputians. In their company, I used to huff and puff around my village, causing constant troubles to villagers especially young girls. And I would return home only when hungry. Say what you like about a notorious lad-and I had all.

You would never guess how much allergic I was to taking bath. As much as dogs hate it, ha-ha. My hands and knees were always dirt stained. All blames put on marbles. I would be playing marbles, oftentimes. And you know what? I had learned a correct way to strike marbles. I’ll show you how. I would close my left eyes and my right eye aiming at marbles in a ring. My right knee bent, left one on dusty ground (for balance), a swift kiss for luck and then strike to knock marbles. Wow, I had won a boomer jar full of it. My coveted achievement though.

Now, I know, you must be wondering what my parents had been doing? I’ll tell you, my parents gave birth to 13 children. I’m the youngest son. That’s why they couldn’t, at all, give care for us. Of 13 siblings, two died-one from untreated malaria and another from evil spirit. But unfortunately both died home, not in BHU or hospital.

And those days, you don’t know how much fascination I held for watching video. Ajay Devgun in his side pungs and damnless looks. Sunil Shetty, for his bulging biceps. Akshay Kumar, for his sexy voice and flying kick. I was also equally fascinated by Rambo‘s guns and Superman’s costume. My room’s walls papered with post cards of these stars. Also my auto books.

But those days, in the whole village, my uncle (a recent retiree, then, from his service as a RBP constable) was the only one who had video. Black and white. Solar energy. He’d invite us to watch video when he had hired new cassettes from the market. But this was very rare. And my father had only a Philips radio. I loved listening to film dialogues and songs in his radio. How sweet! But this too was very rare as my father had been glued listening to news. Of course, his best companion.

And the interesting part? At my uncle’s house, I was always asked to rewind video cassette. With the help of a stick. It required quite a deal of energy and time to complete the task. Almost the length of a-cup-of-tea-long conversation. After that I’d sit in a corner, in well-behaved silence, watching video without even blinking my eyes. Ah, next day, in my school, I’d be narrating about the film to my mates. Even imitating film’s dialogue and enacting in front of them. 

One afternoon, a friend of mine brought a cassette. I don’t know from where he got it. I gathered, instantaneously, all my friends and went to my uncle’s house to watch it. As my uncle put on his video, we sat on the floor all in polite smile and happy. My uncle and aunt also sat in a divan to watch the film.

First scene: Gunfight in a swimming pool. Two men killed.

Second scene: A blonde climbs down a stair in bathrobe. Colour of her bathrobe? I don’t know. I already told you that it was a black and white video screen, no? And two men, masculine, appeared out of nowhere. Oh my gosh! The blonde, uh, starts undressing herself in front of two men. The scene bizarrely plunged into something quite unexpected. It was a triple, sex among three of them.

As they go hammer and tongs at it, thunderous strikes of orgasm revved up and ranted the room. It was a breathlessly awkward moment that I stood confused, caught between whether to continue watching video or leave the house. A catch-22, absolutely. Videos, those days, had no remote control. So, my uncle ran frantically and ejected the cassette. He threw the cassette at us, laughing. We raced out of house.

In fact, that was my life’s first time that I watched porn video. That’s also with my uncle and aunt, ha-ha. It’s hysterically weird, but nevertheless true. Undeniably. Unforgettably. 

Photo courtesy: Tashi Wangchuk; googlsearch

Letting it go

I learn everyday. Each new day is one more day that surprises me with new awakening, wisdom. That’s why I feel, at times, that I live wide awake. And this overwhelms me. Really. This is obvious reason why I want to live long. And die as an old man. Wise and fully awake. I hope you, too, feel the same. Do you? 

As I walk between my house and office every day, I spend quite a deal of time watching trees, flowers, chirping birds, crimson clouds and the sun. And the moon and stars at night. I sit, reverent, as I watch them. Pondering. Wondering. I find song in them, truthfully, the essence of life. How? I don’t know. I can’t explain it to you. But I do feel it. I do hear it. I do understand it, deep in my heart.

But all this remind me one important thing. A time of transition. That we live in a world of transition. That we change. That everything around us transit. And interestingly, we also learn to let things go and readjust ourselves to the change.

Lo and behold, the year is already at spring. Trees, grasses and flowers have themselves sprouting in lush green, colourful. This is time of transition, isn’t it? I can feel we’re slowly creeping into another season. Inexorably though. After a month, we’ll be moving into warmer and wet season. Summer. Then into season of fall. Autumn. Each change of season, though reluctantly, we learn to readjust, right? 

And you don’t know how much I dislike change. I’m really a kind of person holding-onto-things-and-never-them-go. But each time I watch trees and flowers, it makes me to realize that holding onto something is futile. For example, though a tree grows lush green in spring and summer, it has to ultimately shed its leaves in autumn. 

Whatever we’re holding onto, we just have to let them go. Oh, I cannot stop thinking about this. About a year and half before, my heart was badly broken. You’re right! Yes, I broke up from my girlfriend with whom I had spent a solid seven years and was thinking I can never live without her. I suffered. I shed endless tears, literally. Thank goodness, now my heart is mended and I learned to live without my first love. I learned to be strong, took each day step-by-step and survive every sad moment. For better or worse I learned that sometimes growing up means letting go. 

Whether you realize it or not, every day you come across lots of change and transition. Every hi ends with goodbye. A good friend of yours may turn back at you when you need him/her the most. You may get a fast-track promotion. This is also possible that you may lose your beloved ones. And this naïve philosopher in me cannot help thinking that we tread every day on thin line between holiness and adversity. 

Knowingly or unknowingly, we let go things or people every day. But the good news is that we learn to readjust as we tread the routine of transition. This is yet again best taught by the tree that loses its leaves, stays barren, however, readjusts to stand alive in harsh cold winter. 

And there comes a time, ah, that we’ll be in our deathbed. Inevitably. That time though we’re very much attached to our beloved ones, properties, beautiful memories and this wonderful world, we’ve to learn to accept the truth of life. We let go our beloved ones and this beautiful world and learn to prepare for afterlife. 

Hold on for a sec! After all, isn’t every day holds an ending? Aren’t we letting go every single day and nearing to that end, death?

Photo courtesy: googlesearch

Go Youth Go!

Go Youth Go, a group aspiring to bring positive change in our society, has been formed very recently in Bhutan. This group formed by young people aspires to register themselves as a local public-benefit youth organization in a few years. 

The group’s committed members are mostly young people, of ages between 16-24 years old. Its tentative objectives are to address youth problems, engage youth meaningfully, empower youth and to bring positive social change in our society. However, its vision and mission are yet to discuss.

Meanwhile, this group has already started contributing to our society. Last Saturday, seven members of the group have contributed their voluntary work at the Department of Youth and Sports’ Youth Centre in Thimphu. They helped in gardening, constructing fence and cleaning the campus to make the Youth Centre attractive for youth.

      Pic: Wangchuk Dema, Dechen Choden, Jigme Kuenga, Tashi Namgay and Kencho Dorji

                                                   Pic: Youth at voluntary action 

                                        Pic: Jigme Kuenga, one of the youngest members

                                              Pic: Kencho Dorji and Wangchuk Dema

We heal

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly-that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”

                                                                                                                  -Anne Lamot

Thimphu Tashichodzong

Trashichodzong in Spring. Of grandeur and majestic! It was a wondrous spectacle.

 

Cattle at Main Traffic

Cattle spotted walking across the main traffic in Thimphu City. Strange though!

Photo courtesy: Chencho Thinley

Moments of wonder

One weekend, last month, I went out for picnic in Paro with my siblings and their families and friends. The day was-in a word-magical. Sunny and warm. Barely 20 minutes drive north from Paro Town, our picnic spot was an open grazing land, next to a river, below Drukgyel Dzong. On one side lay luminous rice fields and amidst perched a few village huts and traditional houses in ruins. Other side was covered with huge forest. 

We busied ourselves no sooner did we reach the picnic spot. Some set off to fetch firewood, a few ferried water and others involved in cooking. It’s, more importantly, a union among siblings and among friends. After long time back though. As we held individual responsibility, we set about chatting. We talked about our works, relationship with our colleagues and bosses. We talked about untreated inflation on grocery, vegetables and car fuels. We talked about Rupee crisis, economy crisis in Bhutan. And so on. We’re so fully engrossed, both with works in front of us and with our incessant talk.

But my niece, just 7-year old, stood ecstatically excited all day. Her exposure to open nature-may be her first time-left her mesmerized. Unlike us, she wandered around, noticing things everywhere. And she was overcome by constant wonder. She watched on the colorful wild flowers, fishes in the river and flying birds. She wondered at how a wild flower can be in full bloom (after the harsh winter) in the midst of thorns. She wondered at how a fish swims so swiftly and can live under water. She wondered at how long those traditional houses in ruins been there, who had lived there. She asked me all this though, ah.

My niece wondered about those wholly ordinary she saw around. But as adults, we’re lulled in the triviality of everyday existence. We succumb to the details. We hurry every time. We run after time. We run after appointments. We run after deadlines. We run after money. We run after people. We run after conflicts and controversies. Above all, we let ourselves be lulled into “busy” humdrum of our lives. And alas, we wrap our minds and forget to wonder. We forget to stop and wonder about those magical moments in front of us. And each time, we miss moments of wonder.

It was late afternoon when we set out from Paro. Back to home in Thimphu. Inside car, my siblings kept talking about everyday stuffs. I sat by window side. As car ranted on, air gushed forth, so cool, fresh. Valleys, houses and trees perched sumptuously across the terrains. Gorgeous rays of sunset kept dancing, flickering inside car. 

I looked up, up above at the dome of the glorious sky. So large. And eventually I saw the setting sun glancing from behind the mountains, shining bright. A little while on, the glare of sun was sucked out, leaving behind a wonderful marmalade glow. Had I not looked up, that beautiful moment would never be felt again-not exactly, not ever. And I wondered, duly, at how the sun turns into so magical, gorgeous as it sets. I marveled at why the sun has to set and again rise next morning. So miraculous, na?

And flocks of paddy birds were taking flights towards the setting sun, towards their habitats, filling the arc of the glow of sunset in west. I kept watching, spellbound, until those birds vanished into thin air-over the horizon-in that sky. And I wondered at how long those birds had to fly back to their habitats. Where? Will they return next morning? I asked myself this over and over again, wondering, wondering.

As I continued wondering, I realized that I was also struggling to find the language that would connect me to them. To understand and feel the presence of something that exists beyond our logic. And so miraculously, as if a voice spoke to my heart, my consciousness was filled with accruing awakening. Like we’re returning to our homes from picnic, those birds were also going back to their habitats, to a restful night, to protect and feed their chicks. And the sun was retiring from a daylong hard work as it had to again dutifully illuminate the whole world next morning. I relate to that!  

Photo courtesy: Tekearth; goodlesearch