WhereCollagesHappen

Ps: HereIsYourLustForLifeStartRightNow!

LaC0llaGepiCt0rIaL

Ps: HereIsYourLustForLifeStartRightNow!

BoJanglesTaps & SmileySorrows

My being is this. Legs crossed, back stretched…fingers twitching to write, hearing a dog bark in the distance…it’s Sunday evening…I am with my friend…we don’t know where we will be going next. I don’t ask and he doesn’t tell. I want to write something about this moment…I’m thinking hard…I think I shouldn’t be thinking so hard to write about something that simply is. So here goes…but here goes what…that’s supposed to be a question but I can’t find the mark on the keyboards…I am not so used to these gadgets that keep getting updated now and then…the sound of silence and the punching click of the keyboards…it’s quite a rhythm…my friend’s keyboard sounds very different from mine…I don’t know what he’s writing..But his keyboard sure seems a bit agitated and rushed than mine. Don’t know what they are talking about...These two key boards…I don’t understand this language…I shouldn’t even be trying to understand it...After all...it’s just two damn keyboards which obviously can’t communicate…oh, hang …or never mind,…lets move away from this subject…what’s on my mind…I dunno…I am just free falling… flowing……just like the dog’s bark outside …it’s continuously barking for what reasons I don’t know and I don’t care…he could be trying to impress his skills to land a good lay tonight. Dogs …now they are fearless and expressive when it comes to mating…after all…the doggie never expires...there’s no expiry date…look at me and my crassgross mind…but is it really crass…or gross says who…nobody…then why bother…what’s on my mind is on my mind and I’m the be it and end it... Now that makes things a lot simpler…..what is simpler now…don’t bother. On to the next sentence…where does it stop now…the bloody dog’s back barking…he’s definitely trying to draw attention…perhaps he’s figured tonight’s the night…well good luck to that. Spring rain …such bitter rain…that was yesterday….Como esta? Sounds nice…never really picked it up after that…..lingos do keep you in limbos. Index finger rubbing the letter ‘D’ on the keyboard…the finger’s anxious to write…bloody nothing comes out of this wearied mind…but if it’s wearied…it should have a lot to say…but the thing is I don’t want to even play with it anymore..It’s playing a lot of games…which I don’t wanna play anymore…categorically...I’d sooner jump off a cliff than play the crying game…I’m just gonna stop taking the bait and enjoy the flow…..no more stops here and there…just keep going…even the bus doesn’t stop for long..take a long piss and a good dump and get back on the damn bus and keep going is the message…..you don’t wanna go back and see the color of your piss or what kind of shit you just left back there in the bush…now where is damn bus going?…it’ll go wherever it has to go as long as there’s a road…the road never ends…it’s all about the ride…so I don’t know what I’ll see over the bend or over that hill…I’ll see it when I see it…who cares if it’s a rose bush or a thorn fern…for all ye know there may not be a bush at all…so where did that bush come from..And who put the thorns and the roses in there? How come…it’s either pleasant or totally skunk…now who decided on that? Who says roses are nice and thorns are prickly troublesome natural syringes...who made that distinction…why are you being so stupid now…you’re not moving ahead at all…get over it….don’t miss the exasperation of trying to form intelligent expression ..Sleep’s got me shrouded in some dazy veil...the eyelid curtains fall…Waiting for Godot has never so dull and dreary...very sorry…this is what happens to every Tom, Dick & Harry when they get higher and higher…pushed on by the “Boredom In The Kingdom Syndrome” that infects us all…till the next rant..Adios!Ps: HereIsYourLustForLifeStartRightNow!

We don’t need no education

It was a lazy afternoon. The day was holy. It was Shabbdrung Kuchey. Everywhere I looked, I saw school children and farmers, civil servants and tourists, walk about in different directions. The only thing binding them together was the day’s chosen monasteries. It is good to see the dharma alive and kicking, or so I thought.

I stopped by at a tavern, my own way of paying respects to the day’s auspiciousness. I just wanted to sit, perhaps a red bull to re-energize my slacking energies. There were two diwans facing each other. I sat on one and let the moment unravel itself. The revelation came in the form of an informed man. Not informed in the sense of 24/7 news-bars and hourly updates, but informed in the sense of who he was, as a 60 plus skeptical citizen who spoke with humour, intelligence and a nuanced understanding of what it means to have understanding.

He spoke without invitation, he didn’t need any. He had vital announcements to make. He embarked on the talkathon with an ode against the ignorance of the educated lot. He was succinct in his arguments, laying a trap here, magnifying an example there. He did seem to have a big bone to chew upon when it came to appointments of “empowered people” without the faintest idea of how rural farmers function. “How can you have a judge when the judge cannot judge when or how a harvest is made?” he fired. “How can he be expected to pass on a sound judgment when the people he deals with are farmers whose yearly harvests are ransomed for want of knowledge, summoned to the courts and commanded to be reprimanded when those farmers don’t show up?”

He cited his own son’s ignorance of the fields. His son, by the way, was a police officer. His argument was that officials minus the knowledge of the fields could not possibly do justice to people who live off the lands and are summoned to court for petty cases at their own egoistic whims.

He said he asked his son if he knew how many times a year a harvest was made. The son had blinkers on! He recited an account of another well educated person who did not know what the coarse grains contained! The essence of our diet, he roared in stupefaction, rice!

And then he concluded by saying, “how can people, supposedly in positions of power and in-service of the common citizenry, grant kidus when they are so out of touch with the reality of the country?”

By then I had had enough red-bulls. Recharged, I took leave of the crowding tavern and took another course. My walkabouts landed me up in a neighbour’s house. The Aum had just been back from a day long trek to a monastery up on a steep hill. She had gone to pay homage to the Shabdrung’s special statue. She spoke with faith and satisfaction, describing the beautiful statue. Then she spoke full of remorse and regret. She mentioned the neglected Lhakhangs along the trail. Their sacred walls crumbing with negligence, the statues lying on the ground, decapitated and desecrated, grounded on the floor, dirty and dusted. She spoke of Chhortens along the way, vandalized and looted.

These images she contrasted with the beautiful houses in the valley. Where houses compete for sheer size, flowers crowd adorning the balconies and cars fill the garages.

Then she said, without regret or remorse, “people forget the true meaning of life, their priorities are wrong. Their perception and pursuance of happiness is momentary.”

Both were illiterate. One is a farmer turned driver turned workshop owner. He is in his early sixties. He has an epic or two to narrate about the pitfalls of our country. The other is a farmer and a housewife. She is not a history encyclopedia; she is though a devout Buddhist who sees spiritualism starving and materialism fattening.

When I left them, I felt illiterate.

We may have acquired knowledge, but that just melts away when raw wisdom comes its way. A thousand sharp sickles in the fields and a thousand blunt spades in the hills are apparently not as backward as punching 107 rubber-ed and numbered keys. A thousand shovels will bury our collective westernized notions in one dug out fell swoop.

What they wanted to know was; why do people of power forget the bare naked truths and essentials?

On the death anniversary of the great Shabdrung “under whom we submit ourselves,” there were two that asked in the simplest terms, “Why can’t 'influentials' try understanding themselves before they try bullying and bulldozing the world?”

Feeling humbled and chastised, I vowed to get their message across. In the end, it seems, the educated lot is neither too smart nor too worldly-wise. Perhaps a willing ear or two will erase our own educated ignorance.

For starters, on the pros and cons of rice cultivation and harvests, I recommend the paddy fields of Paro valley.

Ps: HereIsYourLustForLifeStartRightNow!

The Milking Pot: From Pastoral Meadows to Urban Melees

"As the crow flies, a Polaroid fader dwells in the capital harking back in the day with a bird’s eye view of what’s happening today"

Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan, is a budding city of more than ninety thousand inhabitants, about 1/6^th of the total population of the kingdom. It is the modern face of Bhutan. It is a town mushrooming with the influx of things modern trying to blend in with the traditional. This is of course no walk in the woods and the slice struggling most with this new found sense of modernity and its complexity are the older generations; as Gen-X goes about figuring it out and Gen-Y goes virtual.

This cooks up a paradoxical concoction of freedom and entrapment that is hard to harmonize or integrate. The differences are obvious; The coming of television with Zinedine Zidane’s bald headers two world cups back and the legalization of television, along with the internet have been in Bhutan’s hermit history momentous moments.

A few years later Bhutan went mobile. These may have been yesterday’s news in most of the rest of the world but here in terms of football jargon, there were irreversible kicks and fouls, red and yellow cards, penalties and goals galore.

The Bhutan I grew up in is fast becoming a fading Polaroid memory, along with the simple lives we led. Bhutan’s new face is both thrilling and chilling. The thrill comes out of throwing our doors open to the wider world and checking out firsthand the grand fuss about globalization.

The winds of change have really been amusing gentle breezes as people get used to the wonders of technology and mass consumer goods. Being wired to the worldwide web and replacing bulky satellite phones with sleek cells is also instant karma. Most of the puffed up fears about the disappearance of traditional culture have been perhaps exaggerated; as the modern gently blends in with the traditional and every new commercial commodity is awaited and fretted about with our own Bhutanese methodology. It’s a rainbow of wonder to some and a spectrum of disaster to others. In my experience it’s been an equal dose of both, adjusting the digital time, drawing strength from black and white photo studio days.

The junction where the two approaches collide and crash to me is personally destination ‘drug abuse’; where the traveler is almost always the youngster with lingering memories of a traditional upbringing and the harsh realities of modern competitive life.

This is more so visible, audible, discernable and perhaps understandable in Thimphu as it must be in other concentrated cities. From a primarily agricultural land with a pastoral life, Thimphu’s transforming into the changing Bhutanese face, in quest of that edgy poise of urban sanity. The tunes get somewhat mixed up and like mine; there are myriad accounts of Bhutanese youngsters gone asunder trying to sing right that wrong note of truth.

But if Buddhism teaches us anything it is that change is the only permanent thing. It would be foolhardy to hold onto an image of pastoral paradise, and as the government has boldly demonstrated; we don’t intent to lower our heads digging in the mud like the ostrich, rather use its tall standing and see the world for what it is; complex, dynamic and ever changing, and find ways and means to adapt, adopt, reflect and lorry on without ignoring the past, forgetting the present, or taking the future for granted.

A good place to start that would be to accept and recognize the problems of drug use and abuse. And offer alternative means to battle the demons of addiction and aid drug addicts. Posters and banners hanging about with passive headliners in town roads and shop windows are simply not convincing or encouraging enough. More aggressive measures targeted especially at established and potential users would be welcome. As a former drug user I know when push comes to shove, sometimes a shove can be a good option to a lethargic junkie content lying either way on a mattress long as the poison keeps flowing. You have to get the junkie out of the slumber and back to a wakeful helpful reality.

You might need to educate, coerce, frighten, convince, cajole or lure the junk and ward off potential users. In other words, whatever’s necessary to get that message of help across.

The pretty slogans will not do, they ring too hollow and shallow projecting a vulgar gathering of people who never did drugs, do not understand people who do drugs and would rather enjoy the midday buffet.

That’s how those conferences look. So come down and check out things at the grass roots level, no pun intended. Let them know talking about their addictions just fine, period. Communication is a boon, and when done with a sympathetic professional ear, it encourages the patient and the wells and reservoirs of frustrated repression could come bursting forth.

The government has done a lot, and to that we owe our thanks and gratitude. I am able to live and write thanks largely to our free educational system, and the kind of truly surrogate father our genuinely beloved King has been and continuous to be, embodied in our present King. The bleating lost lambs need someone like that; compassionate, persuasive and concerned.

We must build on institutions already in place and provide the kind of listening platform abusers necessitate.

I have lost friends, known others that did, people in the prime of their lives, directly or indirectly to drug use and abuse. There are others like me with similar stories, and the numbers keep adding up as we speak. The media reports frequent familiar headlines of a ‘youth found dead in a hotel room,’ faceless anonymous arctic facts that only relate to the families of the dead. This is apathy.

Thimphu is but one budding city, and what happens in Thimphu today is a reality in most of the rest of Bhutan tomorrow. What happened to me is not one isolated story, but a universal one with shared roots of life in a budding Bhutan that I hope does not become the norm, rather the exception.

Here’s praying to the four guardian deities of the kingdom for all of that and more. May the wisdom of the Buddha’s teachings and the enlightened philosophy of GNH find their way in the policies of the government and in the hearts of the people.

Balance and harmony has never come this close to being so urgent and yet so distant. The gaps must be bridged, and bridged with that rich age old traditional wisdom and the miracle of modern technological

pragmatism. ALL IN TACT!

Ps: YourLustForLifeStartsRightNow!

The Geisha of Purple Lounge

It’s evening in Paro town. In the backdrop is Ringpung Dzong, shining like a beacon up on the hill. The symmetric fortress overlooks the town below, majestically illuminated by the floodlights around it. The museum above it is similarly lit up; there is an unmistakable sense of grandeur about it all, which is both inviting and enticing.

Downtown, under the gaze of the magnificent monuments and next to the gas station, is a bar-café called the “purple lounge.” Another form of revelation in splendid colours is about to display herself here. Her name is Dechen Seldon, she is about 5:6” tall in stilettos. Dressed in a black skirt with long slits, a soft t-shirt over a visible blouse and a light scarf adorning it all, the lounge is where she spends most of her time. She helps out in the kitchen and keeps the regulars entertained, with her easy charm, uninhibited innocence and graceful dances. She is, in all her artistic displays, a Bhutanese geisha.

The irony is that she is not really a girl, not in the biological sense. The memoirs of this young geisha were not all roses and petals. It seems like a fairy tale, but it is anything but a fairy tale. There was a time when she went by a masculine name, Dechen Phurba. The second youngest of four siblings, he is fifteen years old. His tender years have seen him spar with his military father, a conservative mother (who he now says is supportive) and a society that defines specific roles for a man and a woman. He was neither, for he was born a boy who felt more at home hanging out with the girls.

“I feel like this is who I am supposed to be,” he says in a soft tone that has obviously become a theme in his life.

He says he felt like a girl as far back as he could remember. That he never dealt with boys, preferring naturally the feminine side of things; dolls, make-ups, dressing up and the like. This was in stark contrast to the conventional world at large. His father gave him lectures on how to “behave like a boy,” his mother chided him for his love of things “girlish.”

Going to school was not all that pleasant. The boys teased him, the girls could not get around to accepting his feminine personality and the gho made him feel uncomfortable. The teachers lectured and advised him to become a boy.

The external pressure of accepted conventional behavior collided with his own sense of who he really should be. Hence, not too long ago, Dechen Phurba decided the time was right for him to come out of the closet and declare his true physical identity. He changed his name to Dechen Seldon and started dressing as any young girl her age does. Now he’s transformed into a charming fifteen year old teenage girl, with a passion for dance. She says she can dance the Baeda, sungdra, rigsel, dzongha, Hindi, Nepali and Tibetan.The music blares and she suddenly transforms into a graceful dancer, her gestures paint the beats of the music in the air, with her body in perfect sync. She takes everyone’s attention away. An admiring patron says “she could easily become a choreographer.”

She says dancing comes naturally to her. There’s no doubt about it. She can more then shake a leg.

She can spin a wool too, mainly the thitha. She weaves keras and presents them as gifts to family members and friends.Though the going has been tough and traumas have been aplenty, she talks optimistically about her troubled childhood, her present sense of relief and freedom and in hopeful tunes of the future.

In time, her parents and siblings have come to accept her as she is. She still lives with them. Her dreams, she says righteously, are to send her parents off to a trip to Bodhgaya and then get herself “upgraded.” She says the finances of undergoing such an operation is an obstacle but she is hopeful that she can start a business of her own, a bar, she says, and perhaps save enough money to finally become what she was born to be;

A woman in all her effeminate biological glory.

But before she can undertake the bodily transformation, she would like to have some stones in her heels thrown out. One of which is the gender tag. She says the “boy’s room” never made her feel comfortable. She lingers in the past for a moment and talks about her memories of the commode she would rather not talk about. The rest room seemed like a symbolical and a literal image of her dilemma. She neither fit in the “girl’s room“nor the boys’.

When she comes of age at eighteen, she says she would like to have her gender documented as a “female.” There is an air of hope and optimism when she delves into the future. Asked about marriage, she says she is not contemplating it, that she would rather look after her siblings and her parents.

Asked what made her come out of the closet, she says it was the “right thing to do.” And that she could not go on wearing a boy’s gho and pretending to be one when all her instincts told her otherwise. Then comes the bombshell, she says she left school about “two weeks back!” and the reason she decided not to show up at school anymore was because she had to wear the gho, which had assumed a dual symbol of entrapment and freedom.

She finally chose to set herself free from the entrapment of the gho and its shackling bearings. She says she just could not do it. Asked if wearing a kira would persuade her to go back to school, she says, “absolutely, if they let me wear a kira, I’ll go back to school and complete my studies.”She hopes that her decision to be true to herself would also encourage other closet-transvestites to come out and proudly demonstrate their inner yearnings as who they are, not as how society would like them to be.

It’s now late in the night and there’s talk about another entertainment complex, called the Gaadhen. Some of the “purple lounge” patrons make a move for the other joint. The place is bigger and swankier. It is filled with people, a good mixture of locals and tourists are enjoying a medley of songs belted out by the in-house band. The place is abuzz with sensual excitement. Everyone’s staring at the little stage where the performers are, and then comes an announcement. The name Dechen Seldon is announced by the house M.C.

She comes onto the stage, fearless and confident. Once the music begins, she takes the audience away with her solo-virtuosity. This girl can dance or this boy can out do the girls is the murmur among the viewers.

The audience is all applause and she’s back mixing among the crowd. It is not a bewildered crowd, It seems like everyone knows her and have come to accept her as who she truly is. A little girl trapped in a little boy. As the night wears on, you begin to forget the little boy and realize this is indeed a girl in every sense of the word.

The only thing you hope comes true for her is that “upgrade.” It seems cruel not to have it done, and it seems natural that that should be done.Then the fairly tale could end as all fairy tales do. Where the frog becomes a handsome prince, Cinderella finds the other sandal and Dechen Seldon is finally combined, in body and in spirit.

Ps: HereIsYourLustForLifeStartRightNow!

Of Allegories On The Crying Game & The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Its dark outside. The neighborhood dogs are barking, probably barking at some lone rangers who are walking the dark ramp. Being young has its perks, one of which is walking the abandoned tar and second, being barked at by zealous hounds who've been unleashed for the nocturnal tides.

i know. i used to be a dark lone ranger. there's no secrets to becoming one, matter of fact, it hinges directly on the night you left that protective shell called the foetus and was forced, palpitations included, to make that entry into the world.

We all come into the world crying and from here on, its pretty much the crying game.

They made a movie along that line. It was also called "The Crying Game." Here the circumstances are a little more suave. Its an IRA soldier, a stunning hooker and an English prisoner. The English prisoner becomes the IRA's hostage. The soldier is brave and sharp...he knows the nature of the IRA. He's being interrogated and in between, he tells this little story.

 "There was a scorpion, stranded on the banks of a stream (a brook?). He calls out to the frog begging him to ship him over yonder. The frog is no slouch. He politely declines citing the dangerous sting and the venom that might do him in. The scorpion is persistent, going so far as to illustrate the stupidity of it all were he to bite the frog. I mean, Com'n ! If i stung you we'd both be drowning! Just a little lift from here to there is all I'm asking huh? One little ride man, Com'on!? The frog is overwhelmed by the scorpion's persuasiveness and insight. Yeah, he's right. What's the harm? I mean we 're in the water and he's banking on me to save his life! 

So the frog gives in and riding his back, the two set forth.

And then they're half-way through when the frog feels this stinging sensation. Like someone poked him with a needle.

The realisation sets in. He's been bit!

"Now why'd you do that? is all the frog can summon looking back at his fatal hitchhiker. The scorpion looks as bewildered as the frog. He then says, "Sorry! I couldn't help it. Its in my nature!" 

The water gushes on as the frog turns belly up and the scorpion is looking at a slow death by drowning.

The English did what they did. The IRA does what they do. The soldier, meanwhile, falls in love with the most beautiful hooker he's ever seen. He still can't fathom why he's falling in love with her.

In the bedroom they're both getting undressed. She's got male genitalia!

The barks are now few and far-between. Strange! This Saturday night feels like a weekend gone all melancholic. There's an air of nostalgia in the locales. Could it be possible that tonight, all of Thimphu's getting the downer?

I came back to this desk to bury my head in and find myself veering off-the-road. The facebook opens and there's concern regarding a note full of rage I'd left behind on my wall. There's  Garfield doing the honors with that look of his and the note basically tells everyone to fcvk off.

A part of me is happy to see the concern. The rest of me is pleased. I'd been happier if someone tagged a line saying, "Yeah, right, fcvk 'em all!"

Much like the DNA inherent in the scorpion, its in our nature to desire and destroy; feeding the crying game over and over. But its also in our nature to detach and delve, into calm mental realms and just fcvkin' be.

The simple observation that I'm alive makes me clueless. The fact that we're clueless about being clueless is another instant clue.  Add 'em all up and pretty soon, as Kundera neatly put it, you get high or dry on this  bewildering "Unbearable Lightness of Being."

PS: As the anecdotes were drawn from a rampant ad hoc memoriam,  i offer my apologies if mine should differ from the movie or the book but it must be said that the writer wrote with complete deference to the subjects and the actual work of art as illustrated above in their original avatars.