The low-down on the showdown: it’s metaphorical

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If we are endowed with anything, it’s scepticism. And that scepticism comes about because we are an opinionated lot. We are opinionated because we are naturally cautious. This very sense of wariness has self-preserved, moulded and herded us to where we are today, as a people and as a nation. A herd mentality sometimes keeps the lions at bay. Or alternately, you could land up on a dinner plate with a lone-mentality. Meals aside, here is an opinion. There is a lull in the air. The stillness is accompanied by a resigned sense of numbness and an acute feeling of euphoria and despair. Like when your feet go to sleep and you wake them up and feel the needles and pins. We are learning to walk again.

The pause in the breath is probably the calm after what has been a political storm these past few weeks. The numbness comes about at the unprecedented chain of events. The euphoria comes from what has been a successful though exhausting election and the despair comes from how suspicious questions have been raised.

The political cauldron of medicinal herbs also contains poisonous roots that just won’t mix and cook. Rather the froth from the broth is spilling over the floors of our living rooms and causing slippery footholds and leaks, in relationships both familial and altruistic. This is injurious to our individual and collective health, as a society and as Bhutanese nationals. With irony laughing the loudest and reality going deaf, dumb and blind, the three proverbial monkeys are seeing evil, hearing evil and speaking evil. The four harmonious brothers have lost the track, and the fruits are rotting and dropping.

The mirrored moon in our country’s political consciousness is not the real moon. Even the real moon waxes and wanes. Do we order the moon and make it pick and stick, to a certain shape and size?

The verdict has been passed, for good or bad, the sentence must be carried out. The mandate has been broadcast. We can only hope for the best and prepare for the worst, if it comes to that. But who among us is courageous enough to admit the reality reflected upon us? Deflection of one’s own reflection is like trying to avoid our own shadows, at best chasing rainbows where there are none and at worst a delusional denial that harms everyone.

With those running away from their shadows or attempting to web illusionary silhouettes of nothingness suffering the most in the process. Shadow-boxing might be a good exercise for boxers that duel in rings, positively not for a nation that aspires to become a model of happiness and contentment, in hypothesis and in execution. There is nothing we can gain, except the hurt and the pain.

Real punches knock out teeth, puncture lungs, bludgeon the skull and most often than not, these physical expressions of the limbs take root in the head, where cacophonic symphonies of thoughtless cries direct wanton threats. Like poison ivies, the branches can spread far and wide, infecting healthy plants, with vines and creepers’ hanging about tying, knotting, blocking and entrapping whatsoever comes into its vicinity.

Let’s not get lost in the jungles of our minds. We have enough floras in our nation to water and keep everyone blossoming. Let’s keep the wilder instincts at bay; we have enough fauna to adore and look after in our national parks. Raw and open wounds do hurt, but nothing heals like an open wound. The right hand takes care of the left when it’s cut, bruised or burnt, spontaneously and naturally, and vice-versa. In this blessed land of the Buddha’s teachings and the Guru’s teachings, what else do we require to put a perspective on reality, alternative or otherwise?

Seen from a plane ascending thousands of miles above the clouds, we see that everything dissolves. There are only passing mists and cauliflower cotton balls that blanket, comfort and cushion the view. Descending, the earth itself becomes a celestial ball that floats in space without boundaries and definitions, without a centre or an edge. As we get closer to gravity, everything takes shape and fits in with everything else.

That is when the plane lands, the captain sings, and the immigration authorities take control. Once you have cleared security, you are home, or not!

If you are already home, don’t turn it into a coliseum. Even the strongest gladiators fought for freedom, not for glory or gore.

Ps: YourLustForLifeStartsRightNow!

What goes around comes around

Image by nasa1fan/MSFC via Flickr

It’s back to the weekly stupor. There’s no getting around it. What goes around comes around is an age old adage- no doubt coined by those who got the roundabout! But what the heck, we have all got to prepare ourselves for the karmic-merry-go-around, sans gender, race, altar, health and wealth.
The comic-tragedy of this ‘my kingdom for a horse’ syndrome is that when it’s your turn to get off the happy- bandwagon, you want to pursue the journey ever more stubbornly- sans logic, common sense, destiny and fate.

That is a battle you will never win, and knowing that too, our stupid morons will go on challenging the very concept of what is relatively true- that the moon revolves around the earth, the earth revolves around the sun, and what doth the sun revolve, I do not know.

But I do know that back in geography classes in school they called it, ‘rotation and revolution.’ You see, it’s not just confined to the celestial bodies; its web has all of us tangled up in blue. This is not meant to be a downer; it’s rather a positive way of spinning that feeling of frustrated entrapment. Today it’s the loss of a job, tomorrow it will be the failure of a business, and yet days, weeks, months, years and decades on, it will be the death of parents, siblings, relatives, friends, acquaintances and on to your own gradual appointment with the maker.

The question is, “within the cosmic scheme of things, is the question of pride that important?” The answer is visible in the question. These are questions of relativity, and from that point of view, the injustices and inequities meted out to our self-proclaimed “Les Miserables” is nothing in comparison to the greater hellish gates of experience that await us all. This is not to say life is devoid of any meaning, rather the opposite is true- it is filled with everything. So could we put aside that cocky rooster and get on with how every other creature on god’s paradoxical planet gets it on?

We make babies and insult bunnies. We eat fish and chicken, design dogs and cats, hunt for trophies and form a P.E.T.A. We exploit the living daylights out of our natural resources and worry about climate change and the extinction of rain forests, the polar caps and the coral reefs. I do not believe in what we do or do not do, and might I add that I have company aplenty in that school of thought?

This is not because we don’t care, but when has a fanatic ever been level headed? There are religious fanatics, environmental fanatics, animal rights fanatics, food fanatics, fashion fanatics, political fanatics, power hungry fanatics, suicidal fanatics, business fanatics, moral fanatics, GNH fanatics and on and on goes the laundry list. My tribe probably falls into the category, ‘hedonistic-fanatics.’ This is to say, we are all fanatics, in some way, shape or form. But this is not to say that it is something wrong. It is to understand that for all the diversity in the world, there are that many numbers of fanatics.

This is not to dampen your spirits; rather, it is a toast to that very fanaticism. For in the end, the earth takes care of itself, no matter how abusive we fanatics are. The heavens are far too detached from our fanatical reach, but even there we try polluting space (is the Mir International Space Station a travel agency?).

The flower and the bee will survive, along with the fish- for long before we came ashore from the depths of the oceans, they were there, and long after we are gone, they will be there. At the end of the day, what goes around does come around. The earth will be fine; the Milky Way will be fine- like they have always been. It’s the fanatic human lot we have got to be worried about.

Now that is definitely not fine

Ps: YourLustForLifeStartsRightNow!

On the road with Miles Davis

Cover of Miles Davis

There is something about the monsoon. As you sleep, the rains pour and there’s a cool breeze wafting about when you walk. It makes you move. So I drove around the western and central parts of the country. I thought it would be a whet way to get myself reacquainted. Nothing beats the road. Not even the road blocks and the landslides. Miles Davis blew his horn as I began my journey, dubbed the return of the prodigal son by a friend. It was beautiful- the mountains, the forests, the houses along the way and the birds in the trees.
There was something amiss. It was the horn of Miles. So I shut him off and listened to the sounds of nature, now more intimate.

How distant and unreal Thimphu seemed when images of pastoral life passed by! Thimphu is the exception, not the norm, to how the majority of our country-men live. I was beginning to feel alive. Horses grazing by the roadside, cows and bulls idling by- horses and bulls, a villager told me, have now lost their usage and are left to themselves. They were everywhere- in meadows, bushes and brushes. It felt a bit sad that their status and role in the pastoral setting had come to an end due to mechanized farming but on the other hand, they were no more beasts of burden. Things do change and if this is the price of progress, so be it.

Roads, houses, schools, BHUs, electricity grids, shops- everything had tripled. I stopped over in Khuruthang in Punakha. The proprietor of the hotel I was staying in was glued to the TV along with a handful of clients. The show of the day was the BBS coverage of the NA deliberations. It was good to see our brethren tuning into the matters of the day. They all had opinions about the NA in general and individuals in particular. It varied as the weather on my journey did.

What were they looking forward to? I had to ask. The return of their MPs back to the folds that voted them onto the national channel, they told me. And what were they going to ask them? I had to prod on. They were rather coy. Perhaps they have a thing or two planned, I didn’t bother them anymore.

On BBS, it was now the evening news. I went outside and saw a man, grey and shabby haired, sitting in a rundown shack facing the majestic Mochhu and the breathtaking Dzong. They said he was a Tsagay, that he was paralyzed in one leg. I greeted him. He just looked back- blank and oblivious. He must have had happier times. It was a contrast- the landscape in front of him and his own setting. I bought him a Pepsi and bid him adieu. The encounters left me thinking and with a head full of reflections, I went to bed.

I drove to Wangduephodrang and thought, “this is a Bhutanese version of what Jaigaon used to look like!” Queer and peculiar! I drove on, savouring the sights and sounds. To Phobjikha, where the mist blanketed everything, to Trongsa, where the Dzong looks like it’s a giant aircraft carrier hovering in a sea of mist, to Zhemgang, where there really wasn’t anything besides country hamlets with names such as Dangdung and Reefer and a hotel cum bar called Bajay and eventually to Bumthang, where resorts are springing up like mushrooms, giving the lhakhangs a run for its butter lamps.

The drive back to the capital was exhausting. Suddenly the monsoon didn’t seem so inviting. What did seem romantic was the fact that we still live in a country that is far more real than anything you can ever find or see in the world. You don’t need to venture far, just get out of Thimphu and go to Dochula.

Ps: YourLustForLifeStartsRightNow!

Everything is personal

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Here is a litany of complaints compressed and compiled for your reading pleasure. It’d be foolhardy to think changes will come our way just because someone vaguely wrote about it in a newspaper. And who takes newspapers seriously in Bhutan anyways? People I know buy it for Crosswords and Sudoku, all delightful toilet engagements.
My grievances are worded about in numerous seminars and conferences with added emphasis on proceedings and prudence. If holding these brain storming sessions produced solutions, we wouldn’t have problems and well, I wouldn’t be here penning my part!

But I’d rather have hindsight and do things better than plan puzzling panoramas from which we stand isolated. Foresight is for the sages, me and my lot; we want our honest daily wages.

You see, my dear landlord picks up the rent right on cue; the new month’s every second day. I’ve stopped making requests about the water shortage and the pathetic plumbing.

These are minor glitches compared to the upkeep of his expensive watches. Then I’ve a run in with the police. It’s getting embarrassing; I don’t know how to handle them anymore. Be nice and they swagger. Be firm and they take you for a dumb bum. From the jailhouse (on one busy night, 38 bed equalled 115 detainees, leaving one fresh fish to re-ponder the inhumane predicament of the inmates in Memeylhakha.

He now believes the canines have it better!) The next onestop shop is the courtroom. Shakespeare, along with the Grim Reaper, awaits you there. A virtual drama unfolds with righteous tones and some fine dialogues.

The brouhaha carries on to the workplace too. They count the late minutes minus the extra-hours. It’s like what my friend Harry says, “Those who have must get more; for those who don’t have anyways wouldn’t know.” Neat indeed!

I’ve had it with red-tape. If I come across one more ‘bureaucratic late-ape’ I’m going to a cave and meditate. When you write, there’s supposed to be an economy of words and generosity of expression.

The reverse is what you get at most ceremonial gates; an abundance of wealthy excuses and poverty of action. I’ve been feeling sick lately. The diagnosis was road-rage, brought about by dangerous doses of chauffeured pride, agitated cabbies and wanton women driving normal commuters to the edge. I’m not a male chauvinistic pig but ladies, driving demands a turn-around of your beautiful svelte necks.

Label me cynical but here are some more of the accumulated cumulus that block and cloud my sky. Is the RGoB the sole provider of jobs, security, prestige and paychecks? Is the Royal Bhutan Police consecrated with powers we don’t know about other than to serve and to protect?

Do judges mounted on high pedestals ever come down to earth when sitting on cases? Is the judiciary married? Is GNH a harp or a flute? Have politicians forgotten the chewed up grassroots? Is corruption honest and hardworking? Is the ACC a news network like CNN and the BBC? Is the private sector open and publicized? Is ‘fronting’ the same as an LBW? Does the TCC require a celebration to keep and maintain the city clean and green? And just what the heck is a ‘meeting’?

The simpler things are, the better they tend to work and the better they work, the happier you feel.

In the end, we are all goods and consumers, perishable ones at that. You sell me services and we barter, bargain or negotiate. We don’t do shoddy deals. If we used our heads we’d find that you don’t necessarily have to run a company to learn the simple art of being nice, helpful and make a profitable name for yourself and the organization you represent.

The RGoB is the kingdom’s biggest conglomerate, there is so much potential in it. The business they have is in running and managing the country and its resources, with people being the most valuable assest.

So should you hear a fellow citizen yelp; at offices, in lawhouses or seeking help with some procedure that’s under process, remember, he’s paying for the help.

Ps: YourLustForLifeStartsRightNow!