An Untitled Open-ended Story
Seated cross-legged on a yak-hide mattress, Angay Lemo, a sexagenarian, mutters “Om mani pad me hung”, with a rosary in one hand and a mini, hand-powered prayer wheel in the other. It’s Saturday. And she’s been all by herself. Her only son, a middle-aged officer, and her daughter-in-law are away, holidaying in Bangkok. Her grandson and granddaughter are away in the discotheques. As is customary they are not expected until three in the morning. She has little or no inkling about what they do and are up to in the discotheques and beyond. Even little does she wonder about their whereabouts.
Angay has been there counting the beads and rotating the prayer wheel for hours on end. Her frail hands are now tired and have begun to give way. Consequently, she decides to call it a day and retire to her bed in choe-sham. She rises, doubly sure that she has counted ten thousand beads. “May all sentient beings be delivered from suffering and causes of suffering,” and “May all sentient beings rejoice in peace and harmony,” she dedicates her prayers even as she staggers to her feet.
She draws apart the curtain and looks out through the glass window. It’s full moon and the moon is high up in the sky, overlooking the sepulchral and dead city. The flawlessly bright and serene and calm night takes her back three full scores of years, when she would stay awake all night, on her nightly sentinel in the fields, guarding her crops against wild pests. Memories of making sleepy and tiresome rounds around the fields and having close shaves with ferocious bears and boars in the dead of night flash across her mind. Looking retrospectively in light of the comfortable and luxurious circumstances she presently is in, she convinces herself that she has already lived her life full circle. “I’ve come a long way, and it looks ages since my rural village saw my back for good”, she tells herself. In spite of the brightly-lit sky, she sees neither human nor animal move in the vicinity save for an automobile headlight moving towards her along the Semtokha-Babesa highway. Acutely aware that she is well into her setting years, that she has lived the better part of her life, and that her fingers now outnumber her remaining years, Angay deeply longs for her son. “I wish that was my son, back home from Bangkok,” says she, fixing her failing eyes on and closely following the headlight. Minutes later she finds it never to be, for the headlight makes straight towards Langjophakha. With her eyes brimming with tears and heart heavy with worry of never seeing his only son before she breaths her last, Angay draws back the curtain and enters the choe-sham – her bedroom and only solace.
In the choe-sham, Angay lights a butter lamp and an incense stick in addition to the ones already burning on the altar before a golden image of Guru Padmasambhava. With her hands firmly folded and raised above her forehead, Angay prays and prostrates thrice, and then climbs into her bed. The atmosphere inside the choe-sham is now laden with sweet aroma emitting from the burning incense. She puts off the bedside switch. Like all Bhutanese, Angay finally takes refuge in the Triple Gem and rests her head on the pillow. Even as her eyelids grow heavier and come collapsing, Angay wonders, as she does every time she goes to sleep, if she will wake up the next morning. “That we all die is certain, but when is uncertain,” she remembers.
It’s half past ten. And she is yet to fall asleep. Normally she falls asleep as soon as she sleeps but tonight is different. Sleep refuses to come. In a state half-awake and half-asleep, she dreams an unusual dream. In it she sees her son waving desperately at her from amidst a huge crowd. Seconds later she hears him call “Ama” even as he pushes and shoves towards her past a group of disgruntled youth brandishing machetes and sticks. At last he reaches her and wraps his numb hands around her. She embraces him, looks up at his face and to her utter horror finds one of his sockets hollow. “Lama khen no,” she yells and she is awake. She can hear the walls of the choe-sham reverberate with the echo of the words of her astonishment. She shrugs herself off and makes sure that it is just a dream. A dream that she thinks will never actualize. She consoles herself and hopes that it is not a premonition of an impending tragedy. Irrespective of her self-consolation and assurances, sleep simply eludes her.
Just then the phone in the living room rings unrelentingly and startles Angay out of her sleep. Notwithstanding her age, Angay is far from being hard of hearing. She puts on her bedside switch and looks at the stop clock on her bedside table. It is quarter past midnight. She throws back her quilt and rushes drowsily to answer it. “Who could be calling at such an inopportune time,” she wonders. Once in the living room she fumbles, reaches the phone, picks it up and asks: “Who is this?” rather harshly. It’s well-nigh twenty years since she left her village for the capital city, but she is one die-hard, innocent and typical rural Bhutanese woman- a perfect epitome of country women, oblivious altogether of her hectic and west-inclined and modern-turned surroundings. In a space of few decades, Thimphu has seen a sea of changes. The capital city is growing and going the West way at a pace faster than everybody had expected when Bhutan first broke open out of its cocoon of “self-imposed isolation”.
That was in 1961, when the Himalayan Kingdom launched its first Five-Year Plan beginning with the laying of roads. The Kingdom has come a long way since then. With a self-less and benevolent King at the helm, we have not looked back since. Rapid and progressive economic, social and cultural developments have ensured every Bhutanese a decent living standard. Schools and hospitals of various grades have sprung up in all the twenty districts. It is, therefore, not for nothing that Bhutan continues to earn international adulation and praise for its economic development. Not every development and everything that is modern is good, however. Development, as a mere truism, is not an unmixed blessing. As much as it has made our life easy, its unsolicited concomitants have hit Bhutanese lives and livelihoods adversely in more ways than one. Angay Lemo has remained a stoic rural Bhutanese, incredibly though. It is ironic that she is neither keen to learn to say ‘hello’ and ‘bye’ nor has she the confidence to utter a smattering of these two greeting terms that she has now become so used to hearing..
On the other end of the line a familiar voice speaks. “This is Pema. How are you, mum?” Pema, her only son, is on line from Bangkok. No sooner does she know that it is her son then her voice quivers. She breaks down but holds onto the phone sobbingly. As if to rub salt onto her wounds, Pema does not have good news for her. Hesitatingly and with much difficulty, he puts it across to her as mildly as possible. Hardly does he finish when Angay collapses, snapping the line. Never has she heard in her sixty-seven years news as tragic as this. Pema got caught up in the recent clashes between Buddhist and Muslim groups, and in the ensuing pandemonium he has lost an eye. He is currently being treated in a hospital in Bangkok. This news is too much for an Angay of sixty-seven, who is physically fragile and mentally weak to digest, enfeebled by sixty-seven odd years.
The door bell ringing persistently goes unanswered. So does knock after knock on the main door. It’s 2 am. And Palden, Pema’s twenty-year-old son, is back at the door from discotheques. His eighteen-year-old sister Yangki is expected anytime soon. He is slightly drunk and has been at the door for sometime now. It’s unusual. Angay normally answers after no more than three rings and knocks. “Something must be terribly wrong,” Palden worries. The fact that she has contacted a virulent flu in recent days added to his worries. Convinced that something unexpected and untoward has happened in so short a time, he walks towards her window. On his way he passes by the living room. The light is on. It never used to be on unless somebody is on the phone. “Angay cannot be on the phone at this time,” he talks to himself. “Or is she?” he asks himself. With fright racing down his spine, he looks through the window. And there on the floor lies Angay, unconscious. He is beside himself with shock when he sees her lying there still. “She cannot be dead,” he says numbly. Palden cannot believe his eyes. He backs away from the window, stands still for a while, jumps back and knocks on it persistently as if he knows, for one, that she is not dead. He cries and knocks to no avail, for the sound dies away in and carries away by the harsh, wintry and chilly wind rushing past. Neither Angay, who has now been lying unconscious there for hours nor anyone nearby hears Palden’s call for help. Desperate to break in and catch her last breath, if he can, Palden rummages for a stone in the hedges. He gets one, and with it breaks in, lacerating his hands and knees on the glass splinters. Numbed as much physically as emotionally, he is immune to pain; at least for now.
As soon as he gets in he puts his right hand on Angay’s brow. It is warm and Palden is hopeful that she is alive. He then checks if she is breathing, and yes she is. As Angay’s heart beats, a flame of hope kindles in Palden’s heart. But he knows he must not lose any more time, for he thinks she might pass away in her state of unconsciousness in spite of the two assurances of her heart beating and brow being warm. He rushes into the kitchen and back from there with a bowl of cold water and a piece of cloth. He then soaks it in the water and dabs Angay’s brow with it as hurriedly as he can. Angay shows no sign of instant recovery. Palden shows no sign of giving up either. He dabs her brow and shakes her unceasingly. With every dab and shake, he expects Angay’s eyes to slowly open. But neither do her eyes open nor does she move. She lies there as firm as a log; a breathing log, in fact. . . .
(Question No. 7: Read and complete this story in 250 words. I wrote it half a dozen years ago. Midway through writing it went astray. I Googled and located it today – where? Here, where else could it be?
