Tuesday, August 11, 2015

The lost tender love

Heavenly eye rising just above the mighty mountains surrounding the settlement located deep inside the valley resembled almost like a dead town with no much upcoming settlements regardless of proper town planning. Street light erected on every road side and a few concrete buildings standing majestically in between the square blocks formed by crisscross roads reminded me of the mighty Egyptian pyramids in the middle of the lifeless desert. Extremities in a temperature ranging from below 10oC to more than 35oC during winter and summer respectively were the scenario of Tingtibi town a decade ago. As told every coin has two sides, despite of its lifeless scenario from frequent visitor’s perspective, permanent resident of the town sees it from other part of the angle leading to its own charm. 

One fine summer morning of the year 2003, I was taking a walk through the outskirt of the settlement with one of my friend on the way to my brother’s house located on other side of the Mangde chu. Being a boarding student of YMSS, which was five kilometre away on a hilltop from the town, we were allowed to move out of campus only during the weekends. Although I have walked for countless time via same route in different occasions, I have never anticipated something unusual will be sighted.

Hair fasten behind, resembling pony tail, pent folded to her knees with her half face hidden behind the cloth which she was trying to hang on the rope stretch in front of her house is how I have seen her for the first time. For a moment my eyes were focused on her with a hope to see her entire face but unluckily she disappeared behind the cloth and by the time I could adjust myself in different angle, she was already gone inside her house with an empty bucket in her hand. On the way forward I was lost with thoughts about her despite my friend trying his best to talk with me. Thoughts like how she must be looking? Who she must be? And started constructing her beautiful face in my mind on the basis of what I have seen and how pretty she will be looking when she smile.

Weekend passed away with our reporting back to respective hostels, and week days were as usual with regular classes. Although, I was physically present in the class and hostel, mentally I was haunted by the unusual incident of the weekend and couldn’t concentrate in any of the ongoing daily activities. But hopefully I was not acting weird as my friends never noticed any changes in my behaviors.

Following weekend, desperately with hope of seeing her I visited the town but returned back with zero success. Then and there my hopes and determination to see her was shattered into pieces thinking that she must have been a visitor who might have come to visit relatives of her and was a coincidence for me to sight her a week ago.

Being a timid boy, I never visited any other classes or hardly mingled with newcomers of our school, particularly with the girls. Every year, couple number of new students use to get enrolled in seventh and ninth grade after graduating from various primary and lower   schools.

Without much knowledge of how other people will react I shared about the incident to one of my close friend who was also accompanying me during that weekend. With no much visible expression of surprise in his oval shaped face, he flatly told me that I am in love with that girl and she is his childhood friend who is among one of the newcomer in ninth grade but I tried to defend myself saying it’s not love rather I just admire her beauty. Because beauty are to be admired and there is no harm admiring it. Being young and middle secondary school student with almost childish thinking, it seems I was unable to differentiate between loves and admire making me unable to digest the comment of my friend who was few years older than me in spite of our same grade.

 Mr. Subbha, talented athlete, good fighter, extrovert and more important is a close friend of mine, never stopped teasing me with  Dechen, an angle of my little heart, the day after I have disclosed him about the incident which was supposed to be  a secret between us. And most embarrassing moment was when he shared every secret with her without my notice. Lots of things were done by him without my prior notice right under my nose but in reality I appreciated what he was doing and changes happening in and around me.  Busy matchmaker could be a right term to describe him by then.

Since I was timid, Subbha use to woo her for me by visiting her class and sharing my feeling whenever he is free and towards the night back at our hostel, sitting on double storied bunk infested with creepy bed bucks waiting to suck its share of blood from our pale body, he used to share about every second he have spent with her and their conversation of the day. Although it might sound funny I use to enjoy a lot listening to his talk and feel as if ‘m listening to her not him.

It went on for almost a month or two and one pleasant afternoon, surprisingly two of her best friends appeared in front of my class room signalling me to come along with them. The very moment, my heart beat started accelerating beyond normal pace and I followed them unwillingly towards the flower garden surrounded by guava trees.  Without much hint, keeping me standing in middle of them, one of them seriously asked me with an unexpected question. Making eye contact with mine, with her soft tone she questioned “Do you genuinely love our friend Dechen” and left with an option to say just yes or no. For a moment literally I got blushed and thoughts scattered without anything to answer. After few second I manage to answer by nodding my head. Then another question bombarded over before I could speak, “Then are you ready to be in relation with her”. The moment I heard the question I was expecting someone to pop up to interrupt two of them interrogating me like a police but no one appeared. Left with very narrow option I constantly replied them with affirmative answer without giving much thought over it; after all I felt that I was desperately in love with her.  Before two of them left me without further interrogation I noticed a faint smile of satisfaction on their faces. Both of them were newcomer with whom I wasn’t much friendly and I started examining them from the back when they were moving few meters ahead of me. From their physical maturity I was pretty sure that they were plus one or two years elder to me, by then just fifteen years old boy. 

Despite I have been formally introduced and literally we were into relationship after genuinely accepting my proposal, I was always shy of her and never had courage to date her. Comparatively she was much more courageous and in several occasions, she tried her best to approach me to make conversation but all I could do was to get away from the scene making a lame excuses. Even then, I never missed to see her face once a day every time during the school days although I hardly talk with her because of my timidity, an inborn character.  Unlike me, she was a day scholar staying at Tingtibi town which exempt her from several routine activities of the boarding life and weekends use to be charmless without a chance to see her smile.

Month or more after being into a typical love affair, we exchanged our photos. The very first photo of her that she sent to me is still with me being treasured in my old photo archive. Whenever I see the photo of her in a red T-shirt holding a child of her sibling and a sentence scribbled on the back of the photo.
“KEEP AS LONG REMEMBRANCE”
                   Yours new Pal
                     Dechen
One day she sent her auto writing book so that I could fill up the provided questions in that book. Although maintaining of such books were a sort of fashion during that time, I was never interested nor did I participated in filling up the question from any of such books. So, Subbha started filling up the blanks for me with his clean girlish handwriting seldom bothering me when it was regarding my personal details but most embarrassing and a funniest thing was that he wrote “SONS” in a space demanding to write one’s zodiac signs. That time neither did I had knowledge about zodiac signs and immediately question him to clarify my doubt but landed up with his dubious answer. In reality “SONS” never were among the universally accepted zodiac signs, in fact I belong to “SAGITTRUS”.  Hope she must have laughed a lot while seeing new zodiac sign created by two of us.

As usual summer vacation was over with nothing new happened rather than the hot weather and seldom heavy rainfall worsening the highway connecting Gelephu settlement with rest of the central Bhutan. Although it’s a natural tendency of the student not willing to return back to boarding school from the vacation but this time I was eagerly waiting to return back to school so as to quench thirst of loneliness by being around her. On my way back to the school I took a conch shell and gifted her; in fact it was a first time I have ever gifted. The shell was carved with single sentence denoting “DON’T FOREGT ME”.

Regardless of not dating or getting involved into decent conversation, our relation was bit typical with its own charm as compared to the normal scenario of what happens in relationship. Frequently she uses to drop me a message with her friend, fully written in a code word with a key to break the code and derive content of the message.  Though, it was difficult for me to break the code despite the provided keys as I wasn’t familiar with such coding. But deriving the message from coded letter was one of the most cherishing parts of our relationship. 

Year passed by as usual and we graduated from tenth grade. Although, she managed to secure a good score; she couldn’t qualify for the government school unlike me.

Coming year she took an admission to one of the private school in Phuentsholing which was several hundred miles away from Zhemgang where I was supposed to continue my education. Geopolitically, Zhemgang was located in central Bhutan and Phuentsoling at extreme south west.

Cellular phones were in initial stage during 2005 with its connectivity in just few major urban areas and were not affordable as a student from a humble family. And using normal telephone from PCO was comparative expensive in terms of tariff.

Now, gap between us seem to be getting wider which couldn’t be filled with our seldom exchanged letter. Those times, exchanging letters with photographs in it were never encouraged in the school and privacy was out of question. Prior to intended recipient of the letter, teachers use to open the envelope and check the content in it. 
By the time we graduated from higher secondary education, I totally lost contact with her.  Nor did she try to keep in contact with me.

A fine evening while I was surfing a Facebook during my 2nd year as an undergrad student in India, I was going through a list of new friend suggestion in my home page.   
From a long queue of friend list I was thrilled to see her among others. With quick reflex I immediately added her to my friend list without much delay and any second thought.
Later, on online chatting with her via Facebook I came to know that she was also pursuing graduation in one of the Indian institute but in different state which was very far away from the place where I was studying.

Again after more than two years of without contact, finally we could keep in touch with each other both by social network and phone but not as a lover instead as a good friend.

On obtaining her successful degree in the field of Arts, currently she is employed in one of the private firm and living happily with her hubby and a kid. On contrary, I got employed as a civil servant and still hopelessly waiting for perfect lady to magically popup in my life which will never happen other than in a cinema. 

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