The Ephemeral Odyssey
U Sharma
Babesa Thimphu
Flower and paper garlands hung above the doors and windows. Candles burnt in lines on the enclosed patios. Moths frolicked around the tapering candles; some burning themselves in the dancing spree, while others dropping to the ground wingless. People were not allowed display of fireworks. Ironically, it was the night of dazzling illumination, the Tihar, festival of lights of the Hindus.
Muktinath had a restless and sleepless night on Saturday, the 21st of October, 2006. He got up with lightness, to avoid disturbances to others, from the bamboo-bed and leant on his back against the wall of his ramshackle hut. His twin sons snored on the other bed of similar genre, in pair. He softly alighted from the bed and lit a kerosene lamp. He pulled ajar the door to the other room where his two daughters slept in twos and the third shared the bed with her mother. He preferred not to disturb them.
He looked out leaving the door still ajar. The old bamboo bench stood in darkness, like a neglected fool on the narrow patio. He pulled a bamboo stool and sat on it keeping the torch-light by his side. He tightened the strings of Khukuri (a long and sharp weapon of fight used by Gurkhas) around his waist.
The night was silent and dark but bright. Dark; for it was a new moon night, and bright, for the firmament was star-filled and the Milky Way was crystalline. The extinguishing candles added to their strength to the coalesced brightness of the dark night, as well.
The 68-year old man sat in silence. He could hear the six souls snoring in unparallel rhythms inside the hut. Similar sounds could be heard in the silence in the neighboring huts as well.
He looked at the galaxy occasionally, and in turn threw, his glances at the vast darkness around. Green lights of the wingless worms gave an inch of inspiration to the laconic man.
“At least the insects have the freedom of movement,” he uttered to himself in the darkness, appreciating the nature’s creation.
The occupants of the huts were ordered to remain indoors after 9 p.m. The rules in the refugee camp were arcane_____ simply mysterious, if not questionable. People seemed to have visualized Tihar as a damp squib.
All of a sudden, Muktinath decided to make a visit to his native land, Bhutan.
“Don’t I have the legitimate right to citizenship and claim over the confiscated property,” came a faint but clear voice from the colossal vacuum around.
The distant bark of a dog alerted him. He shrugged himself. Abruptly, he felt homesick for Bhutan.
“What’s happening to me?” he whispered. Surprisingly, he felt homesick for his native land after sixteen years of hellish life in the hell hole. The second bark of the dog sounded familiar to him.
“ What could have happened to my Bhaloo Kukoor ( his pet dog) back at home in Bhutan?” he murmured, remembering the pet that he had left behind when his family was evicted sixteen years back at the generous fiat of the tin pot dictator.
“I must pay a visit to my native village, come hell or high water,” he spoke with firmness in his voice.
“I wouldn’t stay here any longer. Not even for all tea in China.” He made up his mind to travel to his village, back in Bhutan, and come back with a morsel of soil from whence he was born.
Imaginations are torturous, at times. He believed that a handful of soil from his birth place, kept under his pillow, would hive him a peaceful and eternal sleep and rest to his soul even if he had to die away from his native land, unlike his compatriots. He fixed his mind to materialize his Machiavellian plan.
Muktinath remembered his young son, once explaining to him the words of Benjamin N. Cardozo, “The great victories of life are often won in a quiet way, and not with alarms and trumpets.”
At 3.30 a.m. he left the hut, with a heady mixture of desire and fear, for his native land. He knew that his landed properties had been allotted to a new settler of non-Lhotsampa origin. Yet, he made a move.
He pinned a scribbled note to the paper garland that hung on the door. He wrote the intention of his midnight flit clear and transparent to the family members.
So, it was Monday, the 23rd of October; and, at 5 p.m., Muktinath, a chronic asthma victim, despite his iffy health condition, entered Bhutan, via Sarpang. Sitting on a flat rock inside the forest at the outskirts of Kawapani, a village overlooking the Sarpang town, he lit a roll of tobacco that he had brought from the border town. A large puff gave him an instant relaxation.
He pondered as to whether he would be able to make the journey through the jungle. He pulled another long puff. He rummaged around in the pockets of his moth-eaten poncho, for the torch light. He found it in sito.“Am I safe?” he asked to himself, remembering the ten-hour long journey through the jungle where wild animals frolicked and played amidst foliages and copses.
Discarding the dog end, Muktinath adjusted the belt of his companion, the newly-sharpened one and half feet long Khukuri, around his waist. He tightened the laces of his half-torn plastic shoes.
“Long Live, Bhutan, my Motherland!” he whispered a paean to his country and started the jungle-trek at 5.15 p.m.
“Slow and steady wins the race,” he had heard people saying. He decided to be steady in his odyssey. And, he decided to be constant. He made up his mind to set Thames on Fire by stepping his foot on his soil by 3.30 a.m.
The chill October weather compelled Muktinath to tarry a while. He decided to warm himself up. Darechu Pokhari was the coldest point he had to cross. It was midnight when he reached the pastureland which was once grazed and grounded by his cattle-herd. He vividly recognized the area, though faintly visible at the rays of his torch, on which he had erected the cow shed twenty five years ago. He gathered logs, hoicked some dried twigs and lit a fire. Soon, an inferno raged in the hearth, alfresco.
He looked up. Stars had filled the firmament. He could hear sounds of peculiar nature. That could probably have been made by the stampeding wild animals startled by the eerie night fire. Few meters away, a group of puny cubs passed-by; fully guarded by a large-bellied lioness.
Muktinath had to act smart. He lay doggo on his front by the fire, keeping the Khukuri up his sleeve. The scene brought a disgrace to his, otherwise, intrepid nature. His bristly arms and legs shivered, filled with goose pimples, and, he started perspiring buckets.
There was, soon, a second quivering around the thickets. He shouted, “Out of my way and sight, all of you foxes, owls, beetles, jackals, rabbits and wild animals! Come from under the fire little poisoned arrows…… and keep the big wild animals out of my trail. Don’t let any of those come running towards me. I got a long way……… I need to walk down through pines and down through chestnuts.”
He panted in the silence of the night.
“Oh, God! Please help me. I need to touch my soil and vanish off the face of the earth before the fall of dawn,” he groaned in the darkness. He still had a long way to go. He sketched the shortest route on his head.
…….Darechu Pokhari to Ramitay Gaon to Goath Chowk to Khuchhi to Bichari Bheer to Khorsanay to Salami and to his soil…..
It was 12.30 a.m. by his wrist watch.
“It’s not a cinch to cover so long within three hours. I hope my plans don’t go awry,” he whispered, touching the hilt of the Khukuri. A gentle zephyr blew across his face.
“Oh, what an eerie incident!” he grumbled. He realized that one of his shoes was burnt while he lay doggo by the fireside. As luck would have it, his flesh was spared. He was jolted out of his reverie as the timely breeze swept his face again. The shoe was burnt to no repair and he discarded the other one too into the fire. He resumed his odyssey leaving behind the semi-extinguished fire in situ.
Muktinath walked towards south on a gentle slope. That area was the playground of Muktinath and his contemporary peers’ long years back. They used to graze their cattle herds for months. Few hundred meters away, he reached the motorable road—- Sarpang_Tsirang Highway.
“Ugh!” he exclaimed. He remembered the unpleasant times he spent during its construction decades ago. The people of his village had worked under forced labor in the late sixties. Many of the forced laborers had fallen from the steep precipices while some had been crushed by the slipping boulders. Muktinath had happened to be one of the lucky ones to survive after having worked for three cold months. He touched the well-cut rocks on the wall.
“This is the legacy that the loyal patriots have left behind for their motherland and for the future generation,” he spoke to the dark and silent walls of the cliff.
He crossed the road and walked on. He heaved a sigh of relief standing on the top of Bichari Bheer that overlooked the Damphu town, the district-headquarters of Tsirang. He could see electric lights that brightened the entire town.
Kudos to the Japanese project____ Dai Nippon Company, that generated electricity from Chanchey Khola,” he tuned accolades in the darkness of the early dawn.
It was 2 a.m. when Muktinath started the downhill trail to Khorsaney, a big village that adjoined Salami, the native village of Muktinath. He carried on; enduring the aches on blistered soles of his feet. He remembered the primary school and an adjacent basic health unit that once stood with dignity. They seemed to be no more in existence.
“What has happened to their entities?” he questioned to the silent village, inhaling a gulp of chill but fresh air.
Crossing the Khorsaney Khola, the lonely walker set his feet into his village, Salami.
The next day was Bhai Tika. He recalled how he had received Tika from his only surviving sister in the camp the previous year.
“I would be walking back through the jungle tomorrow and I would miss the Tika Ceremony,” he spoke in a low-tuned voice. His mind flashed back to the candles lit in line sin front of the huts back in the camp in Nepal. The flower garlands swayed in front of his eyes.
He munched the last morsel of beaten rice that he had carried in his pockets. He, suddenly, felt a mild attack of asthma, though he had become inured to the blisters. He touched the soil of his land exactly at 3 a.m.
His five-acred land looked attended in full. He stepped his feet on the last terrace of the paddy field. Paddy was ready to be harvested. A gentle breeze swung the drooping ears of the corns as a gesture of warm welcome to the genuine owner of the land.
“Where had you gone all these years, our master?’ he visualized the walls speaking to him.
He sat in the still of the dawning darkness and sobbed in buckets. He mollycoddled a handful of yellowish stems and wished he could reap the harvest by himself.
He sat on a terrace and inhaled a large gulp of scented breeze.
‘Whoever is the occupant of my land,; be it a Brokpa, Doya, Ngalong, Sharchhop, Lshotsampa or a Khengpa, I consider the new-settler as my brother, by nation. I consider the dweller as my brother; not an enemy, for I believe in living in harmony and brotherhood.
“If my land had been left unattended, it would have, by now, become barren and unproductive. I thank the tiller,” he whispered, still playing with the ears of the corns.
Sitting on the terrace he reclined his back against the wall. His eyes fell towards the northern sky. He saw a shooting star heading towards Pataley, a village, jointly inhabited by the Lhotsampas and the Ngalongs. He remembered his aged-old compatriot-cum-chum, Dorji, who lived in that village. He remembered how intimate the two of them had been, how they worked in their cardamom orchards in turns, in Dhap Khola, and how they helped each other in times of need.
Muktinath’s friendship with the non-Lhotsampas, especially with Dorji, was magnetic. His mind flashed back to the forceful eviction of the Lhotsampa at gun points in the early nineties.
The problem in Bhutan had started in a rather unique way. The slight misunderstanding in the multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country between the people’s demand for respect for human rights and the government’s refusal would have been easily resolved with an exercise on a cool head. It ultimately had led to the misuse of the law and order of the land by a handful of opportunists. That’s why many people, like Muktinath, are compelled to sneak into their own land at night carrying a package of fear and apprehension.
This is how Muktinath would have justified his midnight odyssey.
Muktinath still held trust on his friend, Dorji. Apart from being close friends, the two of them were related through marriage. The youngest daughter of Dorji was married to Muktinath’s nephew, who lives d in Dorji’s village.
“Should I go and meet him in his house?” he asked to himself, and laughed out alone in the morning darkness. His entry through the border was a mixture of desire and fear. He scraped fear from the package and made up his mind to visit Dorji. And, that would be during the following night.
Muktinath had seen a cave at the base of Chanchey cliff. He would first go to his house, pick a handful of soil from the forecourt and walk down to the cave before the morning light.
He would inside the cave the whole day and sneak out by the fall of the dusk. He knew it would be a Herculean task; yet, he decided to take the risk for the sake of friendship.
“Would Dorji be the same? Would he recognize me? Would he hug or embrace me? What, if he forced me to stay back in Bhutan? Or, what if he pointed a dagger at me?” he asked a series of questions, feeling he touch of his brandished Khukuri.
He stripped off a handful of ears of the corns and shoved into the pockets of his poncho.
“This will testify my visit to my birth-place,” he said to himself.
He stood up and walked towards the bamboo dumps that stood as old as a hill at the north-western flank of the paddy field. He remembered a python that dwelt betwixt the huge rocks beneath the bamboo canopy.
He further remembered how it used to hiss at the top of its voice and alerted the people if there was an imminent danger in the village or locality. He reminisced how a flock of mynahs nestled their nests in the nights amidst comfy branches of the tallest grass.
The bamboo dumps stood there as they were, two decades ago. Muktinath stood in silence and waited to see if there was any sign of movement. It was there; nor the hiss of the ancient python, that used to be revered by the village folks. There was absolute silence in the branches too.
“The python may have migrated and flown to a foreign jungle looking for peace and love,” he whispered, consoling himself. He walked up towards the orange orchard that occupied an acre of his ancestry land. Fruits had begun to change colors. Just a few more months left for reaping the harvest. He walked around touching each tree and whispering to them that he had come back. Did the trees, anyway, understand the whispers of plight of their lost and found master?
He picked a piece of a large sized and peeled it open in the chill dawn of late October. He found himself exhilarated. He picked a pair of the biggest fruits and shoved them into the pockets.
“These are for my youngest daughter back in the camp,” he whispered. The orchard had its sui generis tale to be told. Dorji had given three dozens of saplings on gratis. Muktinath had bought and brought eight dozens from Suntaley, a village that boasted of growing the best quality mandarin oranges. Still more, a couple of dozens of saplings had been raised by himself in a private nursery. He laughed a euphoric, ephemeral and tearful laugh in the silence of the maturing darkness.
“Who could have benefited from the harvests of my labor for the last fifteen years?” he murmured, massaging and caressing a tree trunk.
He labeled his achievement of seeing his orchard at that stage a Pyrrhic victory. He harked back as how much had toiled, labored and sacrificed in bringing the orchard to its existing shape and form.
Muktinath had not committed any crime. The entire orchard witnessed the tears cascading down his face.
The age-old pear tree stood as it was when he was evicted fifteen years back. The pomegranate tree was not seen. It looked like it had been chopped. He remembered how he brought it as a one-foot tall sapling from Sarpang thirty years ago. The damson tree that stood beside the banana grove was not there either.
All of a sudden, Muktinath felt a difficulty in breathing, accompanied by a slight pain in the chest. He staggered to his feet to the forecourt of his house. He sat on the chill soil of his clandestine mission, took out the Khukuri from its sheath, and, with its tip, dug out some soil from the forecourt. He clenched a handful of it and heaved a sigh of relief and relaxation. A satisfaction, indeed!
Muktinath realized that his three-storeyed house had been dismantled. He could see a clay-walled hut beside the hummock of ruins. People could be heard snoring inside the hut. Further, piglets could be heard grunting and squealing in the pen few meters away from where he sat. Few cows were tethered in a line of poles under a cow pen. A heifer was seen roaming around. Probably, it disconnected her rope.
Muktinath decided to take the risk. He took out hi torch light.
“I must get an actual view of my house, albeit, in ruins, and the hut, as well.” He flashed the torch around the house. A dog sprinted towards him barking in an unusual tone. He recognized his dog ____ Bhaloo Kukoor.
“Bhaloo, are you still alive? I have been in quest of you, too,” spoke he, in a whispering tone.
Bhaloo had grown old and its fur had fallen. The tail resembled a scabied snake. The dog wagged its tail and sat beside its master. It listened to the story of its master, shedding blissful tears.
“Bhaloo, can I get some water to drink?” he asked the dog. Bhallo clutched one of the hands of its master between the jaws and led him to the faucet. Muktinath drank the euphoric elixir of life at the sound of the first cock-a-doodle-doo of the rooster.
Would people of the village recognize Muktinath if they happen to see him?
Though feeling unwell, Muktinath was happy with the dog. Although old and decrepit, the faithful beast could recognize its master.
“Bhaloo, I am pleased with you. You have recognized me and given succor that was within your reach. I wonder if anyone from the village would extend similar helping hands,” he said, expressing a sense of satisfaction.
He patted the dog on its head. The dog responded with a torrent of tears rolling down its cheeks.
“I will soon leave this place,” he said, “and I ask you to guard my land at all times, the way you have done as of now.”
Bhaloo nodded its head and licked its master’s legs.
……………………
Rigor Mortis had already set in Muktinath’s body when the door of the house was pushed open. Time was 5.30.
A middle-aged woman emerged into the dust-laden patio, looking shabbily dressed. Her hair hung from her pumpkin-shaped head like a bunch of wilting catkins and a long uncared and mangy robe flung from an elasticated waistband. She stood still for a while. It was apparent that that she was born with a squint from the way she looked at the ghastly scene on the forecourt. She walked closer to the corpse.
“Ajai! Ani Gaachi Mo?” Oh! What’s this? She shrieked at the top of her voice.
Her children rushed out like startled squirrels. She spoke to the children in a language that was difficult to understand by the Lhotsampas.
Soon, the forecourt was flooded by the villagers. Perhaps, she called them. The corpse of Muktinath lay as still as a willow bough. Bhaloo Kukoor guarded its dead master, shedding tears profusely. It licked the dead face of his master and looked at the throng. The rivulets of tears showed that it wanted to convey a message to the crowd. Who, but, could be that genius who can understand and read the tears of an animal”
A man in a Buddhist robe tried to chase away the dog. It didn’t move an inch; instead, it grinned its teeth at him____ a forewarning, probably. It licked the dead master’s face for the second time.
Penjor, the headman of the village asked if anyone in the throng could identify the dead body. There was no response. It was ostensible from the facial expressions that many villagers recognized the dead person. Their lips moved in an attempt to disclose the identity of the corpse to the newly- settled non-Lhotsampas, and, yet, they feigned to be ignorant.
Novin Thapa, the closest neighbor of the deceased, almost fainted when he encountered the scene. The blistered legs, blood-clotted nose and the ears spoke in detail as how long he might have walked and died of heart attack.
He remembered how the two of them lived as toddlers together for more than five decades before the innocent Muktinath was evicted. He looked at the hands of Muktinath that clutched a morsel of soil and a pair of oranges that had dropped to the ground from his pockets.
“Muktinath, you are the winner,” he muttered. “You used to tell me, friend, and we had even kept a bet, that you would be buried in your soil______ and, you have won. You are a victor. I am alive today on my soil but I don’t know where I will die and decay. You are simply lucky_____ you don’t know you are being buried in your own soil where your placenta awaits you,” said he in a whisper, still looking at the pale corpse.
Poor Muktinath lay asleep on his own soil….. asleep eternally. Bhaloo Kukoor sobbed by his side.
“Lucky, he! His face is charming,” mumbled Novin.