Meeting After Seven Years

(From Left: Sangay, Me and Tenzy)

It was one such yesterday that we met and created fun and laughter. We did not know that life would take us further away from each other. The shore remained where it was…the waves moved as they always did. The sea did not look troubled a bit. But there we stood, trying to understand life we might make.

There we sat together to watch a movie…to have a meal, or listen to a music. We shrilled out our voice and made faces that only we understood. We hadn’t seen the harsh world. It was a cushion-soft bench. No, we didn’t believe we would be in a different house after seven years.

Tenzy and I met often because both of us were in South India. But Sangay seemed to be sinking in sorrow in a place called Durgapur in the North.

We had given our exams for class XII and we had nothing much to do. We felt like we were flying for the first time because we didn’t have to study and anxiety had a way of creeping inside us giving more excitement than worry. As we waited for our results to be out, we floated in more fun than we ever thought possible. We stayed with my brother – my brother stayed with two of his friends – Ata Yeshi and Ata Karma Dendrup. Good God. We now realize that we might have driven them mad by our childish shrill of fun and the way we nagged them. My brother was in Japan. That made ata Yeshi our victim. One day he was taking a nap and we wanted to go for a ride. But we couldn’t ask him. So we made the alarm that had the sound of a cock wake him up. We had to do it several times and finally he opened his eyes and said, “mo mo…” and we won. We didn’t bother if we disturbed his sleep. We just wanted to get out of the house and have some fresh air…and that evening, we went to Hongtsho for the sheer fun of having ‘Bathub’. My brother Tenzin was there too. On the way back, each one had some ghost stories which made us turn half way back from Dochula. Night had fallen already and none of us wanted to risk seeing a ghost.

We never had the like of that time, ever again, until this Saturday. We met at Sangay’s place for lunch and the minute we busted inside her house, we were our old selves again. Her husband might have wondered what bunch of mad people! But who cared? We had missed it for seven years.

We rattled over lunch as soon as we reached. Sangay asked us, “juice or coffee?” and we said we would go for lunch. We waited long enough for Tenzy (she works in the hospital and that makes everything untimely (hehe…no hard feelings honey)) and it was past two when we finally reached there. Though I told Sangay that we would be there at 11:30, we reached there when it was past two. Sangay was her cool self. Not even the sound of a thunder would budge her. It is Tenzy and I who are jumpy. Oh GOD! We reeled the house for two hours and we rushed back to my place: three of us. I understood later that Sangay’s husband didn’t really want her to go because he misses her so much…but we oozed out the door before he could say much and we were lost in the middle of pictures and albums and memories…We had missed so much in the pursuit of a job. In trying to find an education, we have lost this aura for seven years. I never thought seven years was that long.

We are finally back in Thimphu. No matter if it is just some occasional meeting…we still bring up those memories of our 12th summer and we merge back with the past and we are young again.