Kuenza's Diary

April 29 2010: Back to Bartsham from Yalang. I thought the journey back was easier but when I reached Bartsham, I found that I was so tired and my whole body ached. I went to my brother’s house to have lunch and take bath. Brother is in Monggar for a meeting and Mathang was gone to help Aku in sowing maize. I went to Aku’s house and talked with him for some time and when I found that I was really tired and had no energy to sit, I went to my brother’s house and slept. I woke up and caught the concluding address of the 16th SAARC Summit by the PM of Bhutan. Strangely, I thought I would be much better if I were in Thimphu that moment. It is strange because I always long to be in my village when I’m in Thimphu. This probably shows that our mind is fickle. Mathang told me that Azem Phomo passed away yesterday. This had a very strong effect on me that I felt a sudden shudder of sadness. I felt bad that she had to suffer before she took her last breath. She lost sight long before, that is be...

I can’t believe I’m writing this from Bartsham. Forget about my great grandparents’ time, even during my father’s time, it was just unthinkable. I cup hands on the face and lean closer towards the laptop and I feel tears stinging my eyes. It is not that I am happy that the technology has reached my village. But it is this nostalgia that rushes up my head that makes me want to cry. What is incredible is that, I can’t share it with people all over the world the moment I’m feeling it. I went to my sister’s house just now. I took along three friends and we had Ara and dinner there. She wanted us to stay there tonight but we said we must go. And here I am now, recollecting my meeting, my conversation, each of the five children’s face flashing in my mind. Wow, what great life, I say. I feel good that I have large family. But as her five kids sat around the fireplace, I could imagine how my parents must have had difficulty raising seven children. It is...

We have hired 42 graduate enumerators for GNH Survey. We are soon going to the field. Right now, before anything else, we are training them. I don’t want to say that I lose confidence in our education system. But of course, sometimes, it is so hard not to lose heart to see that our graduates do not understand what dzongkha word is for constitution. But right now, what I’m enjoying is standing in front of them and giving them training on the survey questionnaire. I don’t mean that I feel proud to stand in front of them but I do enjoy teaching…whatever it is. But of course, I am too lazy or have no time to teach my nephew. This guilt is going to haunt me forever I know. Luckily this time, my nephew did quite well and so he is now studying in 11 Science in Yangchenphug HSS. But if he isn’t making into higher studies year after next, I’m sure I will hit my head on the wall for being lazy or acting too busy. What I’m excited about again is that, soon we are hitting the road into going for ...

I hear my mother pray in the other room. I am sitting inside my bedroom, wondering what to do. I’m not able to decide whether to have dinner first or pray. And as I listen to my mother pray, I fall back into many years back when I was a child: I hear the bells of the cattle. I hear so many different insects. I hear beautiful songs from the BBS Radio. A radio is carefully placed on the window. Cattle have started coming home for the night in a line. My sister is slicing off the banana plant to feed the cattle. Another sister is taking the cattle to their shed. I am not assigned any specific task. I help my sister by carrying the light (bati = a small kerosene lamp made from tin). Soon the cattle are fed. They are all taken to the shed. We eat dinner, all of us sitting in a circle. Even as we eat dinner, we listen to the news from the BBS Radio. It is the only source of information for the national news. Soon after the dinner, we all go into the other room. We all sleep in one room...

I'm sitting in the class just now. It is tea break. I don't wanna take tea. I take more solids than liquids so I would better sit here and write what comes to my mind. I just read the article by ArrogantBuddha in nopkin.com. I wonder why he is acting like a hungry old man who has remained virgin all his life. He seems to have been affected so much by the operation he had to undergo. No wonder, he started seeing all the nurses beautiful and he had to tell himself to behave. A day before, he wrote about an encounter with a woman where taking control of himself was the biggest challenge he has faced so far. I wonder what different works and what different thoughts people are undergoing right this moment. And how many people are really, really free? I am attending this 12 day training on PHP. I think this is the second time I really get to do what I should actually be doing: studying programming. Working finely with the syntax and codes of computer language. I sometime wish I coul...

Karma bought me a kira as a gift on the women’s day. He has respected me as a wife, a woman, and as a friend. He has seen me as an equal to him, rather than as a woman who is inferior who must serve him. For this, I must say that I am lucky.  I remember celebrating the women’s day in 2008 in Kolkata. My mother was sick and we were there, but we did find time to quietly celebrate it. As we ate lunch at a restaurant, we wrote letters to each other on the napkin paper. I still have them in my purse. I cherish such moments. I think such moments, piled one upon the other make my life. And yes, I have been lucky. A happy person at that.  My friends tell me that I am lucky. They mean, they think I have been blessed to get someone understanding as my lifetime’s companion. I feel that way too. We do not have anything extraordinary to be marked that way. I am not an extraordinarily attractive woman who can keep her husband happy all the time; nei...

I ate an early heavy dinner today. Karma goes to play basket ball these days. I have no objection in playing sports, but playing cards is what I cannot accept. Not that I see it be utterly useless or anything but without any good reasons, I don’t find it good. I had been waiting for him to come home. I wanted to open the door as he returned, and I wanted to serve him dinner like a good wife would do. But rather a not-so-in-a-rush person, he is always late by the count of my time. Earlier in the evening, I told him, ‘you will reach home only after three hours,’ and he replied that he comes home straight from the game and it isn’t 3 hours. But I was right. We humans always keep record of time in our head when we are supposed to wait for someone. And so when that someone doesn’t return in the expected time, you get impatient. I thought I will not call him but I did when I thought he should have been home. He said, ‘I’m on my way honey.’ I thought it wouldn’t take 10 minutes to reach home...