The Lost Soul

Our shoulders almost brushing, we stand by the window. I am showing him our house where my sisters used to stay. I remember my sisters staying in a house half an hour away from our main house, looking after the cattle. I show him how the lands have remained fallow after my sisters got married and went to stay with their husbands. I am back in my village after more than two years. This is where I grew up and I know the house well but there is no one at my house. My friends and I have come here on a tour and we are planning to stay for a few weeks. As my friends are unpacking our bags, I talk with Dorji and live again our childhood memories. We didn’t play hide and seek. We didn’t play marbles. I always played all these with my female friends. But Dorji and I shared secret glances and the intuitive feeling of love, as young as we were – I guess we felt it glowing in our heart.

Dorji left school because there was no one to help his mother at home. And he is a farmer now. He had the good nature to call upon me and come to see me when I reached my village.

As we stand here today, explaining to him where I had been and what I had been doing, I see a faraway look in his eyes. He is lost. I know what he is thinking. I bring him back to the present, when I tell him that maybe I should prepare him tea. He humbly denies and tells me that he should leave. But we feel like we have so much to talk. We were two small kids dreaming to be like those who drove car and came to watch Tshechu at the lhakhang in our village – dignified, well dressed men and women. And then suddenly we are meeting after so many years – two adults who have seen the world more than we thought we would. We both lost our father. I, as recent as two years back. Even as I stand by the window, looking down at the village, I get the feel that my father is watching me. It is like he wants to guide me and see me make all my decision. But sometime, it is even scary and little uneasy to have someone look at me all the time. But I reassure myself that he is happy wherever he is now and I tell him in my prayers that I’m doing fine and it is all because of him and my mother (and my siblings too). I am lost in his thoughts for a while. Dorji looks at me and tells me again that he has to leave.

At the door, we share a light kiss on the lips, more like a courtesy. I tell him that maybe he can try to be a mechanic, open a watch repair shop. And as I see him pass behind the wall of our kitchen that is attached to the main house, I feel my heart opened agape and I feel like I have just begun my life.