Nawang P Phuntsho

Years ago, an uncle of mine blessed me with a check.  I don’t exactly remember the amount, but immediately I hurried to the bank so that I could purchase some essentials for the school year. It was my first bank visit, but with the security guards’ advice, I joined one of the queues. After what seemed hours, the tortoise-like line took me to the foot of a cash counter. With so much trepidation, I respectfully handed over my prized possession to the cashier. I didn’t expect a busy man to look at my face. He typed something on his computer and without even looking at me said something, which I didn’t hear at all. The next moment, he hurled my check literally at my face. With timidity writ all over my face, I asked what happened. If there was a fissure beneath the floor, I could literally duck in then and there under the weight of embarrassment. As I walked away, I could feel fellow customers looking and jeering at me. I know something must have happened. Maybe my uncle had insuff...

It feels different being married, then and now! Legal Document I found love of  my life at a high school back in Bhutan’s first school. Even at that age, we knew we were in for a serious relationship and hence we nurtured it well. And as we repetitively promised back then, heart and soul, when I graduated, there she was waiting for me, her heart as big as the vast sky and her love still aflame as it was years ago. Our passion made us overcome our impatience of time and distance that tried to divide us. After all, when you know you are in for something sure, you won’t doubt a bit. And we didn’t. It has been two and half years since I called myself married and my five-month-old daughter is an evidence of that fact. But recently I found my daughter was not an evidence enough, legally speaking. I didn’t have an elaborate wedding where hundreds of high sounding officials and cheering crowd of well-wishers attended nor there was grand party attended by friends and family membe...

When local is defeated by these foreign bottles:   Too too many to count? Where men defeat bottles

Photo: Yangphel Archery One lazy afternoon, a few years ago, I was watching an archery tournament with a foreigner. The game was played on imported, shiny compound bows and arrows. As the archers, men dressed in colorful outfits, celebrated karey hits almost after every minute or two, the foreigner and I had time to talk. We agreed and argued on some shooting matters, but one of his points went unanswered. “Bhutanese people consider archery your national sport, but how many Olympic medals have your archers won?” Well, I could give him no satisfactory answer back then because he reasoned that the aim of the archers everywhere is to hit the target and even Olympic archers shoot with the same aim. Very reasonable I thought. He went on to say that India has won 8 Olympic Gold for Field Hockey, her national sport. That he called is proving to the world that it is the truly the national sport. But very interestingly India is ranked only eighth in the world in its national game. And go...

When we were in primary schools we were asked to write an original story in our class six common exam. That same essay type question used to be repeated every year. And to this day I have been wondering what the question setters had in their minds when they demanded an original story.  Is it an account of a real life incident or simply a folktale? And interestingly how can an evaluator judge if stories students wrote on their answer-sheets were original? But back then we scored better marks in English because we got used to such questions – we would memorize “original” stories from library books because at least for us such stories were “real” and “original”. But today in the light of increased talks on copyright infringement and piracy issues, let’s ask whether we were morally correct to have done that. Our teachers never corrected us even if they knew it was wrong. And some even encouraged us. Where was room for creativity? We have been made to believe that it is alright to cop...