Monday 19 March 2012

Where are you from?



Some shots from the visit to my ancestral village - Dec 2013

Been living in Thimphu, the capital city of Bhutan for over twenty years now. What a time! This has been the longest that I have lived anywhere. 

I first came to Thimphu in March 1983, when the Ministry of Education sent me to Yangchenphug Central School in class IX after the completion of class VIII at Pema Gatshel Junior High School. To a small boy from remote Bhangtar, Thimphu was a big town even then. It is bigger today.

I completed my Bachelor studies in 1990 and arrived in Thimphu in July that year to attend the national graduates orientation and driglam namzha programme. I took shelter with kaka Rabilal Pokhrel, who is my ‘sadu daju’ today. As they say in Nepali, 'the wild cockroach chased away the domestic one' and soon I was the legitimate tenant at Ap Phochu house, Metog Lam, Thimphu. That was 1993. 

I left Metog Lam at the end of February 2010 and moved to DSB building. Where? Above the Call Centre, behind Hotel Holiday Home. It is where Changzamtog ends and Changbangdu begins. The immediate premise is dusty and dirty, but the apartment is likeable. 

People often ask me, 'where are you from'? ‘Neoly....Bhangtar....Samdrup Jongkhar...', I reply. But then, I have now lived longer in Thimphu than anywhere else. When I cross Semtokha or Babesa on return from my tours to other parts of Bhutan or from abroad, I feel I am home. Where I live is not my own house, it is DSB’s. But then, even in Neoly, where I have my census, I don’t have a house. Home is where the heart is, as they say. And my heart is in Thimphu. It is, after all, where I work and live, and it is where the people, who matter the most to me today, live.