The Orphaned Wheel and Other Memoirs

Introduction

Holidays are always special and special are those that include your near and dear ones. Even more special are the holidays you take with your near and dear ones at your ancestral village, where you grew up in a rustic lifestyle decades ago. Today I live quite a modern life in Thimphu working as a management consultant enjoying comforts unthinkable to a six year old orphan in Neoly Bhutan four decades ago. Given these backgrounds and the emotional attachment people have with their birthplaces and hometowns, my recent holiday was bound to be special.

I bear my ancestral roots at Neoly in what is known today as Pemathang, a block of villages in Samdrup Jongkhar eastern Bhutan. Ever since my eldest sister decided to resign from managing my landed property that she had been managing since 1991, I make it a point to travel to Neoly once a year. It serves many objectives – collect my share of crops that Timsina Saila gives me by way of ‘kooth’ (a sharecropping system whereby a tenant gives the land owner a pre-agreed quantity of crops), negotiate a deal for the following year, clear out ‘hisaab kitaab’ (monetary settlements) with Baidar kaka who is my local guardian, visit and catch up with my numerous relatives and friends and quite importantly introduce my boys to our relatives and the ways of their father’s childhood.  

Planning and coordination

My annual holiday was fixed the day my boys finished their annual school examinations 2015. Last year I couldn’t make it to Neoly for I took my family to Bangkok with the small savings I had from my four years at Druk Holding & Investments. ‘This year, we must go’, reminded my wife of 20 years. Normally, when we go to Neoly in winter, we also get to attend a marriage, a bartaman (a Hindu ceremony prominent among Bahuns and Chhteris, whereby a male child 8 years or older is given the sacred thread) or a puran (a religious ceremony that involves the recitation of the Hindu religious scriptures). This year we received an advanced invitation from Baidar kaka to attend his youngest daughter’s wedding. Yamuna, all of 21 years was to be given away to a much older cardamom growing farmer from Denchuka, Samtse. It was fortuitous!   

Travelling to Neoly is tiring, comes with a fair bit of risk (thanks to frequent mugging and robbing of Bhutanese vehicles and passengers at the Alipurduar   jungles) and adventurous. So, we always look for company – more the merrier. I applied for my annual leave and waited for the rest of the Neoly troupe to finalise their plans. Rabilal Pokhrel, my sadu daju (sadu = male relative married to your wife’s sister), but whom I address as kaka following our pre-marriage relationship, responded quickly. ‘We are also going’, he spoke in the plural implying that didi and Bindhya were joining too. Two is company, as they say!

Not long after, Kailo Chitra also joined the group – his Jethan (wife’s elder brother) was getting married and he was going. Ever since we finalised our plan, Rabilal kaka and I were keen to rope in two people – Dr. Daju and Bhawani Daju – both hard nuts to crack! We tempted Dr. Daju with the option of taking a ride with us if he didn’t want to take his car. He said he would think about it. Then one-day when we had gone to visit Bhim Dhungyel’s newly constructed house at Ngabiphu and Bhauju (Dr. Daju’s wife) was in my car, I asked her if they were going to Neoly. ‘It depends on daju; he has to manage his leave from the hospital’, Bhauju responded. I was delighted, as I had thought so far that Bhauju, perhaps, was not keen to go.

With Chitra at Dolly Didi's Place (Picture courtesy: Dr. Daju)

We failed with Bhawani daju. ‘I have just started my assignment and I won’t be able to join you guys’, he apologized. Kaka and I gave up; we were going to miss one of the most interesting members of our family for the holidays. Then Kumar Bhai happened in the last minute. He is based in Neoly, where he is a teacher at Pemathang (erstwhile Dalim) School, but had come to visit his in-laws at Thinleygang, near Lobesa. His would be the fifth car in our convoy. In this case even five would not be a crowd!

I could barely sleep the night before departure. It had been two years since I had last been to Neoly and I became a bit emotional. In the bargain, I even composed an impromptu poem in Nepali on the theme जननी जन्मभूमिश्च स्वर्गादपि गरीयसी  ‘Mother and Motherland are next to heaven’. Readers may read the poem in blog.

In this post, I recount our two days onward journey to Neoly.

Day 1: Saturday, January 23, 2016: Thimphu to Phuentsholing. We started at 8:30 am gathering at Thimphu Gate to ensure that everyone was there. Kaka, daju and I were breaking off at Gedu to attend a marriage reception of my niece at Upper Saureni, Tala. Pabi, my maili jethi sasu’s (Jethi sasu = wife’s elder sister) eldest daughter had got married last February, but her in laws at Tala had not found time to organise a reception so far. After a two-hour halt at Tala, we reached Phuentsholing around five in the evening and headed straight to Jaigaon. We had to buy several small gifts for selected relatives at Neoly. ‘A sari for maiju, boottey majetro for the several didis, loongi with saya for ama, a shirt for bhinaju and mantarey kaka’, my wife finalised the list. I agreed and funded the purchases.  After a dinner at a Phuentsholing restaurant, where we landed up paying much less than what we had eaten due to an accounting error made by the restaurant manager, we rested for the night at my maila sadu daju Bhawani Giri’s place.

Day 2: Sunday, January 24, 2016: Phuentsholing to Neoly via Samdrup Jongkhar. We had planned our holiday such that we travel through India on a Sunday. The neighbouring Indian states of West Bengal and Assam are fraught with strikes and ‘hartaals’, which usually do not take place on Sundays.  Assam especially is a big headache! Travelling to Samdrup Jongkhar from Phuentsholing one has to drive more than six hours though various districts of Assam, most of them hotbeds of extremists fighting for an autonomous Bodoland. 

The Bhutan Gate at Phuentsholing opens at 5:30 AM and kaka and I were there about fifteen minutes before time. We were among the first five cars queuing up to start the long journey. Daju, Chitra and Kumar were a bit behind in the queue. As soon as the gate was flung open by visibly tired sentries, cars of many types rushed towards Jaigaon. I also applied speed and headed into the pre-dawn dark. My wife started her role as my assistant driver – telling me when not to speed, when to honk and pointing at oncoming vehicles rushing towards us as if to finish us off and generally irritating me and keeping me focussed on the road. Now and then when the going was smooth, I chided her for acting over smart, but would soon remind myself that all wives are said to be like that!

The previous day, we had agreed to regroup at the Hasimara Junction before proceeding. A wrong turn at the junction would land us up at Siliguri after three hours – a totally opposite direction! As agreed, kaka and I stopped at the junction and waited for the rest to arrive. Daju arrived ten minutes later. We waited for another half an hour or so, but Chitra and Kumar wouldn’t turn up. It was still dark and Bhutanese vehicles of all sorts were flying past us. After a while we decided that Chitra and Kumar had gone ahead of us and continued.

The highway from Hasimara to the Bengal-Assam border of Srirampur is a driver’s delight. It is in good condition and very soon we caught the first stretch of the ‘Asian Highway’, which is good befitting its moniker. Between Barobisa and Srirampur, we stopped by a roadside Dhaba for breakfast. I ordered Puri Sabji for others and Chapatti Sabji for me. My elder son Prateek complained that the place reeked of Indian pee and refused to eat, whereas hunger got the better of the rest of us. After breakfast, we decided to wait for Kumar and Chitra, while Daju found time to aim his camera at the plentiful photogenic people, objects and surrounding.

Kumar and Chitra were lost and we continued with our journey after a half hour halt. It was agreed that besides stoppages for nature call, our next big halt would be at Samdrup Jongkhar. Kaka, purportedly the most knowledgeable about the Assam-Bengal roads led the trio of us. With his better car and longer driving experience (although he can be a bit rash at times) he would run out of sight now and then even in the ruler like straight National Highway 31. I was in the middle with the arduous task of keeping my front eye on kaka and my back one on daju. I needed to be careful not to lose kaka so that I could guide daju and myself to the right direction.  Perhaps the distance that kaka was trying to maintain was purposeful as he might have been reminded of the 2007 trip when we were driving so close to each other that at one point when daju had to brake to avoid hitting an oncoming bullock cart, kaka had hit daju on his number plate. Hema Juwain had then famously commented that ‘your brothers are driving as if they are pulled by a long rope’, referring to the close tailgating at that time. 

After Bongaigaon, the Bijni Junction, which has proved to be a nightmare for many Bhutanese drivers emerged. It is a mega junction with equally broad roads running in three directions. As I crossed Bijni, I slowed down; in the distance ahead I could see that kaka was also slowing down. Before long, daju caught up and we continued. After Bijni, several bustling Indian towns fall by the highway and most of them feed and lead to various places in Bhutan.

Barpeta Road is the first to come; it leads to the famous Manas Games Sanctuary that sprawls across Indian and Bhutanese territories.  After Barpeta, we reached Pathsala, literally meaning ‘school’ or ‘centre of learning’. I am much used to this place thanks to my frequent trips to Nganglam on DCCL assignments. A few years ago, some of my relatives were not so fortunate. They were travelling to Samdrup Jongkhar and when they reached Pathsala, they thought they had reached Rangia, from where one turns left to complete the 50 kms to Daranga/Samdrup Jongkhar. They had asked an Indian sepoy ‘which side is Bhutan?’ They had asked the wrong question! The only Bhutan the semi-literate Indian cops knew was Nganglam and so they directed the stray Bhutanese to the left towards Nganglam. Later, they had recounted to us how they had lost a good hour in the confusion. So, one has to be careful at Pathsala.

Lesson: Be precise – while at Pathsala and confused ask which way is Samdrup Jongkhar or the Indian connection points of Rangia or Daranga. As they say, the answer you get is always as good as your question!

Pathsala leads to Nalbari. And I knew that I had to be careful here based on a previous experience. During the 2007 trip, we were travelling in a convoy but got dissipated by the time we reached Nalbari.  I had gotten a bit panicky and had desperately looked for the silver coloured Alto of my brother. Just at that moment, I had seen an Alto on the other side of the highway enter a side road and thought that it was my brother’s. I had waved at the car and someone from the car waved back. That’s it, I thought, and followed the Alto only to find that I had entered the Nalbari Bazaar, instead of heading straight to Rangia. Of course the Alto was not my brothers and I was lost for a while.

Lesson: Don’t wave at anyone when you are lost on an Indian highway. Rather enquire around and bide your time.

Next was Rangia. This cracker or rather bomb of a town is so chaotic that anyone who can drive through the very narrow and crowded lanes of Rangia can easily win a Formula One race. My younger son’s observations and complaints about Indian driving reached a crescendo when we passed the British era railway crossing and entered Rangia town. As soon as we had entered Jaigaon the previous day, Buku had very rightly observed that ‘Indians honk and horn for nothing …’. ‘Why do they honk when they know that the car in front in stuck because of another car legitimately crossing the road?’ he had asked me. I had no answer. I thought of my many honourable Indian friends spread across the world. ‘Are Indians unnecessarily loud, honky and aggressive?’ I wondered even as I collected all my wit, energy and motor skills to avoid hitting the rickshaws, knocking pedestrians down or simply entering a roadside shop with my car! All of us had to be careful for it was in Rangia during our famous 2007 trip that daju had unwittingly ripped a rickshaw of one of its wheels. The orphaned wheel had followed us for about 50 metres, before we crossed Rangia and fled away.

This time Rangia was uneventful. Besides pacifying my son that ‘Indians were like that’ I kept maneuvering through, under and between people, cars, cows, shit, beggars and dogs. Soon Tulsibari came into sight reminding us of the infamous escort days, when Bhutanese vehicles travelling to Samdrup Jongkhar from different parts of Bhutan had to wait at Tulsibari for the Indian Army to escort them to Daranga. At the time Assamese separatist extremists were supposed to pose a threat to Bhutanese cars and people as Bhutan had flushed out militants from their hideouts in our jungles and villages in a famous operation led by His Majesty, the fourth king.   

Tamulpur reminded me of my school days in the 1980s when we used to take the Samdrup-Guwahati bus up to Tamulpur when we returned home for vacation from Pema Gatshel. The big tree lying at the base of the junction and the old teashops lining the right flank seemed to beckon me. From Tamulpur we used to hop into tinny Indian buses up to Nagarjuli and walked all the way to Dalim – more than 15 kilometers. Those were the days!  

After Tamulpur, Kamarikata and Menuka Tea Estate lead to the famous Mela Bazaar. There was a time when Mela Bazaar served many important purposes. Besides being a bustling Indian bazaar popular among Bhutanese, it also had a shady underside, which fulfilled the libido of all ilks of men including students. It was about one in the afternoon when we reached Samdrup Jongkhar. We had a vegetarian lunch at Hotel Sambhala before starting the last leg of our journey – Samdrup Jongkhar to Deothang to Kawaipani to Dumpha to Beldara. Up to Deothang, the road is good having recently been widened and resurfaced; after that the road is good, ok and not very good in patches.   However, vehicular traffic is very light and the thought of reaching home after two and half hour keeps the spirit going.

Kawaipani looks dead as ever. On the basis of prior information, we take the Samdrupcholing-Samrang highway up to Dumpha and then snake up to Kharbandi through what was once ‘Dumpha ko ukalo’. The Samrang highway constructed and completed recently by CDCL under ADB assistance is good but is yet to be blacktopped. As we drove through, I showed my wife and boys ‘that is where maili didi’s house used to be’, ‘that below the khamari tree is where ‘saila kaka used to live’.  Before long I could see a big orchard of areca nut and an expanse of dry and wetland – the land I have inherited from my late parents in Dumpha. Just before reaching my land, the Samrang highway gives birth to a smaller road – Pemathang Geog Road; we left the highway and trudged up to Kharbandi.

Tika and Bhauju amusing their Amaju (Thul Didi) (Pic courtesy: Dr. Daju)

What a pleasure it was to drive a motorcar across the village that I grew up in decades ago. Amber Pokhrel, Acharja saila, Bhujel, Pitaram Timsina, Dukka Bau, Khatiwoda Maila, Mantarey kaka, Pumfa, Harka Bahadur Mama, Dhan Bahadur Daju, Moktanni Amoi, Hamro Ghar appeared on the sides of the dusty road in quick succession. By the time we crossed DC Daju’s house, we left the geog road and took a right turn towards ex-gup Parsuram Dhungyel’s house. Beyond Balkrishna Dhungyel’s house, the road is merely a furrow along paddy fields and through arecanut trees. The daylight was fading as we crossed Ganesh Khatiwoda’s house and entered didi’s estate. Didi and Bhena were waiting to receive us. We had reached home by the time the cows came home and the birds had nestled for the night.

Our holiday had begun!