I was and am an innocent man. Would you believe me if I said I haven’t hurt an ant in my life? I don’t care what you believe. I will still tell you my story. Want to know why I don’t care? It doesn’t matter what you think of my story. It isn’t a story about a super hero or some stupid larger-than-life romance. If you are a fan of the two types of stories I mentioned, you might want to stop reading because you might get bored. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

I was born into a low income family. When I say low income, please don’t mistake it for poor. We had a roof over our head, clothes on our back, three meals a day, and lots and lots of wires. You see, my father was an electrician. He brought home what was discarded in his organisation. So we grew up amidst wire guns, wire balls, wire TV frames, and wire dolls, wire tea sets and wire combs for my two sisters. I was the second of three brothers and third of all siblings.

Image by sprklg

Our two room hut, built with everything that was junk, was located at the far end of the slums near the river. My parents and two younger siblings shared one room, and I shared the other room with my two older siblings, my handsome notorious maternal uncle, and my ailing paternal grandmother. That’s when we didn’t have visitors. If we had visitors, my siblings and I slept in the common room which also served as kitchen. Now are you thinking, ‘what a crowded rat hole’? I bet, many of you reading my story grew up in a rat hole like that. Did I get into your head? I intended to do that. I am sure most of you grew up in better circumstances.

Mother was a nag. What can one expect a woman in her situation to be like. She complained about money, clothes, food, the leaking roof, cold winter, hot summer, us, our school books, her brother, visitors, grandmother, father, and his two thousand ngultrum salary. We had never seen her smile. Even on losars she nagged us. Father often told us how he fell in love with this beautiful girl the very first time he saw her. We never believed she could look beautiful even if she made up like the women we saw on our neighbours’ black and white television and on the screen of Lugar Theatre on losars.

Father was the softy of the two. Once a week, he would bring us cheap toffees, which were better than no toffees at all. He had studies till class four back in the village community school in Trongsa. Every day after work, he would dutifully check our books to see we had written our class work and done our home work. But I seriously doubted if he understood anything once we crossed class four. I know you must be thinking the same. When I asked him if he could even read what was written, he would smile, pat my back and say, ‘I can read what I need to read.’ He even checked the books of my eldest sister who was in class seven. When she nagged father about his shadow mistress, he would smile, and as always, say, ‘Tsagyem, how do you expect me to keep up with two nagging women in the same house? And the little I earn will go to the younger wife for her make-up. My children, mother and I will starve. I wouldn’t want that to happen now, would I? And I am still in love with you.’ Now don’t go thinking father would have wanted a mistress because he was afraid of mother. I believed and still believe he loved his wife and children very much to go around sowing wild oats. During cold winter nights, he told us stories he had heard as a boy. He always smiled and was a perfect balance for our nagging mother.

[To be continued in Understated lives II...]