nostalgic

Chubachu

chubachu is a small neighborhood in Thimphu at the lowest point of the valley where Chubachu creek meets the mighty Thimphu chu. Bhutan’s capital city, Thimphu, is the largest city and is more rural than the most rural towns of America. One main road, Norzim Lam, divides the city into upper and lower Thimphu. Chubachu creek separates east from west Thimphu.

By law, buildings in Bhutan has to be built according to the aesthetics of Bhutanese architecture and style. The houses are usually two-storied with an apex slope roof made of pine shingles and rocks throughout the roof to protect from the monsoon rain and wind gust. Rammed mud supplements the half-timbered walls in white. The red windows, etched into the wall with their arching buttresses always come in the shape of a human head to shoulder silhouette, in four rows and four columns. Most of these windows face the south and are equipped with sliding wooden shutters.

I wait for her to go to school with every morning. I don’t like going to school with girls but Uma insist I accompany her.

she is twelve, a few months younger than me. she has dark black hair, and wears thick glasses.

the moment she comes out of her house she starts talking and continues to do so for the one hour walk to school. She is as indifferent to hearing my thoughts as I am indifferent to hearing her talk. Every once in a while she startles me by saying something like: “If we are both in our thirties and single we should make a pact of getting married.”

My classmates tease me, “Is that four-eyed girl your girlfriend?” at which she scolds them,
“Leave him alone jeghotos, he didn’t do anything to you.”

Uma says when I was born I was as silent as the darkness. In school, teachers, girls and my classmates think that I am shy and timid because I am quiet all the time. I didn’t make too many friends either.

Hide and seek is my favorite game in our neighborhood. When it comes to my turn to hide, I always go underneath the waterfall of the creek to my secret hiding place, a small cave besides the waterfall to smoke the cigarette I stole from my dad. However, on one particular evening, thank God I had already finished smoking, I see someone approaching the cave.
“Can I hide with you?”

It’s dark but I know its her. I think for a second, “Only if you stay quiet.”
She stands there in silence. I squeeze to the left to make more room for her in the small cave. In silence, we rest our chins on our knees. The splash of the waterfall and the cool night breeze starts to give us goose bumps as water droplets sprinkle our faces. Every so often, she takes off her glasses and wipes them with her t-shirt. She complains about the droplets underneath her breath.
I whisper in her ear, “Shhhhh.”
“No one is going to hear us with the water splash” she whispers back.
“Then, why are you whispering?”
Still whispering, she replies, “because you are whispering Jeghoto.”
No sign of the seekers. We wait in silence. Getting restless, I ask her, “do you want to go home?”
“NO!”
“Why not? This game is boring. Let’s go back and ask the guys if they want to play kingball instead.”
She speaks in silence in the darkness. We wait, and wait and then wait some more.

Why can’t the fucking seekers find us…but what if those bastards gave up? They are probably playing another game by now or maybe they are still looking for us, I think I might have come too far to hide, maybe they didn’t want to cross the stream. Yeah that could be it, I’ve heard my mom say many times that its bad luck to cross a stream during the dark. How did Tshering find me in the first place? Was she following me? She must have because only I know this place. If we stay here too long, mom and dad are going to get worried and then they will give me the beating of a lifetime. Shit.

Paranoid, I whisper to wake her up. Silence.
Then, she lays her head on my chest and wraps her arms around my torso and is falling asleep. My initial reaction is to shake her but smelling the afternoon warmth from her jet black hair, and a faint smell of lemon relaxes me.

The moon finally comes out. I can feel the warmth of her body and her breath through my t-shirt. I lean back on the rock wall so she can rest her head in comfort and I stretch my legs tiring from sitting in the same position for a long time.

“Hey, wake up, it’s getting late…we’ve to go home.” She moves her head trying to get more comfortable and makes a sleepy moan.
I nudge her a little bit harder, “come on, wake up we have to go home or my mom is going to give me a whipping for worrying her.”
she takes off her glasses and hangs them on her t-shirt collar and rubs her squinty eyes from years of wearing eye glasses to wake herself up. I hold her hand climbing the ledge around the rock through the bridge. After we cross the bridge I let her hand go gently and we walk silently to the party.

“Where were you guys? we were looking all over” says a boy, “and some guys are still looking.”
“Well, we got tired of hiding …” says the girl, in a sarcastic tone, “…never would've found us. Losers”
Curious, the boy asks, “Where'd you guys hide?”
she looks at me. I give her nothing. and she replies, “sorry, no hider ever reveals their secret spots…sorry can’t do…”
“Come on, you can tell me, I promise I won’t tell anyone. it will be between you and me and well I guess…” looking at me, “…him as well?”