Letter from a Bhutanese monk

Dear Anslem,

I am very sorry as I couldn’t contact you in this month as I was and I am
quite busy preparing for my exams which will be starting in this month, then
I am going to Tashe Yangtze for 5 month to get blessing my Rinpoche.
By the way I hope that you are fine and well enjoying your job. I know that
you will do the best as you have the best. Even I believe and trust that you
will success in each and every steps you take, as you’ve the capable and
hard working person. About self I am fine as before and doing my studies
well.

Plez don’t mind for me as I want to beg you a favour, please could you do me
a favour and send me one mobile phone (NOKIA). I thanks you from the inner
core my heart that you have favoured me a lot before. This year please do
favour me mobile phone, I expect from bottom and inner core of my heart that
you will favour me, as you’ve the only one to whom I trust and believe as
well wisher. Hope you will fulfill my hopes and dreams. So, please send me
in this month if you can, as I have only one month to go for blessing, and I
hope you will not mind for that and I will be so great full to you. Once
more, please do me a favour and send me a cell phone (NOKIA) I hope you will
never break my trust and believes.
Till then I miss you and remember you always, I wish you the very best of
luck in each and every steps you take and I pray for you the very happy and
long life.

Bye bye,
With love
Fan Thrinly Gyeltshen.

Thrinley (right, with his brother Namgay, our tour guide) in March 2004.
He's wearing the red jacket I bought for him back then.

3rd October - day of German unity

I’m alone.

After months of company.
Months!

Crazy months, filled with an unfathomable amount of wonderful moments.
Unforgettable.
Yet somehow – now, looking back – too much.

I have to spit.
[I refuse to smoke normal cigarettes, but I ran out of cloves, so I’m smoking beedies (hand-rolled paperless Indian farmers’ cigarettes) that I brought from Mumbai in 1999 – all I had left in the house – revolting, but somehow pleasurable.]
I hear the spit fall on the stone below the balcony.
White stone, that covers the whole yard. Even now, though the sky is dark and overcast with rain clouds, the yard is still gloomy-bright because of the stone.
Before the summer grass covered the yard and there was a big pine tree – then the wedding came and it was all dug up, a big hole it was, nothing else; and then covered with this stone. And no tree.
It looks neat now, clean.
And bright.

It’s pouring down now.
The skies unloading what they’ve been holding back all day while the Alpine west-wind was still holding up. The sound of the rain on the yard’s white stone is comforting.
Until yesterday there was a dog here, on the other side of the yard in the back part of the house.
I took him out three times a day and fed him. He became a friend, company. We sat on the white steps leading up to this part of the house. I would just sit and maybe smoke a beedie, while he was lying behind me, almost wrapped around me with his head resting on his soft paws.

But now he’s gone.
And I alone live in this big house with its many rooms, chambers, sheds, hallways and doors. I like to call it a ‘simple farmhouse’, but it isn’t really.
I’ve turned out all the lights and only the screen of my laptop dimly lights the scene and is reflected by the open balcony door next to which I’m sitting – I had to withdraw into the house a little because of the rain, which is still drizzling on my bare feet and shins.

I’ve wanted to be alone for a long time – a very long time.
And now that I am, the first thought is – who can I call? Where can I go?
I know that I couldn’t even take in all the intensity of the life I was leading anymore in the last few weeks of this overbearing summer -- all the details, the little things.
And I was yearning – starving almost – for time just to myself, to process, digest, incorporate and remember even.

But yet… Who could I cook dinner for?

How fickle.