Buttertea at Sunrise (27 page)

‘Yes,’ I reply quietly. ‘I can’t think of staying here without you.’

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Slowly the tension of the day flows out of my body. I close my eyes, enjoying the scratchiness of Bikul’s stubble, and the smoky scent coming from the wood stove.

‘Will you call the night nurse and tell her, if there is an emergency, to call you here tonight?’

I hold my breath, waiting for an answer.

‘You know they will call you Mrs. Das tomorrow,’ Bikul teases, referring to his last name.

I have to smile. Yes, I know.

‘That doesn’t sound so bad,’ I mumble, and crawl deeper under the sleeping bag. This seems right to me, whatever anyone else might think. This is where I belong. Beside Bikul, right here.

‘Please stay,’ I say, kissing Bikul tenderly. Tonight, I don’t want to sleep alone.

The temperature continues to drop. Time is measured in armloads of wood for the fire; rekindling the flames interrupts the dark evening.

The next morning, we wake up to watch our breath in the air. Getting out of bed becomes a battle with will-power, but a little later, sipping some steaming coffee, I hold onto my cup as if my life depended on it. Slowly the hot porcelain defrosts my fingers.

In physiotherapy, an old abi with rheumatoid arthritis is my only patient. I struggle with my Sharchhopkha, and Saidon Abi muffles back in toothless sounds. I ask how old she is but the answer gets lost in moons and Bhutanese years. Most likely, Saidon Abi does not know. Most minakpas have no idea on which day they were born; many can only guess at their ages. Time matters little.

Saidon Abi mumbles that she is from Kadam, an old

temple on the hill above Mongar. I nod in recognition. I know a schoolteacher, Kesang Choeki, who lives up there.

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‘
Kesang Choeki – Kadam?
’ I ask, and Saidon Abi nods enthusiastically.

Abi shows me her hands. Her fingers are bent and

disfigured by the advanced stages of her disease. ‘
Ngamla
,’

she repeats a few times. I nod. Then she points to her elbows, her shoulders, her knees, and her feet. She wants me to know that it hurts everywhere. I nod again. Beside me, a cold wax bath and a lifeless infrared lamp look dolefully into the powerless darkness. Parts of the hospital have electricity today, but my physioroom certainly does not.

A thought strikes suddenly. The outpatient rooms have power. Therefore Bikul has light! If I cannot treat my patients here, we will go elsewhere.

Abi follows me to Bikul’s OPD chamber, where I

deposit my heat lamp beside his desk. Bikul looks at me questioningly.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Well, you have electricity and I don’t. I thought maybe Saidon Abi can sit here under the heat lamp.’

Bikul agrees. We turn the extra chair to stand sideways along his desk and place a footstool in front. At first, Saidon Abi wants to offer me her seat, but when she finally puts her feet up, she purrs with contentment. Even Bikul’s patient who is watching from the examination table has to grin.

By the red glow of the infrared lamp, we let the hours tick by. First we warm her feet, then her knees (while Saidon Abi obediently makes little circles with her ankles), next one shoulder after the other, then elbows, and lastly her hands. Bikul’s patients come and go, but no one seems to mind the tiny old Abi in the OPD chamber.

While my delightful old patient stretches her legs out under the heat lamp, she and Bikul joke around in fast and, for me, complicated Sharchhopkha. I prod Bikul to tell me what they are talking about.

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‘You,’ Bikul grins.

‘I know that, but what about me?’ I have never liked hearing my name without understanding the rest of the sentence.

‘I am just asking Abi if she thinks you are beautiful.’

‘What?’

Bikul turns back to Saidon Abi. They laugh.

‘What else?’

‘Abi is asking me if you are my wife.’

Now I have to grimace. In the Bhutanese way, Abi’s question is only natural. Traditionally, if a young man does not leave a girl’s room in the middle of the night but stays until morning, the couple is considered married. In the minakpa’s eyes, we would therefore be a couple. I smile and for the second time try on my imaginary new name,

‘Mrs. Das’.

When the day is nearly over, the Administrative Officer stops his dissatisfied pacing of the front of the hospital to look into matters in Chamber No. 4. I try to smile politely, but his haughty supervision makes me cringe. His disapproval of my appearance in the OPD room is hidden behind an expressionless mask. To demonstrate that I am here with a patient, I turn to my Saidon Abi. ‘
Dakpa mo,
Abi?
’ I ask. Are you better? Saidon Abi beams me a smile.

She is loving every moment of the soothing heat. Without a word, the ADM turns around and with hands clasped behind his back, resumes his pace in front of the hospital.

Saidon Abi rubs the last one of her warmed joints and, grinning, points at her feet. ‘Again?’ she asks. I look at my watch. Nearly three o’clock, and I am ready to go home.

Even by the moderate warmth of Bikul’s electric coil heater, my cough has worsened. Helplessly I shake my head. With a smile, Saidon Abi bows slightly. Then she pulls a rosary 209

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from the fold in her kira and, murmuring a mantra, returns to her bed in the ward.

When the sporadic electricity supply to the physio room is restored the next day, I ask for a space heater. ‘I will try, madam. Maybe tomorrow,’ our electrician in charge promises. Despite his honest intentions, my heart sinks.

Instinct tells me that his promise for ‘tomorrow’ will turn into the day after or next week, if at all. In partial surrender and partial defiance, I treat most of my patients in Bikul’s OPD room by the warmth of his pathetic heater. The stares from administration continue but no one makes a comment.

One day, Sister Rupali rushes towards me, heaving her corpulent body along the hallway in excitement. ‘Sister!

We received telephone from Sister Pema.’ Mongar does not receive many long distance calls, and when one arrives the entire hospital is informed within minutes.

‘Oh, did she call from Vellore? How are they?’

‘Yes, sister,’ Rupali confirms. ‘They are still in Vellore. I think they must be fine, but only worried about the expense of accommodation and food all the time.’

‘Did she say anything about Nima?’

‘She didn’t say, sister. But they will not be coming back this year.’

Shocked, I stare at Sister Rupali. It is the end of November, and Pema has been gone for nearly two months. If she does not come back until January, she will have missed more than three months of her training. And I will continue to be cold and lonely in our physio room. Depressed and a little annoyed, I leave Sister Rupali standing in the hallway to continue spreading the news.

On one particularly dreary afternoon, when Bikul is busy with inpatients and my mood sinks to an all-time low, I decide to escape the hospital campus and make a ‘home 210

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visit’ to my Saidon Abi at Kadam. High on the hilltop, Kadam goemba is surrounded by dozens of little huts and buildings. Many of them are home to the monks, but also old men and women who want to spend their retirements in meditation and prayer.

The climb is long and slippery, and after every few steps I have to stop and wait while my chest is rattled with spasmodic coughing fits. Once, on a steep and muddy stretch, I consider turning around, but for some reason I push on regardless.

A middle-aged woman dressed in red robes meets me

on the path. I ask if she knows where Saidon Abi lives.

‘Eh?’ is the only response. Obviously my Sharchhopkha is incomprehensible to her. I gesticulate wildly that I am looking for an Abi with pain in her arm – and finally the nun nods. In her bare feet and turning her rosary, she leads me to a wooden shack, no bigger than my bedroom.

Inside the dimly lit walls, I have to blink. An old woman sits in a corner on a mat of animal skin, cradling her right wrist in her lap. Her husband rises to welcome me.

‘
Kuzuzang po la, doctor!
’ the woman greets me with respect and gratefully holds her thin hand out to me.

‘
Kuzuzang po la, Abi! Hang eh?
’ Not wanting to disappoint the old lady who looks completely unfamiliar to me, I carefully examine the obviously broken wrist. The fracture must be severe and cause tremendous pain. Her hand is limp and hangs at an odd 90-degree angle from the rest of the arm, but it is warm and otherwise intact. I try to find out how old the injury is.

‘
Hapta nigzing
,’ her husband replies.

Two weeks? That cannot be, I think, but then consider otherwise. Yes, it can be. Judging from the look of her skinny calves, the old woman likely can no longer walk the path down to Mongar, and she avoids a trip to the hospital at all costs. Still, I try to convince them that she has to see 211

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a doctor. I mimic an X-ray. The old man nods in surprising comprehension. ‘X-ray?’ he asks.

‘Yes! X-ray!’ I repeat excitedly. Then I fall silent. Even with an X-ray, I am not sure that anything can be done for the old woman at this stage.

The couple tries to invite me for tea, but I excuse myself because I am looking for my Saidon Abi. Another old woman takes my hand. She seems to know Saidon Abi.

We pass the new building of the goemba to our right, and the woman leads me once around the temple, setting the long rows of prayer wheels in motion. Then we walk past Madam Kesang Choeki’s house on the left and arrive at a small hut off on its own, nestled under the huge branches of an enormous evergreen.

The hut is filled with smoke from the fire, and a single faint light bulb illuminates black-stained wooden pillars and walls. A few whisky bottles filled with arra, the home-brewed alcoholic drink, and some dried chillies in a bamboo bangchung stand in the shelves. An old grandfather alarm clock ticks away the wrong time. Ancient-looking pots and pans hang from the wall, boasting a charcoaled bottom to the world. A variety of spoons and ladles are lined up neatly in a row. A number of empty bottles await filling.

Above the fire, a bamboo grill, most likely for drying meat, is now used for the storage of some indefinable objects of antique value. Everything has its place, probably assigned years ago, and now lovingly returned there after every use.

Around the corner stands a single bed with a collection of blankets and kiras, all looking as old and as worn as Saidon Abi herself.

A now familiar odour welcomes me at the door; it is that unmistakable smell of unwashed bodies, a smell that greets you miles before a smile can shine through, and leaves its traces on clothes, sheets and rugs. It is the smell of sweat and datsi (cheese), of chillies and arra, of fire smoke and 212

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slightly rancid butter; the smell of generations in wooden huts and houses without chimneys and with the windows closed.

Saidon Abi is pleased to see me and painfully unfolds herself from the seated position by the fire. Her husband, the caretaker monk of the old temple of Kadam Goemba, immediately takes over the supervision of their grandson, a tiny toddler whom Abi had been cradling. Meme puts the small boy in his lap and, holding his prayer wheel, murmurs a few mantras. The boy crows happily and grasps for the exciting toy. When he finds that he cannot reach it, he breaks into an angry howl. Meme laughs and folds the boy’s fingers around the handle of the wheel. Immediately satisfied, they turn the prayer wheel together, the boy settling deeper into Meme’s arms.

Saidon Abi pulls out a piece of bamboo and blows into the amber. Within moments, the flames lick happily at a small black pot with boiling water. The wind keeps blowing the smoke back in through the door, and Abi creates more by stirring the fire.

I present Saidon Abi with my gift: a woollen scarf which should help to keep her warm over the coming winter.

With delight I notice that its green and red checkered design matches Saidon Abi’s red dress perfectly. Saidon Abi’s red robes are similar to those of a monk, although she is obviously not a nun; rather, she has earned them by having retreated into meditation for many years.

With a crinkled smile, Saidon Abi hands me a cup of buttertea in a chipped porcelain chalice and places a plate of fancy biscuits before me. With great difficulty, I try to convince her that I would be happy to share their thengma and popcorn kernels. She laughs at my absurd wishes and hands me a bangchung with sweet zao instead. After all, I am an honoured guest and must be served with only the finest she has to offer. Still she continually mumbles expressions 213

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