Dear Olakha : A Love Letter

 Dear Olakha,

 

I don’t know the reasons why but I always keep coming back to you. Perhaps, your forgiving nature could be the reason. For once I thought I had forever said goodbye to you on that fateful December afternoon but how totally wrong I was. I could stay away from you for just a year. That was the darkest hours of my life. Honestly, it was also the longest year of my life.

I kept thinking of you. Seeing you from my windows at Changzamtog was way too much of a pain to bear. I was on my own for the first time without you. 
For the thousandth time, I wanted to see you and embrace you tightly in my arms.

From my windows in Changzamtog, I used to look towards you at the far end of the mountains

Though you were too far from my office, I loved to drive the express highway just to be with you. The thought of being with you brought a beautiful smile to me while I was returning home to you from work. 

The chaotic and busy construction you were undergoing distressed me at times when the rain used to last for days. Yet the thought of “this too shall pass” brought me smiles and cheered me up. When at times, the weather was gloomy and cruel your soft streetlights in the winding road absorbed and comforted me and gave me the strength to look forward to a new day in life. You’re truly wonderful. 

The incessant construction of concrete buildings made you tired and ugly. It made the roads and footpaths too messy and once your beautiful appearance was marred completely. Overnight you grew a hundred years old and became sick and haggard. It saddened me deeply to see you in this condition. I waited patiently for this phase of yours to pass but it never happened. It was a far cry. 

Frankly, I loathed you.

My eyes wandered and I was smitten by Changzamtog, the attractive place on the block. It was the most accessible place from every nook and corner of the city. Lured by it, I forgot to give a second thought about you and was swayed into its bosom only to be betrayed. Alas! I had the worst time at my new place when troubled with severe shortage of water facility.

The mother of life itself-water! When it was deprived what’s there to remain? I was shattered. I felt cheated. My time in this new place became a nightmare. I could no longer look at it like I used to before. With no options available, I lived there for another year, struggling harder in life than ever before. 

I tried to search for you in Babesa, Taba, Motithang, Kawajangsa…yet none of it could replace you. You’re that extraordinary to me. I missed you way too much. The pain was nearly impossible to bear. I was not ready to let you go. 

Another December went by. I thought I could no longer bear the pain; I finally mustered up my courage and decided that no matter what, no matter what the world say, I’m going to be that knight in shining armor. Thus, like a gladiator, I galloped down towards you and found you again with your arms wide open. 

Oh what I did in my previous life to have been forgiven easily by you, I thought.

I had abandoned you and I’m extremely sorry. The welling tears in your eyes and your bosom open as wide as the vast ocean was enough to let me know that no matter what you’re always there for me. I’m here now and will stay forever…

Your’s truly,

Rekha 

You can find my soft spot for Olakha here.

 

    

How to create a blog button

Day Three on Blogtember challenge-Pass on some useful advice or information you learned and always remembered.

After scouring the internet for a easy tutorial on how to create a blog button, I finally landed in this simple and quick tutorial. Honestly, I  spent my entire weekends last week just to create this button. That super slow person at IT thing I'm, this html code freaks me out. I tried 101 tutorials and finally this helped me. For today's challenge I thought I'll pass on this useful information and link that I've learned.

I've noticed that most of the bloggers here in Bhutan do not have a blog button, in fact I've not come across any one so far. Nor did I have one before this tutorial. So sensing its need I thought today's post may be helpful to those of us who would like to share and link blogs.

Now why a blog button? A blog button represents you. It enables readers to navigate to your site by just clicking it. Visual links are more likely to be clicked than the text links and its a great way to gain readers, followers and to advertise yourself. 

Of all the tutorials on the web, this simple tutorial just worked  perfectly for me. This may work for you as well. Try this and if it doesn't work for you, you can search the web for more tutorials or leave me questions in the comments below.

While you are here, why don't you grab my button and let me know when you are done so that we can share and link with each other.  

                             <div align="center">
<a href="http://irelatetothat.blogspot.com" title="i Relate To That"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAL703-rBvpZwIC0HcTIwzfMnauwCu3Fyo3AnagTOpK0W1Fv5Ihz8xXj8pfc_P_svQ2ISrLm8fOQQ1KtnlQcL507HplZi0ahCao-XgknQe3_epoOHFEiqFixHN0bLvkSsZf265S-IogoCS/s320/irelatetothat_blogbutton.jpg" alt="i Relate To That" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Three Months

Today's prompt in the blogtember challenge is 'If you could take three months off from your current life and do anything in the world, what would you do?'

Three months at my disposal and what would I do? Wow, a tough question. 101 things rummages my brain but as always I need to prioritize. So it would be definitely the three things I would always love to do.

1. Travel and explore the world, to learn. I've this little wanderlust in me which I want to quench and want to leave my heart in so many places around the world. This picture sums up everything for me.

 

Image via 

2. Volunteer for the Red Cross so that I can contribute something to the world.

                                                            Image via

3. And finally go on a writing retreat. The thought of waking up every day just to read and write warms my heart. My ideal writing retreat would be something like this, all inspiration around me.

                                                                    Image via

What would you do if you have three months off to yourself?

A Mountain Girl’s Story - where I come from

Another blogging challenge from Jenni from Story of My Life. If you have been keeping closely with me I participated in her Blog Every day in May challenge. She has  come up with another amazing Blogtember challenge to keep our toes on blogging. Blogtember, isnt it nice a word? To know more about the challenge, click on the blogtember button and yea don't forget to join us.

Sadly, I couldn't make it to its end in May Blogging Challenge. But I'm geared for this challenge this September. Bonus point: If you dread blogging on weekends, Jenni has been kind enough to let us have the weekends off to ourselves. With September seeing a lot of local holidays on weekends, you can stay away from blogging and come up with awesome posts on weekdays. Win-win. :)

The first prompt in this challenge asks you to describe where or what you come from. The people, the places, and/or the factors that make up who you are.

Here’s another opportunity to let my readers know more about me in this challenge.  Whenever, I’m out of the country, people assume me for a Chinese because of my eyes, which is relatively small. When I say I’m from Bhutan, it’s like I’m trying to explain about a drop of water in the ocean. 

 

People don’t know where Bhutan is; they think it’s in northeast India. And I can’t blame them. It’s the isolation policy Bhutan opted until the 1960s. Can you believe television and internet was introduced in the country only in 1999? I couldn't express my delight when we had our first television set at home. It was a revelation of a whole new world inside a tiny box. Life was perfectly okay then. Ignorance is bliss. Now that we have internet and television, I can’t live a day without opening Facebook. 

Image Source: Google search. This is the best map I could manage

With 38,394 km² area and approximately 7 lakhs population, Bhutan became the youngest democracy in 2008. Like in any Asian country, rice is our main staple of diet with plenty of potatoes, chillies and cheese. Normally we take rice for the entire three meals and chilli is not a spice to us, but curry.

 

I’m a small town girl; I’ve lived my entire life in Wangdue, central western Bhutan. Though I moved to Bumthang for the major part of my schooling and later to Trashigang, my heart belongs to Wangdue. 

Soon after I hit my teenage years, I was sent to a boarding school (Day school was not there in my locality those days) and boarding school was the only option to my parents. 

As a young teen away from home, I had my fair share of bullying at school, in the dormitory and among friends. 
I searched for solace and found it in the depths of the books. I used to read and read and I was basically living the life of the characters in the book. Poverty, loneliness, depression, happiness and laughter in the book used to have an impact on me. However, that had helped me to be fiercely independent and shape me into who I’m now and I’m grateful for that. 

People mistake me for a Sharchop (Easterner) given my looks but I’m a Lhotshampa (southerner). I don’t know if I've termed it correctly (Corrections required here please). Originally I’m from Sarpang, southern part of Bhutan but I've never been a resident there, so when people ask me about the location of my village I find it difficult to give them directions. I don’t know my village folks much. And I’m not proud of it. 

And my name, I’m accidentally named after the popular Bollyhood actor Rekha. It’s not that my parents were fond of her. My uncle, dad’s brother had gone to the village civil registration to register my name soon after my birth and he couldn’t remember my name since he couldn’t read or write. And he told the registration officials that my name was something that sounded like “Re” and guess what, those people assumed and named me Rekha. 
Since everyone in Bhutan know the bollyhood actor Rekha, I used to be the subject of fun in the class because of my name. People have never told me, “You have a nice name there,” because everyone has heard the name before. Some physics teacher in the class used to tease me with the bollyhood actor Dharmendra/Amitabh Bachaan. Again another series of bullying used to continue because of my name while I would turn beetroot you see, and at the back of my mind I didn’t know whom to get annoyed at, my dad or my uncle.

I’m sure many of your names must have been altered by the civil registration folks. And this happens in Bhutan only.
  

After college, I became a Thimphu resident for the past 5 years. I struggled to get through the Civil Service Examination and landed in a job and now I look forward to what life has to offer, unsure of it at times. But I like it here and this is where I come from. 

Tell us more about yourself, where you come from, the story behind your amusing name if you have one like me or join us in this blogtember challenge.