OTHER SIDE OF ME

I moved back to Thimphu in the early days of winter 2025. That first morning, I joined my mother on the balcony, the sun already warming our faces. We sat together, sipping black tea, and watched the landscape unfold before us. The houses seemed to have multiplied, the hillsides reshaped—this place had undergone a complete metamorphosis since I'd left in 2011 for college and then for my post in one of the most remote districts. An opportunity for which I will always be grateful. For eight years, I'd been a stranger to this kind of stillness. I had been alone, moving from one place to the next, becoming so consumed by work that I neglected both my health and my family. This moment with my mother, a quiet conversation about topics we held dear, was the first time we'd truly connected since my graduation. As we talked, an indescribable peace settled over me. It felt like a gentle balm, healing the wounds from a breakdown I'd suffered just months before. In that quiet mome...

As a child growing up in the western part of the country, to be very specific Thimphu Dechencholing, my parents never felt the need to teach us local dialect. Both inside the home and outside, the only language we used for conversation was Dzongkhag, our national language.   However, in the school emphasis was given more in speaking in English and there was a time when we were threatened to impose with penalty if we talk in Dzongkha.   We would of course try to speak in English but use to land up giggling or laughing when we converse in English.   Of course, the scenario has completely changed after two and half decades since I left high school. After high school I went to undertake my undergraduate course at the College of Science and Technology in Rinchending. There I met lots of friends who studied and lived their entire life in the eastern part of the country. Most of these students communicate in a local dialect known as Sharchop. And that is when I felt the import...

Very often we are made to feel that we have the liberty to choose anything we want in life, that we need to be bold enough to pursue it. Very often whenever we try to make that choice, the chilling fear of the unknown consequences or what the road not taken would lead us to often make us reluctant in making our choice. Weighing in all the pros and the cons, we often land up taking the safest route leaving our dreams and aspirations lurking somewhere in the corner.   And there are times when we give up everything so that we can fulfill everyone’s expectations, to be a good wife, good daughter, good sibling or even a good employee. But is it enough for the self? Does it make you feel happy looking forward to every new day?   Very often what we do is expected from us and very often the effort and the tiredness and juggling everything in between lures us and perhaps the saddest part is the effort often gets unnoticed. So dies the dreams, aspirations and the identity of the self ...

  At that moment when she asked me to step down for someone else, my whole trust and faith just came crushing down. I have never thought even for a second that someone in that position will have the audacity to do such pitiful thing and that too from her, someone that I have looked upon, someone whom I thought of as my mentor, source of inspiration and above all whom I so blindly trusted. I accepted as she desired but it broke me down…pushed me to the dungeon where I found no escape. I literally cried for about three months, hiding in the corner of the office, thinking what I have done so wrong to be treated like that. Stepping down wasn’t the problem, I wouldn’t have cared that much but to have my trust and faith broken by the person I so admired and looked upon shook me to the core. Perhaps I may never learn to trust again or have any faith or expectation from just anyone. I felt sorry for myself for having worked so hard. I wished only if I had not dedicated and committed li...