A moment in time… An excerpt from the 1960s...

As he entered the premises of the Taba home, the six year old came running to him, shouting excitedly and cheerfully. She was overwhelmed to see him. He had traveled the whole day from Dzongchu, their village home in Kabesa, Punakha. She took him by the hand and led him up the stairs into the family kitchen where her mother stood cooking at the stove. The little girl’s excitement to see him was her love for packed lunches. He had brought packed lunch prepared by the grandmothers at Dzongchu. Her mother poured tea for them as they sat on the warm wooden floor. 

She sat next to him, her elbow on his knee. She could not wait for him to open the packed lunch. He served her the rice in a bangchu (bamboo knit plates). He was cutting up the sikam (dried pork) for her into chewable bits when she grabbed a long sikam. She put one end between her teeth and tugged at it with her left hand. The already fatty sikam had been cooked specially in oil for the journey. Before he could stop her, she had stretched the poor oily sikam to its limit that it slipped out of her hand. 

SLAP! 

The end in her left hand had hit her on the eye. She started crying and her crying was met with scolding from her mother for being careless. The next thing that happened is something that carried on till they lived their lives together. He started consoling her and wiped off her tears. He then put his lagey (the hand portion of his gho) over her eye and blew the warm air on the part that had been hurt. It soothed her and she stopped crying. But that thing which was shared in that moment did not stop. The care kept flowing and she was blessed with that warm comfort till the end. 

Never once have I not remembered this account whenever I saw sikam. Never once have I stopped believing in ‘impossible love’. Never once have I not understood warm love. Never once have I thought loving kindness unattainable. I believe in the possibility of the availability of love that is warm and tender and unconditional … like the one this little girl shared with this young man … forever and always…