It was my first winter away from home. At my age the distance from my
family still inflicts a deep sense of loneliness in me; the bleariness
of the winter didn’t help matter. The initial frenzy with snow long
gone could cheer me no longer. Everyone once in a while misses home.
My father without my asking him used to recount the vague memories of
his home. Otherwise he is a very reticent man. Your first home is
nothing like any other home. When you talk about it your emotions take
siege and you are left scraping the ground for bits and pieces of
memories till your finger nails bleed.

I was in the back seat of a car my friend was driving; we were
visiting a friend of ours. He was on his Bluetooth the whole time
talking to his girl friend. I was happy it was not snowing because the
other day I read about the significant rise in fatal road wrecks due
to skidding vehicles on the highway during this time of the year. I
tried not to think about the vehicles whooshing past us. It made me
nervous as hell. The insignificance and inconspicuousness of being
counted as a mere number in the ever so growing road fatalities scared
me. My friend on the phone seemed to care less his hands coming off
the steering wheel time and again as he drummed on it to the tune of a
hip hop song. I tried looking beyond the lane to ease my discomfort
something I used to do on road trips back home. Such a treat to the
eyes and the mind the high mountains and the soaring birds among the
clouds or the canopy of thick trees underneath. But here it adds to
your worries; the stark landscape with few trees to speak of real
vegetation was depressing. I could never so much as catch a wink
worried like that but surprisingly I fell asleep. May be I was tired.
I opened my eyes to see the car being pulled over into a drive
through, my friend runs on Dunkin Donuts. We both got ourselves hot
coffee.

‘How long have we been driving?’ I asked him sipping very carefully
from the Styrofoam cup which read Caution: Hot and making sure I had a
firm grip on the holder.

‘Oh, trust me dude. We are not lost.’ His reply, loud and clear
clearly exuded confidence, and he sounded so different from the person
I knew back then in school.

‘No, No. I didn’t mean that. I am sure you know your way around here.
I was just asking.’

‘It’s ok dude.’ He replied. His every sentence seemed to be showered with dude.

This is the town. Now we just need to find the house. He said that
half an hour ago and we were still looking for the house. It was right
here, it was right there, he kept saying, and when it was not, he
would come up with the excuse that small towns here change like that
followed concomitantly with the snap of his fingers. Finally on an
intersection, as we made a left turn we could see few blocks away a
porch with a short string of prayer flags fluttering on its ledge. We
knew it had to be that. The light blue paint on the house was peeling
off. A ladder had been propped against the side of the house. As I
made my way up, the front porch steps made a creaking noise. The metal
mesh screen to the front door had a big gap as well.

I decided to knock on the door while my friend was finding a spot to
park his car. I was excited because this was the first time I was
meeting a family here. Since I came here, it has always been someone’s
apartment, a shack to sleep under nothing more than that; if you take
the roof off, sky would bear witness to the emptiness within. On the
third knock, a man opened the door, looked at me and said in pidgin
Inji his arms flinging out toward me, ‘Tashi not here. He went away.
Go.’ I was taken aback by the sudden hostility. I stood there still
which seemed to infuriate him more. ‘I will call police. Go.’ Now he
started shoving me, a woman had appeared by then her arms wrapped
around his waist pulling him back which was when my friend came
rushing from the street.

‘Pala! Pala! He is with me. He is Tibetan.’

‘Ah…’ and he took few steps back surprised to see in my friend a
familiar face and lined up with the woman.

‘Are you okay?’ The woman asked me.

‘Oh! Don’t worry. He is a tough guy.’ My friend blurted out.

‘Let’s go in. Don’t make the boys stand outside Tenzinla. Come in
boys.’ The woman tried to put on a cheerful tone.

The inside of the house was in disarray. It was strewn with all sorts
of toys which we had to trudge delicately to get to the sofa. A small
girl who was playing with the toys as we entered scurried along and
stood coyly besides a young girl who sat hunched on the carpeted
floor. They were watching a troupe of dancers thrusting their
pelvises to the tune of a Hindi song on the television. I thought they
must be quite well off to have foreign channels on the cable. The man
sat opposite us. The woman disappeared to the inside of the house and
came back with two empty cups. The man poured us tea from a thermos
flask. He just sat there stone faced while we waited for our friend to
come down from his room. The young girl was told to call her brother
down.

‘Pala every time I go back from here, I miss the Hindi songs.’ And
then Tashi started crooning few lines from a recent Hindi song.

He was at ease though his remarks went unacknowledged to whom it was
intended. I was still trying to figure out what just happened outside.
No explanation was forthcoming. The man clearly looked like he was not
happy to see us there. Not even once had he so much as smiled at us.
And now to make matter worse my friend was testing his nerves by being
rude. Then strangely enough the man looked at me and said, ‘You know
why I tolerate your friend. You know why?’ I shook my head. ‘He
reminds me of the bygone days. Back then during the winter holidays,
he would come to our house and while waiting for my son, he would talk
the same way.’ He went back to watching the television. I knew then
having Hindi channel was not a luxury for him. It was his time
traveling machine.

When Tashi came down, it looked like he just came out of a slumber,
his hair was disheveled and he kept rubbing his eyes. He could not
place me properly as his friend from school. He took us to his room.
After us he had grabbed a sushi lunchbox from the kitchen.He noisily
chewed on the sushi while Tenzin described him what just happened with
me downstairs. ‘That’s so funny dude’. He said and got back to his
sushi. He looked at me and asked, ‘Were you scared dude?’ His eyes
were red. I knew he was not sleeping but was smoking weed. The way he
was gulping down the sushi meant he was hungrier than ever which is
what it does. The room reeked of that smell I have grown accustomed to
without ever having taken a puff. On a desk by his computer there was
a smoldering smoking pipe beside which Bob Marley’s bust with his Afro
hairdo protruded from the ash tray.

Then it seemed it suddenly struck to him that some guy never showed up
today at his place. ‘This guy was supposed to come deliver me
something. He never showed up. Do you think my father took care of
him? The other day he came to my house and you know what he does. He
uses the f’king front door, how stupid is that? Tell me.’ ‘Shit man.
What am I supposed to do tomorrow? I’m running low on this shit. We
need to bust a move.’ ‘Go where?’ Tenzing asked him. ‘Buy some weed.
Come along.’ That explained what just happened downstairs.

I never expected things to go this way. I thought I would catch up
with my old friend, get to see a real family but my friend doesn’t
recognize me and now we are going to the street to buy some weed. I
should have known better. What was I thinking agreeing to meet this
guy? Tenzing looked calm. He played along because he knew the guy
won’t take no for an answer. Moreover for him this was where he came
to break the mundaneness of his otherwise structured life. I for one
was content. In the school, we got bullied by the seniors for a long
time and no one stood up against them but the bullying stopped one day
when Tsewang ended up in a fist fight with one of the seniors which he
won when he punched the other guy on the nose. That day onwards, we
had a triad going like some gang. That way we ended up being close
though we could never say no to him. I would have liked few words with
him alone to calm down my nerves. But I could not.

I was sitting right next to Mr. Norbu on small round dinner table on
the left and on the right around him, his wife and daughter ate in
silence. The atmosphere was somber, the downcast eyes, every one
trying to evade each other, the slight screech of the chair as the
daughter shifted trying to reach for the ladle on the pot with lentils
set in the middle of the table or the scraping of the plates the only
sound. A clock pegged to the wall had the time at nine underneath
which there was a mural hanging lopsided to the left. I was intrigued
by the symbols on the mural, but dared not make it a leeway into a
conversation because
I followed him into a room which had a wooden altar, silver bowls
propped up against each other in two rows which would be filled with
water first thing in the morning as offering to the god. A pantheon of
gods as statues and photos in different poses, some seated comfortably
on a pedestal calmness emanating from their faces while others
awkwardly standing holding tridents and spears were in a glass display
on the altar. The incense had a very placating smell; I could tell
that it was burning on the far right corner of the altar from the
coils of smoke spiraling upward into nothingness. The incense holder
was hidden from my view but I imagined it to be like the one we had
back home, a miniature bronze elephant with a hole on its back where
you stick the incense stick. He stood there while I worked on the
laptop in front of me mounted on a shoe box. It didn’t take me long,
it was a minor glitch. As soon as the voice of a woman cracked from
the laptop, he crouched beside me and we both looked at the newsreader
wearing a cream colored lapel coat mediating a panel discussion.

‘Thank you! Thank you so much!

‘No problem.’

‘That was quick. You are good with computers. Like my younger son. I
thought it would be a while before I get that thing fixed. My son
threw such a tantrum to get me to buy this.’

‘Where is your younger son?’

The reply was slow in coming. His slouchy back, head craned towards
the screen. The voice of the female newsreader went a notch higher
which seemed like he did it to screen the noise from my side. A voice
droned about the upcoming election the specifics of which I was at
loss to understand, the dialect was from a different region. The
debate seemed to be coming to an end; she annoyingly puts the caller
to an abrupt end and asked the weather beaten bespectacled person for
a quick response in lieu of time constraint. Mr. Tenzin started to get
on his feet and I extended my hand. I followed him quietly out of the
house onto the porch. The orange hue off the street lamp, the haziness
around it meant the porch loomed in darkness. The cold wind would
sweep across threatening to snap the prayer flag fluttering furiously.
I thought maybe he was trying to numb out the pain like when as a
child I used to sneak outside in the evening which was invariably when
toothache would set in and suck in cold air, a whistling sound in my
mouth to ease the pain or my mother pressing a lump of frozen meat on
the bump on my brother’s head.

‘You want to know about my son,’ he said flicking the cigarette butt
on to the street; an ember flew off in an arc. He paused for a moment.
‘He is in a juvenile detention centre. He stabbed someone. The friend
he went to help gave him in to the police. He deserves it.’ I thought
about few comforting words over in my head to say but I continued
listening.

‘I worked very hard, did all sorts of menial jobs. All the donkey
work. Why? So that my children don’t go through the same fate as me. I
came here hoping that things would change. Everything came tumbling
down when my children started losing their ways. I thought may be my
youngest son would go to school, do well. It wasn’t like he showed no
promise. He was good with computers. The year he came I bought him the
laptop you just repaired. He was the one who helped me listen to the
news on it. I have never been so happy since I brought my family here.
I even dreamt of him growing up to be like those Indians in New York
who sit all day in front of the computers while we tend to the wives,
their kids and the pets. What a dream! Now I am done running. I’ve
been running my whole life. I am tired.’

I’ve been running. Mr. Tenzing was running. My grandparents ran. My
parents ran. All of us did in a way. Some circumstantial, some
instinctive, some rash and brazen but very few well planned and
thoughtful like a distance runner pacing himself meticulously after
months of training expecting a horde of people on the other side of
the finish line, journalists with their cameras ready to capture you
crossing a ribbon and some with bouquet of flowers. The great thing is
it is such well thought out that they have learned to endure the
excruciating pain as if it never existed in the first place and so it
never was a run but a jog for them. The thumping sound off the wall as
I hurled the spineless book in a fit of rage, disgusted at the coffee
smudge on my study desk I tried scraping them off, fumed at how
superstitious I was turning out to be that it took complete precedence
over my faith, my faith had come down like a building out of a deck of
cards.

The way he said I'm done running it seemed he would not just want to hang his boots but also let go of his legs, begging mercilessly to have them removed for him.

I've done running. I've been running all my life. I'm tired. He said them in such an exasperation, a mixture of anger imminent from the spit forming at the corner of his lips and despondence the way his shoulders drooped after wards. I could not help think about my grandfather who had seen enough on his first run, the things to come, the pangs of life in exile and decided not to come down from the mountains where the first settlement was. He hung his boots long time back. Now Mr. Tenzing after so many years. In a way my grandfather was a visionary, he did not want to run his luck too far, and he sense that there would be more displacements and more running. Growing up I would overhear my dad talking to my mom about his old man who would not budge from his ramshackle home. There would be a long wait before each winter when up from the north my grandfather would send us something inside a rag its mouth stitched with needle and thread. Our Santa Claus. But that was something my brother came up with years later when we knew what it had inside. My brother was being crudely funny. Inside would be a letter with roasted barley from his backyard mill in another bag its mouth tied with a string and a bag of dried cheese he had to watch over while being sun dried because the birds could sweep them away. We try to slaver the dried cheese rolling our tongue around it, resisting a bite, white bits slouching off and we would laugh at each other when some stick to the side of our mouth. I cannot make it down this time, I have to watch over the house. May be next time. A smeary blue scrawled on a paper. He never came down. As years went by with his age catching up with him and in solitude, he was heard by someone to have said that he could not be in his seventies and that he is en route back home and taking a rest. He never reached home.

I once happened to be in a shop where an old man with stubbly chin had a small boy hoisted from his waist, his legs dangling, fingers pointing at every jar of sweets displayed on top of the counter shouting out I want this I want that. The old man replied which seemed more to the man behind the counter who by now looked irritated because the boy's legs were banging against the glass counter,'You can get all of them. Your mother pays for them.'

The way he said I'm done running it seemed he would not just want to hang his boots but also let go of his legs, begging mercilessly to have them removed for him.

I've done running. I've been running all my life. I'm tired. He said them in such an exasperation, a mixture of anger imminent from the spit forming at the corner of his lips and despondence the way his shoulders drooped after wards. I could not help think about my grandfather who had seen enough on his first run, the things to come, the pangs of life in exile and decided not to come down from the mountains where the first settlement was. He hung his boots long time back. Now Mr. Tenzing after so many years. In a way my grandfather was a visionary, he did not want to run his luck too far, and he sense that there would be more displacements and more running. Growing up I would overhear my dad talking to my mom about his old man who would not budge from his ramshackle home. There would be a long wait before each winter when up from the north my grandfather would send us something inside a rag its mouth stitched with needle and thread. Our Santa Claus. But that was something my brother came up with years later when we knew what it had inside. My brother was being crudely funny. Inside would be a letter with roasted barley from his backyard mill in another bag its mouth tied with a string and a bag of dried cheese he had to watch over while being sun dried because the birds could sweep them away. We try to slaver the dried cheese rolling our tongue around it, resisting a bite, white bits slouching off and we would laugh at each other when some stick to the side of our mouth. I cannot make it down this time, I have to watch over the house. May be next time. A smeary blue scrawled on a paper. He never came down. As years went by with his age catching up with him and in solitude, he was heard by someone to have said that he could not be in his seventies and that he is en route back home and taking a rest. He never reached home.

I once happened to be in a shop where an old man with stubbly chin had a small boy hoisted from his waist, his legs dangling, fingers pointing at every jar of sweets displayed on top of the counter shouting out I want this I want that. The old man replied which seemed more to the man behind the counter who by now looked irritated because the boy's legs were banging against the glass counter,'You can get all of them. Your mother pays for them.'