For the longest time, I called Thimphu home even though I only spent my holidays there. My earliest memory of Thimphu goes back to one evening, when my sister tricked me into carrying her bag of rice through the middle of town. Another more embarrassing memory involves selling pears on the street, for Nu 100 (about USD 1) per kilogram. We looked uncool and rustic, like the people in the villages.
Thimphu felt like a brightly lit street in a big city. It was a place where we could explore, run around and run into glass doors in newly built buildings. I still remember the time I went up to a stranger on the street and asked him if I could interview him. As a writer/artist, that would be my first no.
In the evenings, during rush hour, I liked to sit on a small hill on our compound and watch the cars go by. The hill was our playground, but it was also an imaginary gate. Once you crossed it, you were home, even if you had not entered the flat yet. The hill also served as a meeting point – When we were in trouble, my cousins and I gathered there. On that same hill, my sister told me about my mother’s new husband.
Our family lived in a three-storied building and occupied the first two units. On the first floor was our altar room, always dark with incense lit. Our living room was tiny by today’s standards, but it was accommodating. Below, the space was divided into two rooms. One usually housed an uncle. The larger room belonged to my aunt and her children.
On winter mornings, we woke up in that room and immediately turned on the television. Neither room had a toilet, so we used a separate building outside. That same outdoor space was our playground where we played badminton, cricket, football, and television games. Once, during play, my cousin bruised his chin so badly that he had to be taken to the hospital.
Next to our house was a car showroom owned by a big shot, with a café attached. I never went to that cafe until much later; A part of me felt that we were beneath the people who visited the cafe. Instead, we spent time with the kitchen staff.
Next to the car showroom was a bakery. Its owners owned a large property that stretched behind our house and ran alongside the dealership. We visited them often to collect vegetable waste for our cows in the countryside. In many ways, we felt closer to the bakery than to our immediate neighbors. Across from us stood a five-storied building, a rare sight in those days.
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