One minute she’s cooking, the next she’ serving the food to some Indian uniformed jawans eating at the table, conversing with them easily in Hindi. She hurries off in between to the sink where she manages to finish off some pending laundry just in time to take the kettle off the fire and make all of us some warm Mustang coffee.
Later, as we say good night and head off to our rooms, I see her eating as she stares into the wood fire absentmindedly, a forlorn expression on her beautiful young face.
Tenzin Metok Bhutia lives with her family in this small hilltop village in Ilam on the eastern Indo-Nepal border, the kind of place that’s missing from most Nepali maps of the country and falls within Indian territories in Indian maps of the area. Tenzin’s mother calls Kalo Pokhari, a “forgotten corner” of the country.
In emergencies such as when someone in the village needs medical support, it is the Indian Seema Surakshya Bal (SSB) that the villagers go to. There is a frustrating absence of the Nepali government in any form – no local administration unit, no development works, thus no proper roads or phone lines, and no security unit.
“I don’t think the government is even aware that there are people living here,” adds Tenzin with a smirk.
She went to a Tibetan school in Darjeeling and thus has a strong command of English, Hindi, Bengali and Tibetan besides Nepali. She also speaks a little Sherpa and Ladakhi. During tourist seasons, locals watch in awe as she converses expertly with tourists. She also manages the
lodge efficiently for her parents – she’s the manager, kitchen crew, housekeeping staff, and even a guide when the need arises.
“Don’t you get tired of doing so much work all day? Don’t you wish you had lesser chores?” I ask her once, naively assuming that no young woman would want to do household chores all day. Her answer is as simple as it is sad. “Around here, we don’t have cinemas, malls or restaurants to go to with friends. Work is all there is. If I didn’t have work to keep me occupied all day, I think I’d get really bored and eventually depressed.”
Even as she says all this, there’s a complete absence of any self-pity in her voice and mannerisms. Instead, there’s the sense of a hardened understanding of her reality, which she has had to take into her stride. Her answers are blunt but a youthful sense of curiosity and hope is evident in her sprightly nature.
“I’ve never been into reading books. But I’ve always loved the outdoors and sports like tennis and basketball,” she confesses. It was this love for the outdoors that made her get involved in small adventure programs in Kalo Pokhari such as hiking. Once she got a taste of this, she got hooked.
She then took part in a mountaineering program and successfully climbed Palung Peak (6000m) in Sikkim. She completed the program with an A and was presented with an opportunity to take advanced classes, including expedition planning besides basic skills. And then she came back home to Kalo Pokhari, Nepali for ‘black pond’. And although she considers herself luckier than other young
girls in the village, in regard to her dreams of mountaineering and higher education, the name of the place is ironically well suited.
The highest Tenzin climbs these days is up a small hillock, from where she can get better connectivity on an Indian SIM card to catch up with her friends in India. There’s a mountaineering club in Kolkata through which there are opportunities to climb some higher peaks in Garhwal in India, she says to me, half dreaming of it before smiling, stopping and scampering off to attend to her duties. For right now, she has a mountain of unwashed dishes to get on top of.
A few days later, I strike up a conversation with Chhewang dai, Tenzin’s father, in a lodge in Jaunbari, another idyllic village in Ilam. He tells me proudly of how bright his daughter is and how it’s an utter waste that she has to spend her days cooking and doing laundry.
“Tenzin and my other children have always performed well in school and have never asked for much. It’s only us, the parents who’ve failed to provide them with the necessary financial support to help pursue their dreams,” he says, his words heavy with regret. When he asks me about what kind of stories I’m going to write about Ilam, I can tell where he’s going with this.
His pride makes him talk in circles for a bit before he finally asks if I can write anything that could maybe help Tenzin get higher education or support her dreams of mountaineering. I say that I’d try and try to reassure him that he’s done his best and that it’ll all work out. But even as I watch him smile and leave the room, I don’t know how exactly it’ll all work out for Tenzin.
I’m left with the memory of asking Tenzin about what she wants in life. She had immediately given me a list – a permanent health post, better roads, at least a few hours of electricity each day, and a larger presence of the state in terms of security, governance, anything. Did she mistake my question as what she wanted for her village or had she pushed her own dreams too far back in her mind? Perhaps it’s been a while since someone’s asked her about what she wants. Her middle name Metok means flower in Tibetan. I leave Ilam hoping and praying that something would come along so this mountain flower would really get to blossom.
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