The Woman & Her Expectations

It is my routine job to visit the temple (Wat in Thai) nearby and wander around with the people whom I am known and familiar with. One day, I was accompanied by my host to the inner chapel where the monks giving teaching to small kids on Buddha Dharma by chanting prayers and learning the values. Watching the process and activities inside the temple where some kids started feeling sleepy from the begging of class and their eyes peeping through the windows outside and just mouth murmuring the prayers for sake of doing. I understood that these kids could concentrate for few minutes in their prayers and listening to the lectures given by the revered monk as generation builder of Thailand.

Observing their behaviors, I could conclude that these kids felt it was just another burden on their free time amusement could have happened in the children park. These kids really did not enjoy praying but doing it for the sake of doing to fulfill the wishes of monks and parents.  On top of that praying, kids were asked to bow down on the ground paying respect to the Buddha and its values where some of them could face difficulty in performing it. How pity was seeing these kids tamed at so young age with bombardment of culture and traditions which they may not carry further after their adulthood. Will all these kids live with these values forever or one day they throw out  into trash bin and those efforts are gone into drain?

To me, those kids were like an "caged birds" in a chapel who wishes to flay away in the distant land and sing a beautiful song of freedom and amusement at such tender age. Recollecting my childhood days wandering with cattle in the deep forest listening the musical flow of nightingales and watching the best part of Nature and rivers whole day playing around. The musical instrument known as the flute was my best friend which I could play with joy in my heart and fill the forests with such charming notes. Think of those days that I enjoyed the extreme freedom of childhood and these kids are already burden with their studies and another cultural session given by the monks on Sunday. Their freedom is already lost at such tender age. The motivating factor for kids are like free coffee and some snacks to pick up from the balcony during the course and start munching to satiate their hunger and thirst provided by the monks and join the prayer holding the prayer books.

Indeed, I was the only foreigner, who visited these kids session on weekend holiday and observe their behaviors carefully.  To keep myself engaged, they provided me some books on "How to Talk So Kids Can Learn" written by Lisa Nyberg & Rosalyn Anstine Templeton in English version which I enjoyed reading through and enlightened me with some basic tips to guide our kids at home. It provides us the psychological handling of our kids by teacher and parents so that they can become the best nation builders instead of robbers and murders at the adulthood. I could recommend other readers can brush through this book. It certainly can give you very fine tactics to handle the problematic kids in the school and at home.

Seeping a cup of hot coffee at balcony with my kind host. An old woman came nearby us and my host had good conversation with her in Thai language. She finally could translate their talks to me in this way. "This Thai old woman with an specks dangling on her nose wishes to have one Bhutanese boy friend in Thailand". It was really shock to hear such wishes from an old lady who is already down the line. She could be around sixty plus by now.  It seems she is single for whole life or could be divorced long years back. It made me shut up for while and gave myself second thought to answer her needs at current moment. After analyzing the situation in my mind, I said to the old lady in this way. " At my apartment V.M Mansion, there are very few Bhutanese men living and I may not find one for you. Therefore, I offer you an option that I can be your Bhutanese boy friend for six months . Are you willing to accept my offer. There was great laughter filled the air which came from my Thai host and the Old lady could not say anything to my offer. Her face turn into red and felt so ashamed and left the scene immediately.

This incident made me to think, why Thai women like Bhutanese men the most? Does Bhutanese men have any special qualities and quantities that they can measure it as compared to other men.  I have many hypotheses in my mind for these but I want to leave it for the audiences to find themselves in course of time.


Mindu Wangdi