There was a time when I could not stay an hour without a cigarette. When I think back to those time, I still wonder how I over came that urge and came out clean. I picked up the habit during my initial year in the service. Placed away in the wilderness where I didn’t know even a single soul during my first few weeks lead me to a shop which sold cigarettes (cigarette was freely available in every shop those days) and I tried my first piece a few days after my arrival in the place. A piece of drag led to another and before long I was consuming about 3 packets of wills in a day! Without a female companion, I had nothing to do then to listen to my small portable radio and smoke after the work hours.
I had been home for some months but I am restless. Something is amiss. I know what it is …a root to belong to… I am surrounded by my friends and families yet I feel so alone. My craving for something unknown creates emptiness in my heart that drains me of any will to acknowledge the beauty of the surrounding. I try to seek help for people near and far but nothing fills the void in my heart. I sit quietly trying to harness my thought that travels back to the time I was in university not so far in the past.
A friend called last Saturday evening and asked whether we had a woman’s association. I was bewildered by her question and asked her the reason for the query. Her response was, they had formed a Women’s association in the Dungkhag where she worked and by default every working women became the member whether they liked it or not. Hearing her blurt out information, I couldn’t help chuckling because she said that she had to attend a meeting the following Sunday and by her sound she definitely wasn’t for it.
A friend request on face book is all it takes to make a friend out of a stranger in this digital world. A few years ago such thing was unheard of but now everything is possible.
The gusty wind had been speeding up for the past several days bringing relief to the mounting temperature but the roads looked dusty and the pavement were very dry yearning for a little freshness that comes only with the rain. I silently prayed for the rain since the little flowers blooming in my garden gave dull withered look.
