About

An encore, if you will, Mr. opposition

The curtains are drawn. The audience may have paid for the show but who gives a damn anymore. A new-found arrogance has replaced the back-breaking vote-ensuring humility. There’s a mauling going on behind the scene. At the receiving end is one person – the right honorable Tshering Tobgay. He’s getting a taste of what it means to be the opposition leader supported by a single ally. All is, however, not lost. Just as blood can be thicker than water, a rock is obviously harder than flesh. And that for you is Tshering Tobgay. He will be bloodied all right but he’ll come through. And then he will have something more to say, if you will. He is not aka massive for nothing.

That is the opposition, small but massive nonetheless.

Now me and Tshering, we go back a long way. I have his resume, an incredibly long one at that but I’m not quite the resume guy. I just do what I have to do, and I do it my way. My grandfather, Zamdar Chencho Dorji ( those days zamdar did not mean a sweeper) was the non-accredited  founder of the Bhutanese army. It was under his watch that Tshering’s father pursued and captured the assassin of Lyonchen Palden Dorji. That is history, the untold version of it. Anyway, we were fated to meet up sometime or the other. It happened sooner than later, for good or bad. We were the children of an overbearing paternal monarchy who insisted upon us going to school.

Healthland Cottage

We met up at Dr. Grahams Homes as rough and tough kids who had to manage whatsoever. These days kids don’t go away from their parents that early and they don’t play with tops and marbles or climb trees either. We were enlisted in the same cottage. A concentration camp called Heathland Cottage. Once our parents had shaken us off, we had no choice but to bond. As Bhutanese we can be tribal when circumstances scream for it. Tshering, at the time, was a miniature version of what he is today. The run-up to the elections and the mandate to oppose seems to have taken its toll. He was all sinewy once more.

Growing up wasn’t easy, it never was for the ‘grubby chaps’ of homes. When it came to food, it was one for one and nothing for all. We had to keep our wits razor sharp at all times. Tshering was a little gawky and a tad shy in the beginning. Life was easier for me as I had an elder brother while he had to lookout for a younger one. Now two mouths to feed in a famine-stricken cottage of 33 led many to the miracle world of the holy bible. We started out in Class 2 and were already making a dint by the next year. Seeking solace in books instead of sports and the like, we were the joint winners of the Class 3 essay competition. He was a good writer then but decided to step out into the real world somewhere along the way. He went from the abstract into academia – one he relentlessly pursued all the way to University of Pittsburgh and Harvard. I was able to hold my own until about class 6 before going astray. Tshering was evolving. He was now the up-front speaker in various school forums and already vying for leadership opportunities.

To the Peak of Learning

By our final years in the cottage, he had become an exemplary student with good scores every year. I vividly remember one incident, perhaps Tshering’s final foray into mischief. Who was the perpetrator and who the accomplice, I don’t quite remember but I was a partner-in-crime.  The cottage pantry was at the back of the building with a wire-mesh window. Concrete shelves ran horizontally inside the window. The day’s pot of milk would be kept on one shelf without a lid. Somehow, we’d lifted a plastic pipe from the chemistry lab. We’d also punched a hole in the mesh and using the pipe, have our fill of the milk. Of course, to escape detection, we’d send back water through the pipe. This went on for about two weeks until a born-again Christian reported us. We sure did get the spanking of our lives. We moved on then, to hostel and pretty much on our own paths. Tshering was by then on a set course. He wrapped up school as a prefect and with flying colors too.  Me, that’s another story.

With the Pitt Panther

We were thrown together again on that same bloody course of education. This time it was home-brewed as in Sherubtse, Kanglung. It had by then become a cause for him and a curse for me. He was the man acquiring a reputation as a go-getter. Now that can get a little uncomfortable as far as popularity goes, but then again how does one go and get something and look good at the same time. Leave that to the people who are too busy looking good. Out of Kanglung and Tshering was already abroad studying. He used all the right connections to get what he wanted. After Pittsburg , I remember him vaguely in the Education Ministry, Youth and Zorig. What was very clear was that he was a hundred percent into whatever he was doing. It was heart and soul. His reputation as a go-getter had also thickened over the years, and it eventually translated into his wanting to get into politics. All I could say was go for it man, that’s what you’re cut out for. Little did I know exactly what he was getting into. Well, he’s there anyway. What is most noticeable is that his interaction with people four or five days walk away, in the middle of nowhere, has changed him profoundly.

Today, he’s a listening man, even if it is the government shouting the kind of profanity that I couldn’t be bothered with. It’s hard enough trying to outlive a lifetime of saturated governance. Someone is at least making a stand. That for you is the opposition.

Tosh WangD