iamDrukpa

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Happy Birthday!


Dear Mipham,
Jesus! Time does fly is an expression adults (SO CALLED) often use to illustrate the bewilderment of life and its assorted vicissitudes….I was thinking the same thing for a pretty long time…and today it seems that much more in context and in its urgency. But I go through this every September the 18th, ‘cos that was the day you chose to make your entrance onto this stage we call life.
Imagine! The inception of the whole conception! During my Dharma Bum days I’d read and had my share of the wisdom memorabilia that is the unsaid pre-requisite to becoming a wholly and fully fledged Dharma Bum. It brought me no Nirvana and neither do I understand what Samsara is (I know it’s a good film made by an Indian with Tibetan/Ladaki actors) but beyond that wrapper? I’ll confess I’m clueless…
But the point was the passage of time and how time just flies even though you don’t see it…although paradoxically we do see it all around us; the changing days and nights to the changing seasons and transformers. For me, you are probably the best example of the passage of time, as I’m to my mother.
There used to be this idea in my head and its till there…on occasion I’d tell you this little fictional anecdote about how you, among a billion other probable Miphams, managed to out-fox and out-swim them all to get to where you now stand today – a lovely boy who’ll soon be a teen, do the school and the college and find your own warm spot on god’s beautiful earth.
“The boy is the father of man” is another expression that I find absolutely confounding! But its life’s ways and means of taunting and teasing us I guess…irony being its punchiest sense of humor!
I’m sitting in my office…haven’t had a bite and did a couple of flashes of whisky last night…you see, it was the first day of Thimphu Tsechu (those colorful festivals held in honor of the Guru’s teachings and to further the fruition of the practice of the Dharma practitioners). It was also Vishwa Karma Puja, another festival held in honor of one of the Hindu Gods. I got up this morning knowing you were still asleep (Bhutan is +5hrs ahead). The devotees of the Hindu Gods today take to the streams and rivers to immerse the idol, concluding the worship and the ceremony…and as they go about the immersion procedure, they get into big open trucks holding the idols and singing in the lord’s glory … It was almost a chant of “Happy Birthday to you Mipham” to my ears….
The tsechu goes on for another three days…today’s day two and the dances of the Dharma are in full swing. People dress in their best and still I associate that with your birthday; a celebration of sorts…and to any other person that shares your birthday today, this day of joyous contemplation and rejuvenation.
Birthdays were not a big deal with me and my generation…but I can see and sense rebirth and reincarnation, and perhaps that’s what birthdays actually do or should do…
Look at me! IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY and I’m already reincarnating into a lovable-loathsome-philosopher-dad and that’s because you have made me remember many things I’d forgotten…
But there’s one thing I’ll never forget, and that’s you making your entrance on this day, the 18th of September and as long as I’m alive, you’ll have given me so much just because you are here…and I pray that may every birthday bring you closer to a positive avatar, pausing and rejoicing and reincarnating unto higher realms of consciousness so that it looks and feels like the whole world is celebrating with you…may gods bless you and keep you…
all my love…