Buttertea at Sunrise Read Online Free PDF Page A

net, the cheerful voices and reassurance of Pema’s home are quickly replaced by a miserable emptiness. Images of my room at home, the comfort of my bed in the corner below the slanted wood ceiling, and the honking of Canada geese drifting in through the window start circling in my mind. Suddenly, I feel the barren silence of Mongar’s cement walls as acutely as if they were touching me. The candle flickers tenuously while a squad of flies, mosquitoes and who knows what swirls around my head. I blow out the candle and crawl deeper into my sleeping bag. In the darkness, I listen to the mosquitoes’ concert and wonder if the fleas are already marching in.
    I wake up in the middle of the night. A loud alarm is going off right beside my ear. I reach for the flashlight but still see nothing. The threatening, shrill buzzing sound continues, and I clamber from underneath my mosquito net to investigate the state of emergency. Ready to grab my 27
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    passport and my diary, I plan my escape. Then as abruptly as it began, the noise disappears.
    I light a candle and stare at the ceiling. Immediately the black beetle I noticed earlier resumes its mission, throwing itself headlong into the walls. The rain continues to play drums on the roof, and eventually I fade off into a restless sleep.
    The next morning, the rain continues. It is the middle of June, and the monsoon has just begun. I was told to expect it to last for at least three months.
    My quarters smell musty and mouldy, and within a few hours, my belongings feel damp. My hair hangs limply in my face, and my skin itches all over.
    Outside, the noise of the construction site fills the air.
    Most insistent of all is an endless cacophony of hammers.
    It is not a noise one gets used to and ignores. The uneven racket pierces the ears, and sets up a disturbing vibration in the skull, hitting on the most sensitive nerve.
    Now and then, there are loud shouts in Bengali or Hindi.
    I guess they are orders, instructions, or perhaps even a greeting. Then, somewhere in the mist, a generator springs to life, roaring and sputtering as the diesel fuel fills the chambers.
    When the rain eases, I slide a few steps towards the hospital. A huge scar of bare soil gapes to the right of the main building. In its middle, waving metal rods pierce the concrete foundations of two new buildings. Amongst an apparent chaos of heaps of stones, old oil drums and piles of sand sit women, children and old men, hunched on the ground, patiently beating heavy axe-size hammers onto blocks of stone. Clunk, clunk… clunk, clunk… the sound reverberates between sheets of mist. Mechanically, driven by a force astounding for such skinny arms and slender 28
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    shoulders, they turn boulders into rocks, then stones and then pebbles. One huge piece successfully crumbled, the next one is rolled forward and thrashed with the same unremitting stubbornness, until all that is left is a pile of gravel.
    One of the women turns her head and stares at me long and hard. Her simple, orange sari is mud-caked. The loose end is wrapped over her head as if to protect her from the wetness and misery all around. On her arms a few bangles clink together, singing a cheerless tune. Beside her, a boy of maybe twelve years does not bother to look up. He feverishly attacks his rocks; perhaps his speed interrupts the monotony. Feeling sad and guilty for my own idleness, I turn to follow the ‘new’ road leading to the bazaar.
    The muddy lane snakes up and to the left around a hilltop, and having reached its highest point, abruptly ends in the middle of a huge green field – a football field. Maybe a hundred metres ahead and raised up on an embankment five or six