Homestay

We were brought up with the notion that 'home' is a word for the family in a house.

My name is Nuryn and his, Aaus. I bumped into him as a habit when I returned to Bhutan for the second time. Each time, each place, a new name. This time I was on my own. A little more edgy, a little more relaxed. My return tickets were undone the moment I courageously stepped in the Paro-Chu. I wished to travel further than Bumthang this time. So I selected Lhuntse and Yangtse. And called upon the old driver, Jacob.

But, by the time I was in Bumthang, I was in love, again. With the quaintness of the place, in which I put up. Wooden floors, the sound of nature seeping through. Three days, and I met Aaus. A very non-chubby young boy, with sad eyes and a happy-nature, keeping the evening cash at one of the local bars. Relatively rich and suitably sensitive -- expressed very well in his combined careful and careless nature, respectively. The only thing I did not particularly like about him was his name. And there was no way I could shorten it into something different. 

We hit it over being the only customer who asked for pegs of single malt. We hit it over irregular wins at the casino. We hit it over coffee after regular losses.

He helped me hire a car for my stay there, and get into a home stay. It was a nice place of warmth and adventure. It was off the museum and marketplace, in one of the roadways beside the river. It was one of those rooms that invited a stay into being longer than what it was initially intended to be. It was a room that required solitude, and enjoyed selective company.

It was a room with its own wants. Reflective and easy-going. Like the stories that yielded unto my mind and the love that got made on the soft bed. It was a room that turned into a home in the six weeks that I was there. And in the six million memories I selfishly collected. Of the walls that delicately held my make-to-do posters of Richard Gere and Roger Federer and one tattered Life is Beautiful. Of the window that opened to sights of the mountains longing to meet the river, and the longing for Aaus over the day's end.

Did anyone care for the home that I returned with in my heart? No.

They got busy with the death of one Aaus on one of the morning's. Overdose, they claimed. Yes.

I stayed on without Aaus. The homestay no longer the Nooraaus that he referred to it as. With coffee stains, with suspended stories. I returned. With coffee and death stains, and suspended stories left incomplete forever.