Oh weren’t you a special one! His heart must have fluttered and ached at the same time when you were fashioned and woven in your mother’s womb. I do not write this to bring justice. I do not write this to dramatize the idea of you. Too many bygones have become exaggerated legends for the dreamers. This is not my intention. I write this because my heart has been burdened for a long time concerning you. I have felt the burden to help tie the knot around your existence in this world, Mr. Subarna Lama. Your life was not to teach strife but to see the upside down comfort in an already upside down world.

The essence of you was a magnet to a trail of old books, old guitars, a pair of glasses, zandu balm, two pairs of shoes and a few pairs of socks, some with holes, that you refused to replace. Your wife now has a library for those books, your clothes are still with your family and your lonely briefcase is in place as well.

He puts a fragment of His image in all of us; more of a dim replica, imperfect and blemished. This world devoured you. Oh, but you must have made Him laugh. You had this unparalleled humor, this undeniable wit, a brilliant mind and yet so frail and so weak. A certain someone had asked you to write and print out a letter to the doctor regarding a person who they assumed was schizophrenic, stating his symptoms. You clearly didn’t think he was: “1) He’s nervous a lot of times, 2) Constantly paces, 3) talks to himself “…. And finally, “He sometimes brays like a donkey”. You always came with a warning… PROOF READ ANYTHING HE RECOMMENDS. People would often hear a muffled voice coming from your pocket and it would always be your cell phone, your sister’s voice booming from the speaker talking to who she thought was you on the other line.

Still, they talk about you trying to put up an umbrella in your leaking car or the inkling of doubt you had that someone was born in the year of the ‘snail,’ possessing the element of ‘glue’ because, well to put it gently, his work always delayed yours. Your wife would tell me of this, that she had a special place of retreat and prayer called her “Gethsemane” and you dubbed it her “Get-some-money”.

You had asked your son to bring his girlfriend over to meet you but he never did. Finally, you asked him if she had a mustache. At the farm, you told your yodel-fan nephew to stop yodeling because the cows were getting bored and of our first airline, you called it the only airline that gave you a jet lag without flying. Your wife remembers how you got stuck in the airport for four days because the plane couldn’t take off each hopeful morning.

You were one of the first lawyers in Bhutan. Months you spent studying the Ethiopian, the British, the American, Indian and structures analogous to these nations to write the first draft of the kingdom’s constitution. Yes you. The Bankruptcy Act and the Company’s Act were written by you. Intellectual Property was introduced by you. A lot of contributions and introductions to the system were made by you. All your energy and vigor must have seemed inane even though you kept mumbling under your breath that it was irrelevant to whom the credit was given… pshhh. I am quite certain that it hurt you. It hurt you deeply. I do wonder why you never told your own children about all that you had accomplished. Vaguely, from sources other than you, they’d hear about your forefathers settling the South in the early 1800’s.The forefathers who brought in people into the land that was thought uninhabitable, or your maternal great grandfather who first translated the Bible to Nepali or your mother who was the first female member of the National Assembly. Mind you, vaguely. Now your descendants hear of the people your grandfather had urged to be schooled being glorified and honored for some remarkable claims. Claims that would have left the same fathers quite amused. The photographic evidence of epitaphs and records itself would silence them but this would be a fruitless effort. The need from your side never arose and so it shall be.

You instead woke up earlier, practiced your guitar harder, read more and made tawny water a good friend of yours. Your gift didn’t circulate in the right way because of what you chose to ignore and what you chose to see but this, I can never truly be sure of until I am face to face.

Mr.Lama, I do not want to offend you for writing something that you would have completely disapproved of. You might have disapproved of this for the lack of gain you thought there was in trying to shine a light on where the wiring had gone wrong.Not to put you on a pedestal or to praise you, but I must write these things in order that I build my foundation for what I really want to say. If a case must arise, there would be nothing to hide, only to reveal.

Yes, you were devoured by this world.The gift instilled in you, the heart fashioned for you, and the mind woven for you were what made His heart flutter, what made Him smile with a twinkle in His eye. But I’m sure He wept and His heart ached when you turned back to this world to be comforted. We both know that a regrettable fault turns into an impossible wound when we breathe out our sorrows to the hateful man.

I used to be troubled about your story for reasons that would have been thought acceptable. Who wouldn’t be grieved about a person being used and thrown out? A meek soul to remain an invisible threshold in all aspects of the definition? His old age being spent with not one company of a soul that he had loved, cherished or been a wonderful friend to? Which person who’d known you from the beginning till the end would not be rightly offended or frustrated? Being troubled by this troubled me because it anchored a dangling clock, an offensive flaw in my own character. And so I kept asking for some light to be shed upon my veiled and blemished mind.

I heard it loud and clear- “Who are you to question me? The sun comes up and goes down on the whole of humanity, all the same. I had woven him in his mother’s womb. I am the potter. I know my creation more than they know themselves, so let me ask you a question. Do you think that he would have known me if I had allowed him the honor and the glory for what I had given him? Why do you always forget… that your treasures are not of this world.”

I now am burdened to give an introduction to your story for reasons that help me forgive. That help me understand the true essence of what each person is in His sight. Your story has helped me heal my soul, not by relieving any pain, but by understanding the pain of something larger than life. You have been loved dear Mr.Subarna Lama. You have a beautiful grand daughter who has a bit of you shining through her. God has your family intact and full of hope.

Finally, as a daughter, my dear father, I wanted to just finally start grieving. Three years and I haven’t started yet. I’ve gone after you that way, using wrong ways to dull my pain.

You called me the heart of your heart. You never knew that you were the apple of my eye.