Naturally Beautiful

O! Beautiful bodacious angel!

Dancing in the air,

Naturally graceful, naturally elegant,

Majestically Painted with flair.

She hasn’t done her eye lashes,

Bleached to accentuate feather colour

Or whitened her visage,

The beautiful European Roller.

She isn’t buxom,

She hasn’t worn a wig,

She dazzles with her radiance

Perched on a squishy twig.

She needs no fancy apparel

and put on some ultra high heels,

 Her beauty isn’t to coax

Cockerels to pay the bills.

You don’t expend resources

To look like a tart,

You were innately glowing

Right from the start.

You’re naturally beautiful

You don’t need no beauty parlour

And if of my words, you don’t buy

Remember her, the European Roller!

Karma Thukten

19th of September, 2021

Maokhola Outpost, Gelephu

Cloud formations- A marvel

Have you ever gazed up the sky,

Watched the cloud

And wondered what shapes

they're all about?

Sometimes you see a turtle,

Sometimes a palm tree,

And rarely army of ants

On some hunting spree.

On occasions, you see a cabbage

A carrot or a cauliflower,

The shapes keep on changing

Each passing hour.

At times there’s that hare

And the slothful sluggish snail

Racing Against the breeze

Leaving behind a teeny tiny trail.

Sometimes you see some eerie figures,

Sometimes you see some faces

Or some inconspicuous maps

Of ancient medieval places.

Some shapes are just strange

Of whose shape, you can’t relate,

Like a forlorn farmer in the field

Of oat and millet?

Sometimes you see God

Seated on a throne, our King,

For inquisitive minds in the sky

There’s always a thing.

When your days are hard,

Gaze up the skies

To see some crazy shapes

Unfolding before your eyes!!

Karma Thukten

16th of September, 2021

Maokhola Outpost, Gelephu

Place I call Home

I see no charm in the brimming river

or ecstatic tune in the thunderstorm,

nor melody in the skylark’s song,

I just miss my home.

I am exulted not by the sight of shiny gravels,

neither the winding brook with frothy foam

or the mirthful breeze that sweeps along

but the place I call home.

I don’t long for rainbows arching over the vales,

or moon poised in her silvery throne,

but a warm cuddle to my kids

Back at home.

I’d rather listen to the plates clatter

than the nightingale’s song,

deafening wail of my daughter

 is melodious than its tone.

But I have an important job to do,

Safeguarding my larger home, my country,

Few months away from my little home...

Until my Nation’s pandemic-free! 

Karma Thukten

2nd of August, 2021

Maokhola II Outpost

Gelephu, Sarpang.

A Leader in my Opinion

 A great leader is someone who neglects 99 of your follies and commends on 1 good work you've done. He'll never belittle subordinates, pass on condescending remarks, vilify dull minds and infact be the quintessence of inspiration, epitome of motivation and byword for success! At the end of everyday, he'll assess number of colleagues he helped make a difference! That's the Leader we need, that's the Leader a Nation needs, that's the Leader, You and I need!

Can Money Buy Happiness??

 

Can money buy happiness

Money has certainly made life convenient but we shouldn’t confuse convenience with happiness. Money might be able to buy predisposing factors to happiness but not happiness per se. Worth of a thing can be gauged by the placement of value by people. Money to a toddler won’t make him happy. Money can buy a candy that can make a kid happy but not the money itself. Now, candy can be presented to the kid from a plethora of ways like baking, stealing, borrowing, the kid finds pleasure in biting into the candy and not in finding the source of its appearance. Money doesn’t make him happy but the candy does. It’s like saying money can buy a house but not home.

Money is a recent development, imagine the era of prehistoric civilization where there was no monetary concept, were our forefathers grumpy and sad all the time without even an iota of happiness in them? Well, if you still argue that money can indeed buy happiness, let’s exhume a rotting carcass from a graveyard, cram a billion Ngultrums* in his coffin and place the corpse back. Let’s return the day after and see if the corpse’s smiling.

Happiness is not a product at a sales counter that money can buy.

 *Ngultrum is Bhutanese Currency calculated at par with Indian Rupee

Karma Thukten

2^nd of February, 2021

Lamaigoempa