Thapoo Thapoo…Tales from my Grandma

Book excerpt: Thapoo Thapoo… (Once Upon a Time) Tales from my Grandma is an attempt to preserve the precious folklores and the old bedtime stories passed on through hundreds of generations, especially in the Bhutia Tribal Community of Sikkim, who used to live and interact with nature on daily basis. Some of the stories are straight forward interpretations of interactions with nature which used to surround our ancestors. Some deal with moral values, some are light-hearted and some filled with mystery. There was a time when every other lazy afternoon or every other dinner table, in the tiny kingdom of Sikkim (the present-day the Northeastern State of India), the Old Grandmother of the house would often narrate an invigorating story to the twinkly and keen-eyed children of the household. Some phrases in the old Bhutia dialect have been kept the way it has been passed with the English translation supplied. The intention is to preserve some of the crude elements of the story in its literal form. Modernization has hit us hard and with the disappearance of the dusty old houses, free-flowing streams and natural music played by the birds and with the emergence and manifestation of the mammoth concrete, these little folklores seems to have dissipated in the current day artificial environment. Every story in this book is as precious as a gem, carefully passed on by my grandmother from hers and the other grandmothers of my beautiful and enchanting birthplace called Sikkim.