Chil-shru: A story of five birds

Written by Nawang Chhoetso
A folktale from Spiti.

As I recall, it’s a story of five birds. But a friend of mine insisted that there were more than five birds, however even she wasn’t clear about the details. So this story will be about the tale of 5 birds.

Like all other folktales from Spiti, this too starts with the sentence ” yoyo metuk”- I don’t know what this means but every folktale starts with this sentence followed by “yul jaga chenmo na” -( in a big village). And then the story follows.

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No Childik rang ache pula sum: A folktale from Spiti

Khara-thanga, Kaza(Spiti) .

Written by Nawang Chhoetso

“No Childik rang ache pula sum”-Brother Childik and his three sisters

It is probably my favourite tale, which was often narrated by my grandparents during my childhood before going to sleep.
It always starts with the sentence, “Ache pula sum la no chichik yotuk” i.e. three sisters had a younger brother named Childik.

Childik is a very unusual name as no one in our region has such a name. I am not sure if this name has any meaning. Maybe errors in oral traditions over several generations resulted in a name like Childik, or maybe it’s a word that we lost over the generations.
Although there is a word “Chikdil” in Bhoti language that means unity.

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Shungma

By Sonam Chhomo

Shungma, Jispa, Lahaul valley

The experience of visiting places you always wanted to see for yourself is ethereal. The journey to this shungma felt almost as if I had been divinely allowed to enter its doorstep after many years of waiting for the perfect opportunity to unfold. As a child, I resisted visiting places at high altitudes because Lahaul was/is not a weather friendly place especially during the winter months. Even this time (it happened after a day), my ears remained blocked and my body felt uncomfortable for about two days.

But this year I felt as if I accomplished something.

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Stories and whatnot tales from the Himalayas: the tradition of Teer-Kaman

There are stories which we choose to share and stories which irrevocably fade away with time. 

— Sonam Chhomo and Nawang Chhoetso

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When we ask them about their stories, you would notice a sense of hesitation in the beginning, but internally we all know that they are too eager to feel the same emotions again as they traverse through memory lane. And when they speak, you’ll notice that it becomes hard to stop them, you fear interrupting them lest they change their mind and become silent after a pause. You don’t want that to happen, do you? You too want to understand them and wish to find yourself a place in their memory so that you witness them first hand, look at their obscurities and in a childish spree compare yourself to them. Of course our imagination too helps us to walk this same path as they start travelling back to these days in the hope of reliving their most loved memories.

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Perhaps listening to their stories may retain the authenticity of these experiences which no travel book may hold, perhaps their stories will be the last reminiscent of their generation’s experiences and it is only fair as this becomes our duty to document these as part of history, our history. .

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