The boy and the fox

A poor boy lived with his parents. They were so poor that they never had enough to eat the next meal. One day the father thought of a plan to work on their field and earn some money. He called his son and said, “son it is not wise to live as we are doing and I have decided that you will go and dig our small plot of land at the edge of the forest”. 

The stingy man

(The story was narrated to us by a marvelous Canadian story teller and a writer, Joanne LeBlanc-Haley. ) 

Once there was a farmer who had all regular kinds of animals on his farm. Among his animals was a very special rooster.

One day the animals were all looking for their food and the rooster too was looking for something to eat and was pecking around when he found a silver dollar.

Lunar eclipse – the myth

When I was a child I was always scared by the sudden darkening of the full moon and dread feeling it brought along with the pitch black darkness. I would drag along my mother’s kira-end along with my other siblings as she chanted “Om oh hung baza guru padme sedhi hung” and we would repeat in chorus till the moon came up again. Our neighbours and some elder children in the neighbourhood would beat the drums and whistle making a hell lot of noise. 

Waiting buffalo; the other side of the story.

I know that my ancestor had borrowed our thick fur from the buffalo when he went on a mission to get salt from Lhasa. Everyone thinks that he deceived his friend but not everyone knows the real story about what happened to him. I heard the story from my grandfather while grazing in the cold mountains of the Bhutan-Tibet border. He said that our great, great, great grandfather came to Lhasa on a quest to find salt for his friend.

Dendu and Leko

Every day, I deal with Tom and Jerry in my house. The house becomes a chaos during the weekends and holidays with everything thrown around and with lots of noise. Yes, I am talking about my children. When they were in their midst of their usual battle, I once called out “Zala dabu kentong soptu na” (literally means your bums may get burnt like the monkey) to my son when he tried to imitate his sister. He looked at me quizzically until I told them the story of the monkey and the hen which goes like this…

The waiting buffalo- in-depth story

Once upon a time, far away in the jungle, there lived two animals. They belonged to the same species yet they looked very different. Despite them being contrast in physical appearance they were very close friends and lived together in harmony.

The cat and the tiger

Once I narrated a story to my son. It was about a cat who taught the tiger how to hunt. The story remains his favourite even now. Here is the story…

The Waiting buffalo

Every time we wait for someone to arrive and are kept waiting, we always say “Nga chey mahey jodo marey” literally means “we are becoming the buffalo”. The saying is related to a story about a buffalo and a Yak. The story goes like this...