The Tea Girl From Dawakha

“Sir, please have a cup of tea”; offered a young girl at Bebena’s vegetable market last Saturday - beaming with an unabashed smile bright enough to light up the whole of Bebena Vegetable Market, all the way to Tashichho Dzong.

“No thank you”, I said.

“Sir, you don’t have to pay. I offer it free”.

“No, no, I mean I do not drink tea - particularly not tea with milk”.

“Oh…… Lass La”, said the girl, about to move away - still smiling.

“Hold on ----- do you know me”?

“Yes la, I do. You are Rotary Sir”.

“Where did we meet?”

“In Dawakha la … I was resident there when you visited”.

Dawakha. !!DAWAKHA!! - a locale most would go to great lengths to conceal the fact of ever having been domiciled there.

Dawakha - an open-air prison facility for female convicts serving time, on transfer from Chamgang Central Jail.

Selling tea to regain her dignity & life 

It was a truly humbling experience - to know that I am remembered - not by the rich and the powerful and the all knowing - but by one who is considered a criminal, a social outcast - a stigmatized person.

I am deeply touched and honored - I mean how often does one get offered a free cup of tea in the middle of a huge throng, by a person who may most likely be living on the fringes of law and society?

Obviously the young lady is a remarkable person. Her beaming smile is proof that she has made her peace with life - buried per past and is now trying to regain her dignity and her life - by selling cups of tea at the vegetable market.

Background: In my capacity as the Club Secretary of the Rotary Club of Thimphu, I had to visit the Open Air Prison (OAP) at Dawakha few times, to oversee the implementation of three Rotary projects at the OAP. The young lady tea seller obviously remembered me from one of my visits to the facility.

It took a while to dawn on me that her offer of a free cup of tea was her way of saying Thank You.

Over the days since the incident of last Saturday, I have been thinking: how lucky I am and yet it was so terribly thoughtless and insensitive of me - I should have accepted the cup of tea and drank it.

I hope it is not too late. Beginning from coming Saturday, at the top of my shopping list will be - a cup of tea from that young lady from Dawakha. Hopefully I will bump into her once again and, this time, I will not fail her.