SEVEN BOYS (A survivour's tale)

He sees his friends, and he doesn’t see them. He talks to people, but the silence haunts him. He hears screams, and he experiences strange exhaustion.
But it is the terror in his friends’ face that haunts him the most. He survived only to be haunted by the memories of his dead friends.
Tshering Samten, 18, the lone survivor of the Tsimasham tragedy, is a different person; in less than a day his life changed for ever.
Today, he sits on his bed, huddled tight in a blanket for protection. And he prays furiously, pulling his rosary.
It’s not a good sight to see Tshering Samten being questioned by every goodwill visitor coming to his sister’s house and asking him to repeat the story that will haunt him for a long time.
As night falls he hears his friends’ screams and the horror he saw in their faces keeps flashing in his head.
“I see them huddled on the rock, helpless and crying for help that never came,” he says. “I can hear them praying in desperation.”
Tshering Samten rests his shaking hands on his bruised knees and looks at his sister with guilt that only he can understand. And he apologizes for his helplessness. His sister smiles at him with the reassurance of pure happiness that a person who had been at the throes of death and back brings.
In the next room, monks chant prayers. Visitors sit in the living room and talk about the incident. Hearing them discuss his dead friends he closes his eyes and bites his upper lips for strength. And he cries like a baby.
“Sangay Dawa and I had just drawn some flowers on the wall,” he says, recollecting the last thing he did together with his friend who was among the seven boys washed away by the Wangchhu in the wee hours of July 27.
Sangay Dawa lived with Tshering Samten at his sister’s place. On the cream wall are the two beautiful flowers, painted in red and green. Underneath the flowers are their names and signatures.
“Art by Tshering Samten and Sangay Dawa,” read the signatures.
He looks at his friend’s handiwork, goes silent for some time, and again bursts into tears.
“They would have been alive had they swam across with me. I failed to save them,” he says in a cracked voice.
Tshering Samten seemingly needs help and support to see him through the trauma.