In our homeland Bhutan, the painting of Theunpa Puen Zhi (མཐུན་པ་སྤུན་བཞི) or the Four Harmonious Friends comprising the elephant, the monkey, the rabbit and the bird are seen ubiquitously on the walls of Bhutanese homes and various monasteries around the Kingdom. It is said to symbolize interdependence and serve as the epitome of friendship and cooperation. It is said to even connote Gautama Buddha himself and his closest disciples.
Drawing my inspiration from these, I have put down a description of four of my friends who study together with me at medical school. While our friendship had initially sprung out of the fact that all of us had chosen the same career path of joining medical school and the confluence in a foreign land as fellow compatriots, our bonds have since grown (and continues to grow and be constantly reshaped) by the interaction between the strikingly different personalities each of us have, and the differences and commonalities we have found in each other.
Below is a description of them based on my experiences and observations. And I have partly decided to publicly publish these because my dear buddies wanted to be the subject(s) of my newly started blog!
Enquiring Elephant
He has an incredible memory. He'll remember every nook and cranny of where a particular statement originated from; while the rest of us struggle remembering what the lecturer has printed on the lecture note slides, he will even have remembered which particular lecture note of the several we read contained a certain fact or sentence.
On normal days, he is quite moody some would suggest. I would simply say that he sometimes like to take time off and be by himself. We all have such days. Perhaps just that our Enquiring Elephant has more of these days than most of us do. But on most good days, he is really kind. An inquisitive mind, I love the look on his face whenever I'm teaching him something - mostly it's something related to our modern gadgets like phones, tablets, laptops or the internet. I'm not a tech wiz but when I do try to impart whatever little knowledge I do have, he observes keenly. Mostly it would be something really trivial or mundane but he pays close attention to how it is done and makes you feel like a really good instructor.
On the whole, he's a really well-organized person - he always wants his stuff kept back where it was taken from (a reasonable ask honestly) but on most days we don't comply to his demands, sometimes inevitably and other times just to piss him off. He's one of the most hardworking and down-to-earth of the five of us.
Mad Monkey
Well, monkeys can hardly stay in one place for too long. Such is the nature of our next friend - the Mad Monkey! He's the adventurous one. Try walking with him in the University premises one day and a journey that would otherwise only take fifteen minutes would take twice as long or more because nearly every third person walking down the road would be someone he knows and they would stop to have a quick chat; it's his adventurous, outgoing (and quite uninhibited) spirit that has earned him so many friends and admirers. He's probably the most carefree (bordering to recklessness more often than not) and relaxed of the five of us. While I call him the Mad Monkey, whenever he visits the house of our most well-organized friend, the Enquiring Elephant (whom I described above), he becomes a bull in a china shop! And good heavens, doesn't that upset our poor Mr. Enquiring Elephant. But this very fact also makes the two of them such close buddies.
The Mad Monkey of course is the charm of the group. Sometimes he can amuse us with his gymnastic abilities, other times drive us crazy with his boisterously bold ideas. A true romantic and a cryptic poet, he's a man of many talents, not to mention plenty of intelligence. But it is probably his innocent heart that perhaps compels us all to forgive and even adore him despite his notorious, crazy acts.
Charismatic Cheetah
The champion runner, the fastest land mammal, cheetahs are perhaps one of the top class athletes of the animal kingdom. Our friend, the Charismatic Cheetah is the same. As you might have guessed by now, he is an avid lover of sports among other things! And he is pretty good at them too - football, basketball, table tennis, badminton, you name it and he plays them all, in fact plays them well enough to make it to the school/University teams of most of these sports wherever he goes. But the love of his life is the one where eleven grown men run after one ball and try to put it inside the opponents' rectangular post, the sport described as "the beautiful game" by Edson Arantes do Nascimento (more popularly known by his nickname "Pelé") - football! Well, he's so crazy about football that one of the most depressing things about exam time for him (as he confessed himself) is not being able to play football because he has to study so much!
Gifted with a lean tall torso and a handsome face, how many "kills" this Charismatic Cheetah has made is probably something even he's lost count of! Just like his wild counterpart, who's so well camouflaged in the grasslands before a game, he's a guileful and clever fellow; anyone who can outwit this fellow is a person of considerable brilliance. After reading many Buddhist books sometime back, this cheetah had turned vegetarian for a while.
If one is courageous enough to irritate him persistently (something we friends often do intentionally), he contorts his face in desperate frustration to something that renders the most hilarious look to his otherwise smart face (a look we call the "Udzarongpa face").
Talented Tortoise
Tortoises and turtles are perhaps one of the most shy creatures of the animal world. I have always enjoyed watching the way they retreat their heads into their shells at the slightest movement around them. Our friend, the Talented Tortoise is also someone very shy and extremely self-conscious on most days. But one should not be deceived and mistake his humility for his weakness. Underneath his shell of shyness lies a person of extremely strong will and a robust determination to prove himself. Tortoises are often depicted in fairy tales as being the wise old creatures. Similarly, our little friend, the Talented Tortoise too is somewhat a store of wisdom with immense kindness and compassion that often results out of wisdom. He's probably one of the most selfless and kind-hearted persons one can ever come across.
He is also an abundantly talented poet and writer. However, his shyness prevents him from boasting about his works and it took an accidental look into some folders on his laptop to discover the hidden treasure of poems he had composed over time. While a shy person by nature, he is also someone who will quietly make light conversations with people and always keep in touch with them. He makes it a point to exchange a few kind words with all the shopkeepers along the street he walks everyday between University and his apartment; they always inquire to his whereabouts whenever I visit them and if he hasn't dropped by already that day. His humble but diligent nature makes him absolutely adorable to anyone who gets in touch with him.
Barking Dog
I do not want to write much about myself lest I end up writing something that either sounds downright flaunty or extremely self-deprecating. Suffice it to say that I might be considered the Barking Dog of the group for I am probably the most talkative of them all and also the one who tries to lead the pack most often. More often than not, they let me bark and lead for the simple fact that if they don't, I will engage them in an endless debate in which I will ultimately triumph by hook or crook (or perhaps more accurately because I will refuse to accept defeat) and also because that would be the reasonable thing to do than have a howling dog behind you all the time! My friends will probably have more to say about me.
