Uniforms to Help Financial Crunch

In this what is called the financial crunch or crisis, one must be ever careful of the cash transaction. Money has become tight now. One must know what to buy. The boiling desires of want one has been reduced with the economic inflation in the country. With no increase in salary and slashing the government budget in all developmental activities, money has become really hard to get now. The real problem is rupee shortage against our Ngultrum. The government report shows a scary picture of taking some five or more years to recover from this financial crunch. Millions of debt are still to be cleared and on the other hand, millions of our paper are floated in bordering towns, now useless. I was told by one storeman in Jaigion that these papers were said to be eaten by rats inside their cupboards. That’s it. I don’t really understand. Now the cost of everything has skyrocketed. On the other hand, millions of the rupee are earned every day from power export.  It is difficult to comprehend the economic situation now.

At this juncture, some schools in Bhutan have come up with a good idea to help themselves, and to teach our people how awfully bad it is to spend our money across the border- buying more than what we need. Teachers' dress have widely become popular in schools for instance. Darla MSS is the living example; teachers have come up with wearing a dress during their working hours. Excellent! It helps; it helps not only individually but also financially. It helps one’s family, it helps society, and it helps the government. The help may be a tip of an iceberg, but it still makes difference. Our ladies workers have kiras comp. anywhere. They tend to buy very expensive kiras and tegos almost every month to show off to their friends. It is expensive. To curb these trends and not to have many kiras useless as one useful dress, this uniform, I think is a good idea. But there are again personal rights, freedom to choose, freedom to wear but that is another side of the coin. Our male workers are done with five or six ghos in a year, and they don’t need to dress as such. They have dresses already. Their ash-white or ash-black or blue ghos are enough. There is one Lopen in Darla, who always wears ash-white gho a whole year-round. That is too much. And there was one southern Bhutanese (my) math teacher in Jigme Sherubling HS, in Khaling who had just one whit-ash gho for two years. I remained there for only two years, I didn’t expect he would have continued with that one gho only, but I was really struck when I saw the school magazine of one of the schools (name withheld), seated in the middle with his old white-ash gho, that man has become principal! He is a sucking calculating man, I guess. He really understands plus and minus.

Hyped-up, I counted my ghos. I breathed; I have not been a real jerk on ghos. Within eight years of my earning, I have 16 ghos staffed inside the cupboard’s shelf. It barely filled the whole step of the shelf no. 1. Not so much I thought poor, I have given many old ghos to my people. I remember clearly, I have given almost seven or more of now. I am not a gho freak. I have only two very expensive ghos; one Lungserma, given by my parents, and Sershog gho forcefully bought to me by my wife. These two expensive ghos are staved and bedded inside the suitcase. I hope they wouldn’t lay eggs and double. The last time she gave a look at them, there were some bugs creeping in-between. Soon, they will make a home out of my precious, but useless ghos. Like all men, my favorite ghos are plain ash-blue, ash-white ghos made from across the borders. I have five or more ghos in these colors and I am afraid that some people may feel that I have learned from my math teacher of Khaling.