A Transitory Life

"Sometimes you are nobody in life, you have no money,

You are not successful, you are not pretty,

but you mean well and have a good heart.

People should pay more attention to people like that."  says Celine Dion.

Last time, On one of my trips, I had a feeling of the weird unnaturalness of this transitory world. There is nothing as ‘yesterdays’ or ‘tomorrows,’ as such, it’s fleeting. We live to see shifty things around. It’s difficult to pass round many kinds of lives, and to think about dying, parting, and leaving all these loving people and the world must become nothing.

Some images of life that ring us hard (All photographs are from my photo albums except two from Google).

 Live in either way, this fleeting thing.

Sleep, for maniacs infatuate this world 

Poor man, rich heart. "Wealth and riches are illusory; show not over-fondness for them." A Buddhist saying. (Photo courtesy: Google)



Running into the midnight. "It is better to travel well than to arrive."Buddha.(photo courtesy: Google)

The nature of flower and our life is same: to stand in the rains or shines and then decay. Life is transitory, like the morning dewdrops on the grass; Be not idle, nor give time to worthless works, O Guru

"All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances."-Milarepa

Ever transient is this world of ours; all things change and pass away; For a distant journey even now prepare. So, know emptiness, and be compassionate.

Chick

(Readers' restriction: The humor below is only for the mature group as it contents some offensive terms, and the writing does not necessary blame any languages.).

Born and brought up in Eastern Bhutan, and the only language I knew was Sharchokpa, I always wanted to learn others' languages. And Lhotsampa being quite popular, I was quite excited to learn. In class IV, luck was on my side, Bishnu Kafley was my Lhotsampa friend(and we had been friends for many years, till we graduated class eight, and after that we lost each other…hope, we will meet one fine day, and now I will surprise him with his language). In those times, I didn’t know his language and nor did he know my language. So, we spoke headless-legless-English. ‘Come,’ ‘go,’ ‘eat,’ ‘play,’ with various body languages.

As the chick become cock, I graduated from the Samtse College of Education. By then, I could speak here and there Lhotsampakha. My first posting was in Tsirangtoe Lower Secondary School, Tsirang in 2005. It was both fortunate and unfortunate; fortunate; for I was there in the place where the majority of the population were Lhotsampas, and unfortunate; to live in the remote windy, damply place. Anyway, I was eager to learn their language if not, master some words and semantics orders. Great!

My students always knocked me out, and they do even in my sleep; with their beguiling faces, naughty-dirty faces, and rough-murky behaviors waken me up.

That was the class, probably my third class, and the third chapter. I jumped two chapters to start with the easiest one - that was the domestic animals. Being a geography teacher, I taught geography. We talked about domestic animals. I asked them to name some animals, and, which they did one by one. I wanted to go a little further; animals and their young ones (a teacher always adds something more on the topic, and that adds the teacher’s persona and his high erudition!).

‘Cow-calf, pig-piglet, horse-foal, chicken-chick, and others.’ I said.

The students gave a sudden laugh.

‘Chick,’ I told them sensing funny.

Their laughter continued.

‘Chick,’ I repeated playfully, but loudly.

By then, there was a little laughter and girls begin to bend their heads.

‘What is fun with the chick? You know chick?’ I seriously asked them.

‘We know sir,’ the faint voice shot up.

‘Sir, it’s a dirty word,’ a student said.

‘What is it? I want also to learn.’

‘Not in the class sir,’ the captain in the class said.

I asked the captain after the class.

‘It means sleeping together, and having sex together sir,’ he shyly, decently, and indirectly told me.

I never thought I would go to that extend. It literally meant f**k. I didn’t go to that class for three days. And chick was to be strictly checked, I promised them. My impatience to learn the Lhotsampa language certainly waned from the day.

The Trip

Yesterday, we (class +three professors) visited three legendary temples in Belur, Halebeedu, and Shravanabelagola and it is about 222kms from Bangalore. These places have very impressive historical temples. All arts and architecture were made of stones - very huge stones and the smallest stones showing the rich intricate details of thousands of different Indian inscriptions and motifs. There were wonderful monuments depicting religious history, mosaic, music, dance, and others. The stone crafts were perfectly finished. I guess no human mortal could have done this sculpturing, there is no doubt gods and goddesses could have. Another legend also says superpower kings had erected these structures. (I bought a travel guidebook for more details) The temples were built in about 11^th to 12^th century during the Indian Vedic periods. Every day thousands of people visit these temples both from inside and outside of the country.

I have taken some (packs of) photos of these museums and temples. Below are a few of them (a picture speaks more):

The view from the Shravanabelagola' s temple

Looks like Roman architecture-outside of the Shravanabelagola's temple

There are similar structures around

People moving up to see the inner sanctum

Stone monolithic stands rain or shine

Rock crafted statuettes

Inside the structures...

Statues stand high watching

Belur star-shaped temple

Monkeys like sculptors casted out of huge stones

Where are we to go now?

Rows of magnificent works 

Intricate stone edifices

Roman Colosseum building like

Belur busy temple

Towering temple in Belur

In between, we sneak out to see a dam nearby

This is Halebeedu, a small part of the temple 

There are many Buddha-like statues in all temples

Showing different motifs

Furious Lord

Depicting wars

I am the most handsome of all. Ha...ha...ha!!!

Singing Lords

And dancing Lords

Uh...ah...come on to the last photo

A kaleidoscope of Halebeedu's temple

And the last one isPhew...turn ur computer to see the magnificent colossal statue of Gommateshwar, which stands 58ft 8 inches and considered to be the world's largest monolithic stone statue. There are many stories attributed to this monolithic. You may Google it the easiest i think.

The Temple of Belur, Halebeedu, and Shravanabelagola are difficult to pronounce but very promising places to go. There are so many things to learn from those devoted pilgrimages and tourists, but not for a couple dating, supposedly…haha.

The Long

(Readers' restriction: The humor below is only for the mature group as it contents some offensive terms, and the writing does not necessary propagates nor it’s propaganda or blames any language or so).



I was born in the society of ‘The’ and the ‘Long.’ Much as I am equipped with these phonetics, it’s still difficult to utter these sounds and at times I wonder why these two words having similar pronunciations have different meanings all over.

 ‘The’ and the ‘long’ words can contort faces and they can be the most reprehensive to a certain group of people in Bhutan especially Sharchokpas. Whenever I have to use these english words ‘The’ or the ‘Long,’ I use it with much care. A Peculiar American, ‘the’ accent is very close to our brother’s slang ‘the’ and we love distinct American articulation. Anyways, I just look around to throw out these English words -quickly. If it were rowdies, we would have a real long guff-talks-no matter the subject using these 'slangs'.

 I have some kind of uneasy neurotic hunches to use these two Bhutanese slangs with my students and most of all with my Sharchokpas students (But everyone knows these slangs, be it Ngalops or Lhotsampas or others in Bhutan). The worst part of this is that the hesitant words come out often unnoticed to the wrong people; but as an English-speaking class, I shouldn’t take any blame for it.

 In one of my classes, the students had got bored with series of classes, and they asked me my free time.

“We have a long class, sir. We want to enjoy long now.”
Were my students making fun of the word ‘long’ or was it just mockery to me as I use it often?
“To enjoy (the) long.” I flashed a small smile and continued, “Thus, we will have long break then.”
“Yes, thus, thus,” some naughty students weirdly twisted their mouth to pronounce the word thus as t(h)ues that made girls buried their heads for sometimes.

 No problem, I was forced out from the class after exchanging some quick laughter with boys - those mischievous boys.

 The ‘long’ and the ‘the’ are very derogative Sharchokpa’s terms for the male organ -penis, and as such ‘thus’ if mispronounced is a female organ.

I try to substitute the use of words ‘long’ with many others synonyms like lengthy, extensive, elongated, etc. However, for the small children in the school, the word ‘long’ has to be understood as long only and the ‘the’ likewise. These two words are also the most offensive words uttered when one is angry or in utter hopelessness.

And ‘the’ and ‘long’ are commonly used words in English.

And Take care and THE LONG Goodbye…and see you next time.