When Rains Come, it Come in Battalions

So many graves things are happening in our school these days. First of all, our school vice principal’s wife has been hospitalized for several months. The subject he was given in the school to teach was in shamble. For more than a month, the classes V A, B and C science have been bolted in the bags; students thirst for a teacher to teach this study of scientific knowledge. When there was no hope of his return, and when the exam came knocking, our science department took an initiative to teach those classes. You know but our science teachers in Bhutan are loaded; loaded not with money but loaded with periods, they somehow agreed to adjust and spare their already compressed time. When I asked my class V students now, I heard that one period is enough to cover a chapter. This is how sciences are taught when everyone shares teaching; because it’s like nobody’s cake. They try to munch all at once.

Secondly, the school had to remain for a month without our principal, and which too saddened every one of us. The principal’s sister has a severe kind of trauma and further, she had a birthing complications, which kept both of them in Thimphu hospital ICU for many weeks. Life is difficult, I heard him saying.

Thirdly, two of our students were now behind the bar. Their sentences were up to three years. I feel pity about these two students from class IX and X who are locked up in the dark, who will miss their education, and their lives are blackened now. What, if it happened to a rich or noble group of people?  It won’t be news to be shared. These two boys committed a fourth-degree felony, it could have had settle before it got everything punched. That’s the cruelties of law enforcers sometimes; they don’t study behind the offense and nature of the crime as they should. These two boys were said to have entered inside a shop in Rinchentse and burgled some food items and some money. I heard that they didn’t even break a door or anything; they simply went inside the already unlocked door to survive one of the boys. I heard that one of the boys was staying himself in the rent and he had some difficulties getting enough ration to eat. It’s a pitiful story to be told to anyone.  That boy was the one to take that class x boy with him to that shop. See, bad minds infect and change other’s minds. I heard that they have taken the worth of nu. 8000/- or something.  The question now is that will they think good about life once they are released from the dungeon?

Fourthly, Bhutan football team was hammered by the Hong Kong team. What a disgrace? Bhutan must now focus on some very necessary developments like road, drinking water, poverty, not just some routing playing. Don't do what we can't do. Do what we can do!

Anyway, I pray that this mid-term exam gets over before another misfortune strike here. There is a plan that our school is going to conduct a small ritual to drive these evils from here. The last review meeting was a fruitful one as everyone agreed to contribute nu. 1000/- for some months to lay the foundation of our school’s chorten. That meeting also decided that there is a need for ‘Threma’ rimdro in the school, to which the house unanimously agreed. Our national assembly will continue in the next session!

To a Father, Who is Seeking his Spiritual Life?

Poem # 3

 

Father, a builder of a family circle;

Six children and a wife,

He, for devoutly spiritual pursuit, is gone,

And spent days, weeks, and months away?

To them, hopes of his children are left.

What has this religion begotten?

Is it a spiritual discipline?

He talks of the roots

The realization of angelic enlightened

It’s only gossip,

Belief made differently

And one more does much!

‘Choey’ is not where you go, selfish

To shower the grace,

While leaving others to suffer

Can we connect the God with such injustices?

How many butter lamps, rites and rituals,

Repeating mantras and scriptures,

Pile of gold in the shrines,

Traveling overseas,

Or confining in deep forest and

To the Bodh Gaya;

Renunciation is not mysticism

Rather, attitude towards life should be.

Godly is being together with

Your children, parents, wife and all individuals

Saintly is unwavering faith and loyalty to the Tsawasum,

The Bodh Gaya is in home and workplaces,

The God is everywhere for everyone

You offer yourself to the service of others

Being good, doing good

Conscience and consciousness

Is the inner soul of yours?

Living and exhibiting happy environs;

Through happiness comes compassion

And compassion is the virtuous sacred of contemplation.

The path of religion is as of death

Death is the sole divinity

Death intrudes

Everyone dies

Look at the face of your children

Dying before their death

Agonies of your arrival - eagerly starved.

I believe:

‘Spiritual’ is on the face of people

And it ends in there,

It’s the deeds and actions that shapes

The world we inhabit

Being a server is Buddha-hood

Who, being Buddha-hood is still a server?

Outward worships bring little transformation,

In the absence of basic factor of love and care?

You are the Buddha

You true can return to heaven with these deeds -

That is true religion.

*Choey-Dharma

*Tsawasum- head, government and people

Cardamom

Many people are planting cardamom these days. I too planted some lean cardamom plants last year, and these plants have remained as they were. The leaves are drying up now. They have turned brownish. What is my Elanchi up to now? When many are being profited from the spell of cardamom, my plants didnt have an energy to drink a drop of rain from the sky to keep themselves alive.

But coming to the serious point, people are planting lots of saplings these days. Because there were stories of how a family earned lakhs from two or three boras (sacks) of cardamom. We envy their hard work, when somebody has done something good then we try to copy. Some people never take risk of starting a new venture. It’s only things done by others, and then people like me follow. I have planted three saplings in my garden for a test. I hope it grows well.

Just next to our hydro power, cardamom business could be a second-highest revenue generator in the country. We know our water is drying up year by year, and constructing a power station is quite dear for the country, it looks unwelcoming and bleak. But one hopeful thing that we look to is our gift of nature; the soil. Bhutan has the nicest soil for cardamom cultivation. These plants grow in-between 300-700mts above sea level. If every plant people plant is to grow, then every household would become so independent and rich. What everyone needs is working hard. Everything needs hard works to be a successful one.

In Appreciation

                                                                         Poem# 2

Two things in the life never betrayed; God and the Parent- to whom the sky shines and for why it shines, the meaning of life is for them and what life meant is taught by them. When falling has a fall there remains dear parents. They formed the kingdom in a small realm of life.

Tell me, I ask myself,

What is on your mind?

What I have always had

Fixated for all time.

Nothing but my sacrificing father

Providing for me his dependent child

And my ever-supportive mother

For bringing me life, keeping me alive.

Our kind wise king and the royal family-

I speak from my heart frankly-

You have made our surroundings

A paradise on earth for me.