Book Fair and Halving Budget

As an all-time avid reader and bibliophile, I am very thankful for organizing the book fair in Mongar and Punakha. To promote readers, to promote reading habits, to promote knowledge, and make a knowledge-based society; there is a need for exhibitions frequently in different places in the country. I feel books should be made available everywhere; in every small town, on the highways, hotels, home, and in the classroom. It should be made easily accessible. If Bhutan is to weigh against other countries, then the books are our weapons; the main windows in the walls. We must therefore read books and value books to understand, evaluate and foster knowledge and information. Our people must read and access changing ideas and expressions.

I feel this book fair is not only a good chance to make money by book enterprises but also provides different choices of a book to our readers at a concession rate. The government of Bhutan is kind enough to give a certain budget to purchase books for school libraries to all schools in the country. The books are bought from the book fair by the respective school. But this year, the budget has been slashed more than half in the case of Chukha Dzongkhag. This slashing of the budget is not a good decision. It’s good to save for the future, which Bhutan does, but things like saving for the books is not a good idea. This year the budget to buy books has been more than halved. For example, a school previously got nu.100, 000/, now got less than nu. 40,000/ or less. The reason why the Dzongkhag has chopped the budget is not very clear. It must be tax deduction or saving for the years to come.

In addition, this year being the reading year, the deduction of budget to buy more new books and read more new books are contradictory. I would be grateful, if, schools could spend as much as money to buy books than hoarding money in the closet.

Google Guru

Earthquake is a Lesson

We don’t have to do anything. Nature does everything. A devastating earthquake in Nepal destroys the lives of thousands. Natural calamities like an earthquake are difficult to predict and can sweep whole humanities. Did you know that the lord Buddha’s teacher was nature? He enlightened under a Bodhi tree; a tree taught him to be nature like and natural. The ultimate GOD is NATURE. The powerful nature destroys and creates; it leaves no stone unturned to punish sinful acts of animals like us. It tries to wipe out the destroyer of nature. When the disaster strike, people flock to help each other, come and share love, truth, and become faithful. Are they like this when the world is normal? when tragedy doesn’t shamble us? No, I would say. They cheat, fabricate, and terrorize. Catastrophes like this teach us to love and live.

Thank god, God blessed Bhutan as is not affected by the earthquake. I would like to express my deep sympathies and condolences to victims of earthquakes in Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and Tibet. 

I would like to leave with a photo of the national flag of Bhutan at half-mast to show our deep sentiments, condolences, and mourning to those victims and affected by the earthquake.

 

My Khayey Poem

From Google

This poem is purely the product of my personal experience of remote-kind of hard, but easy-comfort and free life! The countryside was it! How I spent nights chasing animals from the field crops. And at last, in the end, animals and I would be friends in the night. Animals like deer, when I make noises are saved from the tiger.

Khayey (Sharchopa Term): Stilt hut; a tall hut made up of bits and parts of woods, poles, leaves, etc, and usually made as a house for guarding farmlands.

It’s hard

Hard in the rains or shines

But it’s free

It’s demanding

Calculating the yields and the meals

But it’s carefree.

A Khayey is a thatched banana leaves

In which, through perforated leaves see the moon

Moon is the king in the night

Like wild animals are.

The Khayey itself is all naturally built;

Tall poles, little poles, leaf of verities

In this nature, a human as I stand;

With an insipid fire burning near my bed.

My maize plants surround the Khayey

The tall and tilting, swings gently

Sometimes waves are just under my feet

Who protects?

Anyways, the fresh evening breeze keeps fresh

I can hear every tiny sound

The sound of all insects and creatures…

The sound of cuckoo…

The chatting of birds…

The sound of animals rushing beside the farmland

It’s their world.

Slowly the sound dies

But my friends come into life

Not bothering whose crops they are destroying;

What I have?

What they have?

I shout, throw stones piled beside my head

My guests sprint down for a minute or two.

But soon,

Alas! Loud roars roar the deep valley of the forest

making different sounds

There is commotion

‘My deer,’ I cried

And the only way to help them from the prey

Is just to shout continuously

I expect some of them to come near my Khayey

And take refugee.

But it is a two-way blockage

It is an easy trap for a tiger

And he would never leave having one

There is a painful cry of deer for many minutes,

As he drags down the valley.

Oh dear, it is painful to have my favorite orange deer

(I saw her the previous evening)

And I believe it’s all because of me

To have chased away from my field

As she came here for the refugee

If she has been a refugee here

Then where is my refugee place?

The sinking thought answer silently in the night.

Cluster Sports Meet 2015

Darla school is hosting the cluster schools sports meet. It begins on 16^th, and it will go on till 19^th April 2015. There are five Middle and Higher secondary schools from lower Chukha Dzongkhag. They are Darla MSS, Gedu HSS, Pashikha HSS, Chumithang MSS, and Kamji MSS. Many outdoor and indoor games will be played during these four days. Today, on the first day, many athletics were won by our host school.  I hope other schools may not go back to their schools with all red, red faces-so very defeated! 

After this cluster meets, there will be Dzongkhag meet, and then regional meet, and then a national level. I leave with some snapshots for the day: