Thursday, September 26, 2013

Just a Dream!



Wikipedia defines dreams as Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep”. For me dreams are associated with the events that are yet to unfold or something that has unfolded before. This is what I think is my opinion on dreams and dreaming. I am mentioning of the dreams that we dream while asleep probably at night, although some may dream during the day. It’s been pretty long since I last had a dream and dreams never come to me. This is a fact that makes me feel incomplete. When my friends and colleagues talk about dreams, I listen very carefully to their description and wish I was the person dreaming. 

But just last night, I saw and unusual dream. I was walking home although in real… I drive. I was walking with a group of students who were pointing at my calf saying that my stocking was torn. When I looked at it, it was indeed torn and an itchy sensation made me scratch my calf. Later, at home I found that there was a few inches deep cut made on my calf as if made by a sharp object. 

Picture Courtesy: Google Images
I went to the toilet (in my dreams of course) and flushed some water on the cut. There was an opening on the wound and some green fluid oozed out of the wound. I went to the room sat on a chair and started wiping it with some tissue papers. To my astonishment I found maggots…oops in my wound underneath the skin. I took out one by one with tweezers and felt…disgusting! This thought makes me puke now, in real. After removing all maggots from my wound, I was attending a doctor. I had to stand in a line to see the doctor and every second that I spend standing makes me scratch my wound. In the midst of scratching the wound and after a sweet-satisfactory sensation, I heard the bell of the doctor calling on his attendant and it was quite loud. Later, this sound woke me up only to find my cell phone alarm in its full volume. I immediately looked at my calf to find out, it was just a dream, still in bed. 

We have connotations on dreams we see and it also carries some derogatory meanings on the omen in one’s life, whether be good or bad. I don’t know what omen my weird dream carries but the thought if it makes me anxious and nauseated. 

Please do share about your dreams too; I know some of it may be as weird as I dream-t it.
Happy Dreaming!

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Right to information bill



There has been a growing concern among the public and social networkers alike on the ongoing Right to Information bill debate in the parliament. There is much hue and cry over the said bill. 

When people benefit from this bill and when everything becomes transparent, right to information will make Bhutan happier not forgetting our pursuit of Happiness. People will avail swift public service delivery and works will be done faster and people can now question the ones not doing their delegated works. 

People reserve the right to access information held by the government and why shouldn’t the people? A government secret needs to be kept a secret unless it requires some mandatory disclosure for some legal proceedings. Otherwise it is the right of the people to access information held by any governments.

If the hue and cry over the right to information bill means the government will be exposed, so be it, now it’s the people’s government. My opinion on this debate is simple… if this bill is passed and implemented, some of the elite government officials will have to definitely face legal proceedings and that’s what the government is trying to put a cloud on. The government must function in the interest of its citizens and not in the interest of a select few. 

In the west, there are massive online revolutions, hackers attacking government websites and data, social services groups and individuals protesting against government held information and secrets. A typical example of a government deceit on its citizens would be; when USA withdrew its troops from Vietnam, they conducted a massive operation called the “Operation Baby lift” and their stand was to protect the innocent children from the North Vietnamese communist. 

But in the post war reality-era, it was just a propaganda move to cover up the lost war. America pumped hundreds of thousands of troops in Vietnam and lost the war. An Aljazeera correspondent based in New York now, was one such baby lifted to America during the operation. She too did a story on this fact. Where is the right to information? If we do not learn from other countries how shall we learn? From a group of select few who claims to have the all knowledge on right to information, give me a break! Wake up Bhutan, if not now! When?

I foresee a time when there will be another Julian Assange and Edward Snowden from Bhutan in the making if the government reserves the right to information bill.
 
Food for thought: It is error alone which needs the support of the government. Truth can stand by itself. –Thomas Jefferson

Monday, September 23, 2013

Is getting late, getting laid?


Note:I am writing this because most of my friends who were happily married once are unhappily divorced now. Not one or two but many in counting and two are at the crossroads of filing a legal battle with each other. In the following I have voiced out my opinions on the stories they shared. 


Here’s a thought to ponder upon! Why do some people don’t even take a split second to go back to the primitive ape age? They react so angrily and without giving a thought to it, they jump to conclusions not wondering opportunities and options available. Some have rigid attitudes and some too flexible to be naïve. Others take pride in keeping their spouse at their finger tips like the Alpha male and Alpha female for packs of wolves.  This is the evolution of our family systems. Families kept us bonded for generations and this bond is becoming weak with modernization. I suppose time will heal everything.

The life cycle revolves around doing ones nine to five job, getting home and spending time with family. This is the rigid and accepted practice. Otherwise the fairer gender at home will be smoking red with anger. At times, don’t we get late? Or we purposefully want to get ‘late’ for reasons other than getting ‘laid’. Oops! And if one’s not home frequently on the time one leaves office, in the mind of the one at home, it’s surely getting laid. What a preconceived and subconscious thought? Insecurity breeds with familiarity. I have come across such beings and they teach hard, that family is not everyone’s cup of tea. Not for now at least! 

The evolution of Bhutanese practices on family has been the tool that kept families together and I read it years ago that people marry within the blood line not to let the wealth go out. If this is not happening now, certainly some fragments of this cultural practice must be alive. I am a Sharchop and some scorn at the very name. I have a reason to be mocked at because long ago our ancestors had the culture of marrying ones cousins-the golden cousins. Ask any easterner about it! This has become a debatable issue and for modernists, marrying within a blood line would be taboo. 

Google images
This takes me years back to my college days, where an extempore speaker declared, “Women marry in haste and men with curiosity”. If divorce was what fate had in store for them (my friends), certainly it was a curable-mistake to have seen the person good to you playing the role of a humble spouse. If this is what you like not to believe, please refer to the legal issues and hassles handled by the judiciary in our country. It’s staggering-in all sense of the word. 

Dear friends, play safe and don’t let your spouse think that GETTING LATE has something to do with GETTING LAID or vice versa.
Happy living folks!





Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Uncle Bajay!



It’s been pretty long since I haven’t updated my blog and it is partly the rain that is to blame because it kept me indoors and occupied on chores. And it was during one of those rainy days that something caught my eye. A bottle of beer-which today’s generation might have even forgotten that it once was a hip drink for all drink-a-likes! 

The Golden Eagle beer which was long gone from the Bhutanese bars and market is alive at Mr. Bajay’s hotel. Just a bottle remains as his show piece. If you have gone through my book, “Beyond the call of daily life”, I have this man mentioned on the very onset of the book. Mr. Bajay’s real name is Pema Dhendup. He comes from the tiny little village of Tama, Zhemgang. He earns his living running two hotels and a furniture house right in the town of Zhemgang. He is survived by four kids. 

Mr. Bajay is a familiar face and he was the first Zhemgang resident that I knew when I came to this unknown place. He comforted me with all advises when I was heartbroken supposedly for being sent to a remote school. Now, he and I are minutes apart and we have many characteristics in common. We share seven long years of  friendship. He was a devout reader and his knowledge on the flora and fauna stands testimony to this fact. He tells me his love for reading is diminishing by the day. He has a small collection of books which makes an onlooker wonder-An all knowing being.

Uncle Bajay with his Souvenir
He idolizes the great minds of the world including some of our former ministers. The wisdom of great inspirational leaders and the good things they did to our country lights him up, then I follow suit. And why shouldn’t I? After all, if something good needs to be followed as an example, no morality check up would deny not to. 

His skill in cookery is yet another mentionable quality. He is a learner at this skill. All the ordinary dishes that we encounter in today’s hotels are obvious but his skill and knowledge on food goes beyond the conventional food preparing process. He shows me some sauces which I haven’t heard or seen before. With his talks on various subjects and issues, I let a few gulps down my throat. I am a documentary movie enthusiast and whenever I get hold of a new documentary movie, I make sure I pass onto him as he too has an undying thirst for knowledge.
He frequently asks me on the English words and phrases that he doesn’t quite understand and he tells me my explanations can make a retard understand, hence, the teacher-ship which I pursue. He was educated until middle school and during his formative days he was reputed to be Zhemgang’s only ‘nine-chuck’ expert. 

On one usual evening, having read an entire page on Obama’s consideration for South East Asia, he was lost and I had to tell a summary on the story to which he even now remembers what he learnt. A naturally born-to-learn learner! His outlook on learning makes him an all knowing saint. But when it comes to computers, he lags a little.

And in evenings…

As customers heats up in discussion on various subjects, he will humbly come listen to the discussion holding an orange mug to which he already might have poured in some pegs of the familiar ‘Special Courier’ whisky. This is Mr. Pema Dhendup commonly, Uncle Bajay.