Skip to main content

Smoking Incense Nonsense

When I am bogged down with so much work and I have no time at all to write anything, new ideas enter my head and refuse to go away. But only sometimes, I make it a point to jot them down. When you are busy, you receive many calls from people you know and you don’t know. And when you are lonely, you get no calls. When you have time and want to write something so much, your inspiration fails you, your words fail you and you find ideas slipping away from you. 


Initially I found solace in folktales and later fiction followed – writing short stories excused me having to be politically and factually correct in my statements. Then social issues caught me. Non-fiction is something I still am uncomfortable with. May be I don’t like facts. Are all facts are stranger than fictions? But the blogging allows us to be short and precise and personal. It gives us freedom of not writing at all, say for months.

Lol…I have said basically nothing here. I know. It feels good to talk useless sometimes. Talk junks. Anyone can choose to be nonsensical.

People are still smoking here. We are supposed to be a smoke-free country by now, remember? We have made enough headlines by now.  Health Minister has clearly stated that the government’s position was that no one is allowed either to sell or buy tobacco products, but people have the right to smoke. 

Now as someone has remarked, some form of barter system must be taking place here. Or where does smoke come from? We don’t mistake incense emission from Lhakhangs and temples with cigarette smoke, at least.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Utpal Academy - Bhutan's first All-girls High School

Academic Block Welcome to Bhutan’s first all-girls school. Isn’t that wonderful news to all our parents? Certainly, as a parent of a one-year old daughter I am excited about the coming of a school exclusively dedicated to the needs of girls. Our girls need special treatment, which we can for sure entrust the responsibility to Utal Academy, Paro. Dinning Hall I really like the name – Utpal – in Buddhist world, Utpal is another name for lotus flower, which is believed to grow from mud and yet blossoms into a beautiful and majestic flower. It stands for purity and many deities are depicted holding flower Utpal, more prominently Jestusn Dolma, the Goddess Tara. Symbolically, it also stands for the transformation of our girls. What an apt name for the school! Hostel Room The Principal’s message posted on the academy’s website promises providing our young women an “opportunity to participate fully in a wide range of extracurricular activities to develop skills and qualities that

System Thinking

System is a collection of interrelated elements that create one complete and unified whole. All components within it constantly interact with each other to achieve a specific purpose.  For example, a car is a highly sophisticated form of a system. Hundreds of different parts work together to make it move in the desired direction, and even if a small part is missing, the car will fail to run.  From the system, I learnt that system thinking is a perspective of things around us, which makes us see how everything is connected to other things. In the above example, it is not just the motor that creates the motion in the car but combined work of all the parts in the vehicle. For example, even if everything works, without an accelerator, the car will not move in the desired speed that we want it to run.    Therefore, system thinking forces us to think about the relationships between things and how they influence the overall system. It makes us see the bigger picture. For example, when we buy

Fighting RCSCE-phobia

Now that the orientation is over, graduates all over Bhutan would be hunting for information and scratching through all our history books. And in absence of readily available information, it is going to be so frustrating for many. There are are aspirants like Tashi.P Ganzin who are already seeking divine intervention- whether to appear or not to.  This is the biggest moment in a graduate’s life – it’s time to learn and relearn so many things about the home and the world. And they need good attention from their parents and relatives, guidance and advice from elders. I am sure all 1300 graduates who attended the NGOP may not appear RCSC Common examination, but we need to inspire and encourage those that brave the odds. Many of my friends are waiting to take the exam of their life – their future will either be made or broken when RCSC declares the results. And my full prayers and support are with them. They are terribly afraid of it to say the least. I heard while there are no prob