What's Mongar Court's Message to Schools in Bhutan?

Mongar Court has sent Ministers to jail and therefore a principal is no big deal. The judgement on the Gyalposhing land scam case sent a strong message. I don't know if it was a fair judgement but even if it was not at least everybody took a good message home. But with the principal's case there are several messages coming out. Even if the judgement was the fairest possible, the impact on the society could be unprecedented. The expected message to be taken is that corporal punishment is intolerable in schools, but there are hundreds of principals out there who are affected by the news. They must be hurt, they must be questioning and must be realizing that this could happen to them for just doing their duty.

By duty I am not saying that lashing students is their duty, their duty is to run the school well. Running the school means dealing with hundreds of young children, some of whom doesn't have sense of direction. The easiest thing to do would be to let it be. Let students do what they like, don't play parents, don't play police, don't play counselor, don't play judge and jury, don't just give a damn. Just go to the class and teach the curriculum. If there is an accident call the ambulance, if there is a fight call the police, if someone does drugs send them to jail, if there is a relationship among students call their parents and let them get married. But then school is more than that, every school has the moral duty to give every child a meaningful life.

They deserve to learn through mistakes, they deserve to stand corrected. No school will go lashing every troublesome child, but sometimes some children really need serious dealing because otherwise they are going to shatter their own dreams. Dealing with such students is no principal's favorite event. Every morning several students have to be summoned to the principal's office with different cases ranging from quarreling, stealing, fighting, smoking, drinking, doping, gang fighting... some students have their files filled with 'last warnings'
Some students ask for suspension because they want to skip school and have fun, and some even don't mind being terminated. A good principal's job is to make sure that these children don't leave school. The tempting world outside the school seems to care a lot but when these children are on their own they will realize that nobody cares about them, sometimes no even their own parents. We in the school know so much about the real world out of school and there we don't want our children to go unprepared.

I'm against corporal punishment and I'm more against mental punishment. We have dealt with children who would ask for any punishment except calling their parents. They say they will be thrown out of the house and removed from the census. When students are caught in gang fight and drug cases they beg the school to punish them any way the school likes but not to send them to the police. But we consider ourselves very wise and try the western style, we are expected to deal with them in a civilized behavior- yes we are expected to send them to jail! But we don't, we punish them, we watch them, we see them become better with few lashes. If they were sent to jail they would have never seen this life they are now living.

Principal in Jail

Mongar principal could have easily called the parents of the junior students and ask them to file a report with the police and arrest the senior for bullying and harassment. This could have saved so much of school's time and could have easily spared himself from all the problem. But the school took the responsibility to deal with the case, advice the boy and asked him to apologize. The boy took it lightly and went on to bully the junior further. The principal wired the boy and perhaps the boy may learn to fear the school rules now but the parents took the principal to the court and they won the case. Clap, clap, clap, their boy has leaned a good lesson in life, that his parents will watch his back at all times and he could go on misbehaving.

Thousands of young students across the country have heard the news that even a principal could be jailed for beating students. They must be feeling excited about it. These experimental young minds are made little fearless. And thousands of teachers must be reconsidering their roles as teachers, as caring teachers. Not to mention the hundreds of principals. If hundreds of students begin to revolt against school and take the principals and teachers to court hence I won't be surprised, I would thank Mongar court. Whatever is legally right need not necessarily be morally right.

By this I am not saying beating up students in any way is right, not all teachers and principals are as caring and good, some have cases of sexual molestation and some could be naturally violent against students for no good reason, some might thrash young children like their enemies; in such cases justice should prevail.

But we cannot go all american overnight to sue every little whip in the school just because there is a law against it. Some parents have natural court-going tendency and teachers are easy prey. We need protection too, we need legal wing in the ministry to protect us. Our job is getting more sensitive by the day and the more seriously we engage in our duties, the more vulnerable we become. We love our students, we care for them. Even in a family with two children parents resort to beating sometimes, we are family of hundreds of children.

Say No to Sex on Camera

Love making is one of the most intimate expressions of love. There is nothing shameful and bad about having sex but unlike in the rest of the animal kingdom sex is a very private affair in human world. When this very romantic ritual becomes public then it turns vulgar and therefore subjected to humiliation.
Bhutanese society is so small that just one leaked private video is enough to disturb half the population while the unaffected half share and gossip over it. Shocking number of homemade leaked videos have silently gone viral in our country and no one is giving a second thought before forwarding them to their friends. What more is a sadist?
Sadist is the man who made love on camera. Sadist is the man who leaked the private video. Sadist is the man who distributed the video. And sadist we all are in receiving those videos and watching them, trying to see if we could identify the people in the clips. How exciting it is when she is not our sister, how naughtily we talk about it when it's not our daughter, how casual we are because she is nothing to us. Will you do the same if she was a family? Can you imagine the humiliating pain she and her loved ones are going through?
Today the world is with you in having fun at their expense, tomorrow the same world will switch side and enjoy at your expense should you be the victim.
I see no difference between the women in videos and any other women when it comes to what they will do in bedroom, it's just the matter of having caught up with a wrong guy who took advantage of their trust. Whatever the intentions were, the act of recording the private business in itself was wrong. There can't be a justification, it was just ruthless abuse of blind trust. How could it leak out if it was never recorded?

I am a guilty sadist by circumstance; because I use a smart phone and I have huge contacts I have received every leaked videos in the town but on my part I have tried to stop right there by not forwarding them. I know I couldn't make any difference but as brother, as son and as father I have done my share of right so that I could face the women in my family without much guilt.

One woman I know has received all of the clips and surprisingly she has forwarded to all her women friends. Quite shocked, I asked why would she, as woman, do this instead of helping in containing it. She told me that her not-forwarding them can hardly make any difference, she rather chose to send them to her lady friends to warn them and to let them learn lesson. She is right, sometimes we can learn from mistaken we haven't done ourselves.

Remember:

1. When you are sending your phone or computer for repair, make sure you don't have secrets saved in them. It's alleged that some videos were leaked that way.
2. The files you have deleted from your memory devices can be retrieved using retrieval software, so don't think your secrets are gone when you have clicked on Delete button. 
3. If you are staying in cheap local hotels make sure there aren't any peepholes as was in one case. 
4. Last and the best, don't trust your partner if he takes out his camera in the bedroom. Say no to Sex on Camera and there is nothing to worry about. Sometimes it's not about trusting your partner but it's about how well we understand the technology. 

What keeps us going as Bhutanese is not our military might, it cannot be technology advancement and never was industrial estate, we are beautifully Bhutanese because of our social values that binds us as family but these videos we are sharing are degrading our Bhutaneseness...

One Bad Road Leads to Another

I can't believe I loved the whole idea of Ped Day once. Over the time, when it was implemented and inconveniences were caused across the society I realised I was just being too romantic with the idea, ignoring so many difficulties that it could cause to the already inefficient society.
So much is said against Ped Day and every Tuesday the anger and frustrations are growing but there is no sign yet from the government to do away with this idea of disabling the society. It has become clear that the government is desperate but submission is out of question. I feel very sorry for the government whose good intentions are all falling apart, and pulling the legs of bigger priorities.
There is an old Bhutansese saying, you have to drink the ara you prepared,no matter how it taste. And Ped Day is one such ara, the government could neither drink nor throw. The notification to allow feeding mothers to work from home was one desperate measure to ease the tension but it landed up hurting more women than it has pleased. The solution turned into problem. This is how one bad policy leads to another, and it could go on spoiling their image if they try harder because the ultimate solution lies in forgetting the Ped Day and making reasonable use of all the resources that are wasted every Tuesday.

I Nearly Failed as a Father

It takes huge guts to confess that I nearly failed my duty as a father. I don't blame my mother for my long nose, I rather thank her for keeping it intact on my face throughout my restless childhood. But damn I nearly lost my daughter beautiful nose two days ago. I woke up from my nap to my daughter's cry, then almost went back to sleep when I heard her cry again.
When I checked she wasn't in the kitchen with her mother. I ran out on to the balcony to meet my little girl running to me with her face covered in blood. My heart broke right away. I hated myself for having taken a nap, I blamed my wife for not having noticed her slipped away. I wasn't sure what happened to her and what to do.
Upon investigation we found that our baby fell of face-down from the veranda, thank go we live on the ground floor, just about a foot from the ground. I had left some carpentry work unfinished, among which there were several planks with nails on. Her face was scratched by one nail, from middle of her brows till right nostril. Then she had toppled down and hit her head on the cement ground. Despite the fall she has managed to climb back and came to us crying. During this whole process of falling, bleeding, crying, and climbing back, her father was sleeping and that gave me the greatest pain. It was the mercy of god that the nail didn't go into her eyes or her soft skull.
It was such a relieve when we discovered that the cut on her face was not deep and that it wouldn't leave any scar. Swelling on her temple soon subsided and she started playing with me again, and I swear I will never leave her alone. I want to urge all my friends who are parents to be extra careful with your babies because I have had friends in school and college whom god had created beautiful but their parents failed their duties when they were babies and thus they had to live with their parents' mistakes forever. God saved me this time!

Compassionate Bhutan must accept Abortion now

 June 11, a young lady died in Phuntsholing Hospital after an unsuccessful abortion in Jaigaon. Until the doctors saw bleeding from the victim’s genitals, her friend had lied it was an epileptic attack. Telling the truth could lead to legal actions, but she left the world, free of pains.

Record shows that every year over 200 women suffer similar fate, which could be just the tip of an iceberg. There may be hundreds others who must be crying in the corners with pain, or worse must have died silent deaths.

Our compassionate Buddhist kingdom views abortion as a very sinful act, equivalent to killing a person. But with due respect, I seek to know where is compassion in letting a young woman die along with her baby? Where is compassion in letting an unwanted child see the light of the world, sentencing him to a home where he wasn’t wanted? Where is compassion in letting a young woman give birth to a child, whose father has given up on them?

I find more compassion in abortion; killing a cell for the sake of a woman’s life, and liberating both the mother and the child from depth of mistake. Abortion is not an ice cream that everybody would enjoy if made free, it is but the only option left when everything seems wrong. No woman will go for abortion for pleasure.

If there was a way out, the 23 year old woman wouldn’t have travelled over 400 km straight against her country’s law and pay Nu.9000 to let someone dig into her and take her guts out. In such times no amount of law can stop that. But just because it’s illegal at home, the desperate woman has gone out to Jaigaon, place where nothing seems right- who knows if the man who operated on her was a doctor or a vegetable vendor.

Abortion is not permitted in Bhutan because we are Buddhist, isn’t it more Buddhist to forgive a woman for her mistake and give her a new life instead of letting her die along with child, which we were trying to protect? How many women must die before we rethink our role as a Buddhist?

Late PaSsu

Deep condolences to my family members, including myself, who must be disturbed by the shocking news of my untimely demise. I was murdered by somebody in the Ministry of Homes and Culture Affairs, Department of Civil Registration and Census that has a vision of becoming "an efficient and effective organization, delivering civil registration and census related services of the highest standard and quality". The cause of the death must have been a careless punching of information in the database.
It may be an omen that I will live longer but upon hearing that I am "dead" in the census record of my country I had a very bad feeling. It came to my notice when I applied for NOC for my promotion. 
How did this happen?
Is it my fault?
Who should take care of this?
Do I have to apply for leave and run to Thimphu to prove that I am alive?


Whoever is responsible, please, don't kill me, I have a whole family to look after. And I don't have time and money enough to come to Thimphu to sort things out. Please take necessary action and know that I have forgiven you for declaring me dead.