Dear Students, The World of Your Own

The world will not end this year I will take the risk if it does, but I can't take the risk if you choose to end your world. You own a world of your own and you are the center of that world. You can destroy that world as easily as you could make it a wonderful place to live in. There are always choices ahead of you, distinctly black and distinctly white, easily separable. There are people like you and me who go strong and make white choices, and there are people like you and me whom the black choices choose because they are not strong enough to love themselves.
Every time you go on vacation I get a bad feeling that you might land up on the dark side of life, from where you might drown further away from life everytime you want to return, therefore I write this to you to tell you three simple things as you leave for summer vacation of 2012.

1. Bad opportunities, like weeds in our garden, are generously available in the human garden. But don't be generous with them, be kind enough to spare yourself a few moment to think of all the people that mean to you so much, and think about what would happen to them if you go those wrong ways.

2. You will be caught. Bad things never go unpunished. Every time you are tempted to do something wrong just know that you can't run from it. If love can't stop let fear hold you back.

3. Take care of your own little world, the big world will take care of itself.
Have a happy summer vacation. Make people around you happy. And when we reunite let's share our happy stories.


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Tear Drops on my Chair

I have known this high school principal for sometime and have gathered a lot of regards for the man he is, the Education officers he was, and the principal he has been so far. He is known for reforming and reconstructing system into very friendly environment that every time he leaves a place people feel the emptiness he has left behind.
This time I came into close contact with him, over and over, and he spared me enough of his time to talk about his school and listen about my school, yes we were talking about students' problems and relative solutions, without ignoring the origin of the problems. It's interesting but disheartening to know that we actually have ideas about where the problems come from and how we could prevent them but there are major stakeholders who wouldn't do enough.
His few sentences touched me so much and made me think over it for days; he said, "I think I should quit this job before I make myself a merciless devil, who sits on this chair and watch parents cry for the mistakes their children committed. How many parents cried here in front of me! Those parents leave behind all the self respect for their children and beg of me to give them another chance.
"Our intention of helping the child together fails to convince the parents, they don't want to take their children home for some days and talk things out- they are backing off from the little help we are asking in helping their children. And finally when we leave them with no option they leave with bitter hearts.
"In a small society like ours I am already hurting too many people, who wouldn't understand, there are too many tear drops on my chair..."

Though enclosed within quotation marks, the words are not exact to the scale but I made sure the meaning and the intention is preserved.


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Tattoo: The Permanent Character Certificate of Temporary Mischief

Written for Student Digest April-July 2012 Issue.

Tattoo is a design on the skin, achieved by changing pigments of skin. The process is done by repeatedly pricking ink into the skin using sharp needle.  And because it is done inside the dermis layer of the skin it can’t be erased unless done surgically. The technology of removing tattoo hasn’t yet been introduced in Bhutan and therefore to have a tattoo removed could cost fortunes.

Why am I talking about removing tattoo, when everybody does it for keeping? Well I have learnt from experience that at one point in life you would die to get them removed. You would look at it each day and wish if you had never done it. I know you won’t believe me today, because I didn’t believe them then.

I was just like anyone of you, if not naughtier. I was full of energy, energy waiting to explode and there were always choices ahead of me. I made many wrong ones amidst my youthful excitements. And you could land up doing your share of wrongs too, which as you grow up and as you realize, time will forget and forgive. But there are certain wrongs that would last beyond our realization, beyond our righteousness and beyond our repentance.

One such wrong is getting into drugs. It’s addictive and destructive. It gives you an illusion of happiness and stops you from growing. It clouds your judgment and forces you to multiply your wrongs beyond your intentions. Every morning you wake to find that one more person has left your life, and yet you keep moving away from your family and friends. If you are lucky to receive a timely help you may be able to jailbreak but I have seen how the ghost of the past visits your happy home in future. Just when you finally overcome the addiction and decide to settle down, have family and play with your kids then you realize you aren’t left with much life. You had already damaged so many vital organs in your body to live a normal life. Then you feel the unforgiving grip of your youthful wrong holding you back.

While drugs problem is talked about enough there is a subject equally important that didn’t receive much attention. The aggressive love for tattoo is another youthful folly, which literally last forever. At one time you don’t find anything wrong with tattoo because you see so many celebrities showing off their designs, you see all your friends having them and because you probably think you will never grow up. But you have to grow up and you have to know that those celebrities have millions of dollars and that your friends are wrong too.

Technologies with which celebrities create their tattoos are medically safe and the tattoo makers are professionals, they know what they are doing. Do we have professionals? What type of tools are we using? Last year a student of mine tried a tattoo on his neck and landed up infecting some nerves inside. He couldn’t move his neck and had hard time talking; it took over a month of treatment to regain his speech. He was lucky that it was just a normal infection and not tetanus. There are other infections associated with careless pricking that could ruin your life.

Surviving the infection is just the first stage; living with tattoo is another challenge. My tattoos didn’t give me infection because I sterilized the needles I used but tattoo itself is an infection, more so when you are someone responsible in society. People associate tattoo with drug addicts and gang members but I am a teacher and I don’t like to be assumed that way. How could I change that way people think?

When you are young you don’t care a thing about the world. Tattooing your body is just another mischief you try among hundred others. To gain little extra attention you tattoo strange designs and shamelessly find it cool. I have seen arms and legs filled with vulgar words, phrases and signs displayed openly in public. But someday you are bound to change, and you can’t read your future. Look at me; I never thought I would hold this respectable position in the society. All my youthful follies are forgotten with time except these tattoos on my arms but I am very grateful to myself for not having filthy and disrespectful symbols and words.

Your future is waiting for you with greater opportunities and you could be someone everybody looks up to. And from where you are then you can’t afford to show your tattoo and escape wrong assumptions. Future can’t lie in the tattooed arms. Even if you choose to lead a quiet life you have to become a parent someday and when your little child points at the sign of middle finger on your arms and ask you questions, how would you explain the vulgarity of your designs? Therefore, if you don’t yet have a tattoo, don’t bother about having one. You don’t have to keep a permanent record of your temporary mischief. 

Out of Syllabus

This article appears in the latest publication of Student Digest, and unlike other stories I wrote this exclusively for the magazine.

4th Issue

Would you spend an hour reading a chapter that is out of syllabus? Would you do an assignment your teacher would not mark? The answer is obvious, there is hardly enough time to study what is actually important. What makes something important? The high probability of something coming in exam is considered important. Do you study only for exam? When will you study for your life?

These are some questions I didn’t ask myself when I was in school, but today as I reflect and realize I begin all over again. I make my students question themselves often between their chapters. I make them question every page in their book. While every school has an elaborately decorated vision that encompasses every aspect of life, they lack the freedom in bringing their vision alive. The written syllabus creates a narrow tunnel through the school, from exam to exam.

Exam has become the license to so many offers in life and therefore everything in school should revolve around exam, and there is no way other than the narrow tunnel. One day we reach at the end of the tunnel with good marks in hand and a job ahead of us, but then we realize that everything around us is out of syllabus. Nobody would want to wake up unhappy for the rest of our lives, despite having a passed so many exams and having gotten into a good job.

We must realize early in our lives that life is not bound by syllabus; we must dare to go out of syllabus to pursue real life.  We must go beyond mere collection of information to processing information and invention of ideas, so that we don’t feel stagnant. We must discover our natural talents and polish them because we all come with our own unique gifts. So many strangers gather in one place called school wearing same clothes and there is no better place to build relationships, respect differences, work in teams, and learn leadership, for these are the elements of life that could guarantee us happiness. We should love to learn every new skill that comes our way and try to master some, for we never know what life has in store for us.

Millions die every year yet we don’t even know but when Steve Jobs died world stopped for a moment. What makes him so special? He discovered his natural talents, spiced it up with his ability to lead, supported it by his courage to rise from failure and went on to make an almost perfect technology. iPhone was not in his syllabus, he created it. He literally went out of syllabus by dropping out of school. Walt Disney was another drop out who now lives forever like his characters. If Albert Einstein studies within the syllabus without dropping out at fifteen would we remember him now? Bill Gates is a living example of someone who went so much out of syllabus to create Microsoft and become a billionaire. Who remembers his classmates who were lucky then to be able to complete their college?

When the time is right, don’t sleep in the syllabus. Wake up to life’s calling. For if you land up in a good job you must know how to work happily and if you remain jobless you should know how to create job- these are not in your syllabus.

Get your copy of Student Digest @ Nu.65. If you are in Wangdue and Punakha, just get it from me.

Selling Books in Wangdue- Nothing business about it!

If selling books were as easy as selling beer I wouldn't have chosen to sell Yeewong Magazine and Student Digest in Wangdue. And I am ready to accept any proposal to sell Bhutanese books here. I am a busy teacher and also forbidden to do business but I am a literature lover more and there is nothing business in what I am doing.

Student Digest on Sale!

Bajo town though merely born yet, has over 50 shops selling alcohol. If you don't find a bar in every next building, you win a lunch from me at Hotel Phuensum- well they sell alcohol too. On the contrary, if you find one shop that sells books in Bajo Town I bet you a copy each of Yeewong and Sutdent Digest. I am already sorry!
The adventure of selling books is something like the journey to Mt Everest- hardly possible. People have lots of excuses when it comes to buying books but I have way around each excuse. It is irritating, humiliating, saddening, and less often exciting. Many talk straight about my commission, that which but goes in travelling around and I don't mind forgoing it as long as I can spread the books in every corner of Wangdue Dzongkhag. I want to do business which gives me more satisfaction than money.

My wife runs a shop that entertains children with Play station games, computer games and internet. We chose to do this business even after known that our costumers are the generation with no money in their hand. While the whole town is madly busy intoxicating adults and drawing huge cash we are patiently enlightening children and exciting them on their crumbled changes. There is nothing business about this either.
Two magazines have already made it to our shelf and we are willing to accept more as long as it goes on to educate a child- anything for youth. If parents don't want their children to swim in rivers, get into fights, do drugs, drink alcohol,... put some cash in their hand and bring them to KPS- buy them books, let them Google, and let them see what it feels like to be Ben 10, after all a Students Digest cost less then a bottle of beer, and if your sacrifice another bottle your child can enjoy hours of gaming and surfing!