Friday, July 29, 2011

The Other celebration


While the whole nation celebrate the historic wedding of our beloved king Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuk, on October 13, I have another reason to celebrate the day. Of course not so greater than life celebration which our people would be a part of, it’s the birthday of cousins. Yeah, the twin little girls, they are as excited as most of us for Royal Wedding. The excitement in these girls is so much that they can’t wait to celebrate their 11th birthday on the day, the lovely queen Jetsuen Pema gets crowned as the queen of Bhutan and finally the whole beautiful saga over the King’s marriage from gets a grand edge from where another page will be written in the wonderful history of our country.
Photo Courtesy: http://www.whatsonsanya.com/
 Samten Dema and Wangchuk Dema, there is so much similarities between these two girls except for their names which is not Nima or Dawa as we have for many other twins. For weeks, and even today, I couldn’t make the difference between who is Samten and who is Wangchuk. The little sister at house has a trick on how she makes the difference in these two elder sister of her. One has a mole and another doesn’t on the face, and these days, former is so much in removing the mole from her face. If her endeavor meets a better end, we are in danger of losing our trick.
Photo Courtesy: Author
Being a part of the history that belongs to everyone of us is so much a privilege but to be part of ourselves which we can relate so much to the greater celebration, its another beautiful feeling.

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Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Moving ahead by looking back

If one has watched “The curious case of Benjamin Button”, one would definitely understand what it means when we are fed with the quote “Life is to live forward but has to be understood backward.” As much as the mysterious growth of the main character, the quote if related to our way of living in a very close look out at the culture, it holds so much true. We have been living forward without understanding our roots. Things left behind could well be in the race towards being jammed and rotten in the forgotten basket. Like the endangered species, our norms and cultures are fading, and much to the awe of contrary, we seem to embrace new things no matter its origin is borrowed and that it has nothing to do with whatever is ours.
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Ancient people used to pass down the cultures in the form of the songs, and it involves little wondering as to why music appeals to everyone. People then sang cultures and norms with emotions and music. Today, we hardly have such music and songs other than what our great composers and lamas have penned down in the books and these books makes nothing better than the articulating element in the rich shelf of books in national libraries and museums. These books talks only in certain seminars. Like misty dews, only it lasts just few days and with day break, dews evaporate even without living any trace of having had such programmes. 
Ten years back, my father would team up with his friends and have archery friendlies. By then he and his friends were proud archers carrying a cheap bamboo bow and arrows. Eves of occasions like losar (New Year) and thrue bab were the busiest. The preparations for such long awaited occasions build with excitement and more excitement. And the biggest days would have score of men shooting at the distance of more than a metre. The women would cheer for the men and would serve ara and tea. Today we have men decorated with colourful piece of clothes sometimes without any sense of occasions. Almost every member in the team would be having at least one or more. But the charm in having these colourful clothes which although says of number of hits one has on the target is not as exciting and proud as one would have had with traditional bow and arrow. With compound bow and arrow, the speed of game would have increased, but it has defied the beauty of one arrow hanging proudly on the target and all men dancing and celebrating in the traditional version of the game.
Today we need occasions and national events to remind ourselves of our origin and culture. And this is the sourest truth of all. If it’s not for festivals or tshechhus people hardly fancy wearing beautiful traditional dresses. Of course office goers are something different to be argued here. It’s for the norm and formality of office ethics that one is asked to come in gho and kira. Best place to learn our tradition and culture is institutions and schools, but these days the school students seems to be major part of the population jumping at the fancy of so many borrowed cultures and styles. With unkempt hairs declaring as new hairstyles and pants hanging with inner wears visible, we have our future generations in those shoes whose tongue hangs out like a hungry dog. Do these kids even understand that Dra lhams are made out the hides of animal and they are sewed to add the decorative patterns? Do our kids realise that they are the future of the country, a country that has so far been sovereign and proud for the unique culture and traditions it exhibits proudly? For a small country like ours, can there be anything so strong a weapon than these virgin cultures of ours?
Of course, there’s so much globalisation and evolution in our way of living. One can’t survive the fever of the vogue, it comes like a flood and you float with what’s at craze. Right from wearing dresses to ways of eating, from singing to dancing, from reading to studying, there are changes. In last few years with the advent of internet and television, there’s none who could defy the taste of style otherwise one is as good as being called an old fashion, a cave man in an extreme bantering. But the challenge for the Bhutanese in particular rises way above the novelty of such things. We are entrusted with extra responsibility to guard the sovereign and independence of the our  small country which not only boasts of more than 60 percentage forest cover but also of having conserved our long aged traditions so far. When the rate of globalisation and multi culture are its peak, to keep our tradition taught in the young generation is very important for elder responsible people. Like our pristine mountain peaks, to the pure rivers it sends meandering through the vales high and low thus serving everything that is near and far from these rivers, it’s in the duty of everyone to understand our culture, conserve it and pass it on to the generations coming. It is not late until we decide not to do.

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Saturday, July 2, 2011

Facebook...connecting people


When the nineteen year old, Mark Zukerberg build the website, thefacebook.com, it was little known that today after  7 years, it would be a website a  world visits more than google. Yeah, you read it correctly, facebook in 2010 was declared as a website visited more than google. It has not only over taken the google founders in terms of the value, today it’s said that more than 600 million users have registered in the facebook. If it’s not for the reason that more than billion people in world lives without the internet access, otherwise facebook would be flooded and Mark would riding towards the sunset to the party with billion users.  Today, Mark is the richest of his generation, and in the world of technology, he comes third after Bill Gates and Oracle’s Larry Ellison and with its estimated worth of more than USD 70 billion, Mark is going stronger with facebook getting associated with every tit-bits around. Google to counter the facebook has now created another similar thing called google +. It is said that it has extra feature of being able to do video chat. It won’t be long before facebook comes with another surprise feature to counter its competitor.
Mark Zukerberg, http://images.forbes.com/
While there can still be some foul cry of as to how this billion dollars worth baby began. Like few interesting things in the world, facebook has its controversies soaring beneath it as it reaches top and top, but that’s however another thing to write about. All that i can suggest you all is to watch the movie "The social network". With almost about 10% of world’s population in its membership, facebook boast not only about its soaring stature in the market but also makes one wonder about the things that we find interesting as the user. So what makes facebook be the first choice over the dead orkut and conceded hi5? Why has everyone flocked in facebook? Is it because of there are many feature which are user friendly and easy to use even without the much knowledge of internet? Of course it is known fact that facebook has so many features right from making us able to upload the photographs, comment on it, like the comment, sent the messages, interact through status and above all its extra feature of chat server was plus point. Another nicest thing about facebook is that almost like twitter, one can share any links in our facebook wall which could take us directly to the concerned website or news. And with the page feature one can have for one’s own website, facebook users are directly feed with the very prompt and hot stuffs whether it is latest news or latest technology.
Right from our casual interaction, romance to the debate for concerned issues, facebook provides a free platform. The groups in facebook functions even better than pages in facebook. For the concerned matter translated to the common interest, groups function in building a collection to build the common interests to its highest possible level. With its integration in blogs, facebooks have very much become a part of blog’s easy accessibility and functionality. The plug-ins in facebook are very much part of my blogs. It not only makes my blog very much reader friendly assuming that most of the readers are facebook users, when ever users comment using facebook account, the link of my post gets automically shared in user’s wall. And yeah to be able to comment, one doesn’t need to be in my friendlist. Even for liking the article, it gets shared in one’s profile. If you want your article to reach masses, making one’s blog so much facebook friendly is necessity.

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With almost every person you in facebook, it seems like world you know has become small, right to the size of gadget you are using to access the website. Other than having being able to meet people you know or you have known, we also get to know many other people. The world seems have shrunk even further when some of the people you chat is from other side of the globe, and we chat as if we know each other very much. There can be little wonders many facebook users may not be even knowing the neighbors very properly as we do people on the other side of the world.  In England’s one of the states, there was reports claimed of facebook increasing the syphilis. There can be nothing as funny as this one, but somehow is true. Yub, it’s true. Few people even look out for free sex with random people they meet up in facebook, and bumping into it is not very hard. There can always be repercussions. Some people tag ourselves in nude photographs, and even before we realize it, most of the people in the friendlist would have seen it. For the kids, with facebook not really having any clear and clean methods positively designed for the younger kids, it won’t take much longer before kids start writing on teachers wall and coming up with excuse of not being able to reach class or under the velvet of pseudonym, one would even challenge one’s teacher. However, to write about these detrimental effects, it can never stop here. As long as one, as a user doesn’t come up with apt ethos, one would be always in the erroneous lane.
Today, most common thing whenever a guy meets girl, a stranger on a business venture meets another, or in any case, one general thing people ask or discuss about is whether one has facebook account or not? Like I pointed out in the above paragraph, if it’s not for the inaccessibility of internet in some parts of the world, facebok would even claim to have half of the population as its active members. If you are not in facebook, can you even claim to be existing? Now that’s exaggeration, but it’s still probable that some madcap like me would always ask it over a glass of wine or over the excuse of cracking the joke.  
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