News that Broke my Soul

The news of 13 year old girl being raped and murdered in Sarpang killed a part of me this morning. This was something we used to hear from distant lands as shocking news. Who would have thought our country will have to see this day. We have strong laws, so many people are in jail for rape, and still what is missing?
I am still angry over the news of girl being raped by her father and brother, which didn't even make so much news among us and by tomorrow even today's news will be forgotten. We don't care much- we don't care as long as it didn't happen to someone our own.
I am a father of a daughter who want a safe place for my daughter to grow up, go to school, play with friends, dream big and live without fear- perhaps every parent would want it- perhaps we should stop treating this news as just news...

Don't even know what to think and do...

No Street Children in Bhutan- Wish the same to the rest of the world!

A lady from Belgium,Manu Louage wrote to me, asking me to help her get a picture of street children in Bhutan. 

"My challenge is to find somebody living in Bhutan to take a picture for me and for all the street children in the world. With the Belgian organisation 'Mobile School' we want to claim April 12th as International Day for Street Children through the United Nations."

I love photography and I am concerned about children living on the street, but not matter how much I recollect I could not remember seeing or hearing about any street child in Bhutan. Or is it just my ignorance? seriously, if I saw any child on street in Bhutan I would have taken them home myself. 
Mobile School has launched "NoStreetKidding" Move on Facebook for which they wanted me to get a shot of street children in the pose they have illustrated and post it on their Facebook Page. There are getting it from all 193 countries of the United Nations to "claim April 12th as International Day for Street Children!"
I proudly wrote back saying I would love to do that for the great cause but Bhutan has no street children, though there are over 150 million children living on streets across the world.
She replied shortly, asking me to take a picture of any Bhutanese child in the said posture and support the move. I consulted Kezang and we agreed to use our homegrown model to pose for us- our daughter!
When I posted the picture on their Facebook Page, they welcomed Bhutan as the 103rd Country to join the move. 

One Two, 12th April 2103- My Model
On April 12th they will draw the #nostreetkidding sign together with the flags of each and every country on one of the biggest squares in Belgium!
Check out the Map of their progress

Kinder Joy Brain

I don't think there is anybody who doesn't know about the egg shaped product that makes your kids crazy. And when our kids become crazy they make us crazy finally. There is not a day in a year my daughter doesn't ask for a Kinder Joy, there is not a night she does watch Kinder joy Ad on YouTube. I want to kill whoever was that first person who introduced her to this product.

The Magical Product

It costs a staggering Nu.35 in Wangdue, which is enough to buy myself a decent lunch. After paying so much it is interesting to observe she wouldn't eat the edible half, and I assume half the kids on the planet would do the same. They are after the other half which holds a surprise toy. I noticed that there is no surprise anymore as my girl keeps getting a monkey paying cricket- seemingly made in India!
Well I share a similarity with Kinder Joy, one half of me is a father who just calculated how much this stupid egg robbed off me so far but the other half of me was fully amazed by the brain behind the Kinder Joy concept. It emerged in one of thousand talks I had with my kindred spirit Tshering Tenzin at his headquarters. We looked at the product from all angles (it looked like an egg from all sides) and saw that it has very low investment, high price and targets the loose ends of our wallets- yes children. Amazingly it sells on its own, and one Kinder Joy sold becomes an advertisement for next hundred costumers... it works like magic spell. It's like Facebook on internet, which needn't be taught nor advertised.
There is so much to learn from this small product, though I hate it every time my daughter catches hold of one. While the world is after making big stuffs someone has put all his brain on creating a small thing for small children to make us scratch our head!

Do You Remember Those Stories?

Dear Parents,
Do you remember those stories your parents told you about talking animals and trees? Those good verse evil stories? Those happily ever after stories, before you sleep? Do you in any way believe that those nights of story telling had influence your relationship with your parents and also had shaped your outlook on life?
Do you want your relationship with your children to be like your relationship with your parents? Well, things have become complicated now but there is always a turning point for everything, and I believe if we can win over our children before the world of digital entertainment invade them, perhaps we can establish that same loving relationship.
Tell them those fairy tales before they sleep and let them live their innocent years innocently. Let them love their parents more than Cartoon Network, let them count on you for stories. But if you don't remember those stories your parents told you, let me introduce you to a loving daughter who grew up listening to her mother's stories and now telling those stories to her children every night- Chador Wangmo. She is a teacher and she strongly believes in telling stories and therefore written four Books for children.
The books are on sale in stores in Thimphu and you can also order by leaving a comment on this blog. If these four books run well she will be inspired to write many more such books for our children.
This new year I recommend you to buy these four little books and tell stories to your children. The illustrations are done by a fellow blogger and loving father Kinzang Tshering (Qinza).

Chador's Series

Note: Chador Wangmo is one of our favorites on Nopkin and also WAB. If you are on those two Bhutanese Writing sites you will be curious to know who she was, and I bet you will blindly buy those book if I disclose her pen name. Perhaps next time!

Since 1989

In 1989 world leaders felt the need for a special rights for children under 18, after discovering that the Human Rights do not protect the children fully. They signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Bhutan was among the first countries to recognize and agree to it.

The Convention ...spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life. The four core principles of the Convention are non-discrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child. Every right spelled out in the Convention is inherent to the human dignity and harmonious development of every child. The Convention protects children's rights by setting standards in health care; education; and legal, civil and social services. (UNICEF)

Built on varied legal systems and cultural traditions, the Convention is a universally agreed set of non-negotiable standards and obligations to be respected by every country signatory to the CRC.

Quite strangely I went to school in 1989. Every person of my age would have same hostile memories from schools but because I was very naughty myself I don't have any good thing to say about my primary school. I was beaten by teachers and seniors almost everyday. Nobody seemed to mind and therefore I didn't mind either. I thought I deserved the hammaring on the head and whipped naked in the public. But much later I realized that not many thought they deserved, because by the time I reached high school only a few of us where still holding on to school, rest have dropped out on the way.

Teachers and parents are the people who should be educated on the rights of the child, but how many of them even know there is such a thing? I actually saw the articles in CRC only last week, thanks to the 'Educating for GNH' workshop in my school. Perhaps this ignorance is still widespread among our teaching fraternity which is why even in 2012 children are scared of teachers.



I pledge to myself that I will respect the CRC at all cost without negotiation and serve my duty as care giver and protector of children who are put in my hand. I will work toward protecting the Rights of the Child which we were supposed to do since 1989.

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!

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?

If I Write a Book on My Mother...

My Mother- Cendrella so far

If I write a book on my mother dear, only the first chapter won't have to be written with blood and tears. The first chapter of her life was happy, born with a silver spoon but her luck soon ran out and her Cendrella-ordeal began. Despite being a daughter of a Dzongda, she had to fight the hardship of village life alone. She was deprived of education and gradually parted with her little inheritance. My young mother had to cremate  four parents and two husbands before I came of age to wipe her tears.
If I ever have to write the second chapter I will have to write of all those people whom I have tried all my life to forgive, people who walk this earth with pride because my mother was humble, people who rub shoulders with titans because my mother was innocent, and people who enjoy the smoothness of silken nightgown because my mother chose to remain in rags. My mother's good heart that I inherited reminds me each day that revenge is not the solution. Every time I think of writing about my mother, I think of those people who made my mother's life miserable and even on mother's day I wrote nothing.
My mother is living the last few chapters of her life and I am going to restore her birth rights- she deserves happiness in each word of each page, and I am going to make sure these few chapters justify the whole purpose of her life. I swear I will give up all my faith in god if he takes her away before I could give her all the happiness in the world.

Which Gang should I register my Son with?

On New Year’s Day my son got robbed in Jaigon amidst the crowd. His beloved mobile phone and some cash were snatched away by a group of Indian Nepali boys. The first question they asked him was, “Are you a member of MB Boys?” MB boys, I heard, is a gang in Phuntsholing with over hundred members. They are in permanent state of war with the Indian boys ever since the murder of an Indian boy in Bhutanese soil. And today, despite strong indo-Bhutan friendship, no Bhutanese youth can walk safely across the border, unless in groups or with elders.

For once I wished my boy was with that gang; they would have given him protection and he wouldn’t have to undergo the traumatic experience. But that’s soon forgotten as we packed our bags and headed home.

But that was just the tip of an ice berg of what is happening in our towns.  Wangdue is now seeing strange faces and deadly group names, which only mean gangs are growing here at home too. I heard of some gang leaders from Thimphu visiting Wangdue to register members; they seem to have registration form, fee, interview, and other formalities in place. And as a concerned father I am seriously wondering which gang I should register my son with, because I don’t want my son to be a victim of all the gangs. He may need protection even as he walks to school. He has already seen the weakness of being a good boy.