Two amazing tales of Pasting Village

Sikkim is a mystical land; with its own rich heritage and culture. Discovering its legend mixed with magical phenomena had always been my passion; to share stories that are unknown to people around makes me a happy man. I have tried to visit places that have mystery woven on its footsteps.

I was at Pasting, a small village, near Rongli with 50-55 houses in the forest region when at that time the white chaamp flower was at its full bloom. My grandfather (Aja) had his cardamom field at Pasting and it was that season when he used to stay at the village in his small hut like home. It was me, my father, Kancha Kaka and Kanchi Nini on our first visit to Pasting. 

There was a drive till the small bridge near Lingtam. Thereafter, the walk of my life made the jungle stride across the deep woods with leeches hanging around my shoes. I could see Nini screaming out when one of the leeches entered into her shoe that did make the rest of us laugh. We could hear the birds singing, the strange sounds of insects and the unknown fear of the jungle within us.

In an hour, we reached a small hut made by Aja in the middle of the forest for his few days staying during the cardamom seasons a few years back.  After taking a rest, Aja (grandfather) took four of us to show the cardamom field. It was strange till that day no one had ever visited the whole cardamom field apart from Aja. The field was really big. The flowering buds of cardamom plants had started to bloom. He showed us varieties of diseases that affected the cardamom plant. He seemed to be like a cardamom expert. Aja narrated there was a time when the very field would yield 14 to 16 maund of cardamom but this time around one has to satisfy with two to three sacks. All we did was; silently look at his face. 

While moving across the forest Aja wanted to show us something we had never heard of.  He showed us a huge rock split into two parts. He told us that once that rock was a single piece but a couple of decades back at noon a huge bang was heard and something flew into the air from the middle of the rock that had the rocks into two pieces. Later on the villagers nearby said that the ‘thing’ looked like a Sankha (counch). It was a fascinating one; I have heard several stories of flying sankha that burst from the rocks in other parts of Sikkim and nearby regions. One legend even says a few centuries back, one of the army generals from Nepal was flown in a flying sankha couch to Kathmandu from Darjeeling regions. 

After some climbing to the hills, he showed us a big rock and told us that he would let us have a surprise. As he went near, I hurriedly followed him. He cleared the spider webs and weeds from a small hole and pointed to it and said this is our Devithan (worshiping place). He then pointed to the marks at the rock and said this is a footprint of Shivji! I asked Lord Shiva! He looked at me and said yes!

Since centuries people have been worshiping this “foot mark” during purnay and aaushi. He went on to say time immemorial there was a fight between Shiva and a demon. Lord Shiva had stepped at the stone and leaped, so this is his footmark. I looked with a curiosity and asked how you knew it. He told me he had heard from his father.

With curiosity and excitement playing inside me; I did not doubt his words. We all know we have such stories in different corners of our state. We made it back to the house of our grandfather. After staying back for some time, we bid farewell to Aja and made our journey back home.

India made me eat my words ; 1983 World Cup win

Have you ever eaten your words?  You head me truly, can anyone eat his own words? David Firth was an English cricket writer and the founder editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly Magazine which started its publication in 1979.

The story beings prior to the start of the 1983 Cricket World Cup; Firth looking at the poor performance of India in the 1975 and 1979 World Cups wrote an article in Wisden asking the Indian team to qualify for the World Cup with the associate nations. He gave no chances to India entering the second round and had written to leave the tournament. Firth declared that he would "eat his words" if India won the tournament.

The 1983 cricket team of India led by Kapil Dev had a dream run at the tournament and defeated the mighty teams of England, Australia and West Indies to win the tournament.

PR Man Singh, Manager of the then 1983 World Cup team was a subscriber of Wisden Cricket Monthly. He had not read the June issue wherein Frith wrote about India very poorly. A few months back when he read the article, he immediately wrote a letter to Frith that India was World Champions.

He reminded him of his promise. A perfect gentleman he (Firth) was, he had a piece of paper in his mouth and had a picture taken. The September 1983 edition of the magazine ran a copy of Singh's letter along with a photograph of Frith with a piece of paper in his mouth, captioned, "India made me eat my words".

Source: Assorted from the Internet

Lingtam Dak Ghar

History has its perspective to retell its own story. That long-lost tale of yesteryears recapitulates the golden days of bygone years. Today Lingtam, a half-hour vehicle road from Rongli Bazaar is a silent wayside small village mostly forgotten by history.

Nowadays with flourishing tourism and beautiful homestays; the place is customarily remembered by the tourists for its small Lingtam Police Check Post where the visitors and the vehicles need to submit their “Permit Pass” to visit the other side of the road till Changu.

Towards the end of the 1880s, this place had continuous visitors in the army personnel related to British Expedition Forces that marched towards Gnathang, the Sikkim-Tibet Border. Despite the presence of exotic locales around this effortless landscape; one deserted house that lies just along the wayside caught my fancied eye when I visited this place for the very first time a decade back. Between the modern days, concrete buildings lay a small wooden house empty from inside with broken planks. 

The small house was a post office once upon a time during British Expedition to Tibet. A place that transported the communication between the British Army people posted to the frontier of the remote world with the western world.  Interestingly, the post office is no more today and even the British issues are no more but the only thing that remains even to this date is the name “ Dak Line” that means “ the area falling along with the Dak Bungalow (Dak – Mail Service, Bunglow – small house )”. More precisely I have heard from the people living at this small silent village prefer to call this house a Dak Ghar rather than Dak Bungalow as it used to be called in heydays. 

An elderly man upon my query had spoken to me, he then said his father had told him the mail service had postman walked all the way to Yatung, border trade market of Sikkim and Tibet. Even the postman from Yatung would visit once a month to deliver mails at Lingtam Dak Ghar. This small wooden house was also used as an overnight stay for travelers passing by while if there were travelers not accommodated inside the house would have to sleep at the tents provided by them.

Interview of the week: Mathematics teacher with a green initiative : Lomas Dhungel

Lomas Dhungel, aged 35, Maths GT at Makha SSS is perhaps the youngest National Award for Teachers from Sikkim. He is inspirational, enthusiastic and has a desire to work towards the betterment of the society; and believe me, his work speaks. Meet the person whose unique mathematics classes and green mission initiative of Hariyo Makha is trending on social media.

Many congratulations for this year’s National Award of Teacher from Sikkim.

Ans: Thank you so much for your kind words

 

Tell us about your family. Also let us know about your education.

Ans: I live with my father, mother and younger brother at Shantinagar, Singtam. I completed my class 8 from East Point School, Singtam, class 9 and 10 from Govt Sr Sec School, Singtam, and finally Class 11 and 12 from Sir Tashi Namgyal Senior Secondary School, Gangtok. I did my graduation from Siliguri College under NBU IN 2007. Thereafter, I completed my M.Sc. Maths from Madras University in 2015. I have also done a PG Diploma in Environment and Sustainable Development from IGNOU.

 

How do you see this recognition in your growth as a teacher?

Ans: The National Award earned by me was due to the blessings from my parents, my relatives and the good wishes of all my students, colleagues, mentors and motivators. Thanking everyone I would like to mention that I am highly motivated to work even harder and with full dedication in near future.

 

You are a Maths GT at Makha SSS, Why do you want to be a maths teacher?

Ans: Previously, I was working at the prestigious State Bank of India. Since my childhood I was deeply interested in science and motivated by the lives of hard working scientists like Jagdish Chandra Bose, Michael Faraday and many more. Hence to continue my pursuit, my interest in scientific research, I cleared the interview of Graduate Teacher (Maths) conducted by Sikkim Public Service Commission and became a teacher in 2012.

 

How do you use technology as a tool for learning in your classroom?

Ans: In today's era technology has become a major tool in learning. I take the help of smart classes, YouTube, Google and other technological platforms to provide additional supplementary to the school education. During this lockdown, teachings in audio-video mode were done mainly through Whatsapp, and tests conducted through Google forms. It would not be wrong to say that education is supported and enhanced by the use of technology.

 

What strategy do you adopt while teaching mathematics?

Ans: I teach mathematics that is one of the most feared subjects by the students. To ease the learning process complex concepts are broken down into simpler and easy-to-retain explanations using a mixture of poetry, story-telling and playful activities. This will help in attracting the attention of students and make them confident specially dealing with formulas and other difficult areas.

 

How do you usually maximize classroom participation?

Ans: I usually follow the concept of "Grouping & Re-grouping". Students are mixed in heterogeneous groups that contain all types of students. They learn in groups, helping each other, and once the concept is cleared then two or more groups are again merged into one, and the process continues until the whole class understands the concepts.

For the few who are reluctant to participate or ask questions to me, a special "Audit group" is prepared from among the fast learners who go deeper into problems faced by their classmates. They discuss and solve the queries or bring the problem upto me if required.

This saves a lot of useful time and helps in group learning and better communication from within the class. I also have kept a motto in the class "Once you finish understanding, always maintain a habit of helping your nearby friend".

 

How would you encourage the practical applications of mathematical thinking in everyday life?

Ans: I think the best application of mathematical thinking is to help in reducing the fear of mathematics from the hearts of children. Students from higher classes can help their juniors in this process. The main aim of learning mathematics is development of aptitude and logical reasoning. The more we practice mathematics, the more we develop our analytical and reasoning ability.

 

Tell me, what are the changes you would like to see in the students you have taught?

Ans: I strongly feel that I have been blessed by my teachers who have inculcated practical human skills in addition to regular education. Being enlightened by such enigmatic Gurus, I also want my students to consider lessons in human values like value education and environmental liability at par with concepts from textbooks.

 

You are earning through plastic and paper wastes, how is it possible?

Ans :

There had also been time when I had failed to bring out any sustainable output to my research – particularly during 2013-14. However in 2015, a new idea of up-cycling plastics for book covers was developed. This led to the starting of the Hariyo Makha project. We have thus been upcycling plastics for covering the books and copies of nearby school Adarsh Vidhya Mandir out of which revenue is earned.

We have so far upcycled 85,000 plastic pieces into 6100 book covers and earned gross revenue of ₹ 35,000 out of it. We have also converted 1,00,000 semi-used A4 pages into 1000 copies and earned ₹ 20,000 out of it. In all 7,50,000 pages of all sizes have been segregated piece by piece, out of which more than 4,50,000 utilised as rough copies, and 1,00,000 sold after being converted to notebooks.

 

 Why Hariyo Makha, why not on a larger scale Hariyo Sikkim ?

Ans : Hariyo Makha is a small gratitude towards Mother Nature. We have been sharing our ideas to many schools across East, North and South districts, and also to few states outside Sikkim also. It would be a humble welcoming if everyone would join us for a greater Hariyo Sikkim.

 

How do you see the success of Hariyo Makha?

Ans: All the initiatives under Hariyo Makha are mainly for earning small revenues that are "completely" utilised in helping needy and drop-out students in education. We feel humbled and happy to have helped 8 students so far. We are supported by over 30 schools, 300 student volunteers and more than 100 public intellectuals. We feel satisfied to find that our message on environmental liability is slowly being inculcated into the minds of everyone, especially the students.

 

What next now?

Ans : We have always been guided and motivated by the Education Dept, RDD Dept, ENVIS Dept, and State Pollution Control Board in various initiatives. Presently there are 10 initiatives under Hariyo Makha. Few are in their experimental phases to be added soon.

We have already earned more than ₹ 56,600 out of our works, including an amount of ₹ 21,000 earned by the Ajambari Self Help Group at Singbel, East Sikkim. The story had also been published by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Govt of India. Motivated by this success, we are looking forward to training more SHGs and NGOs for similar success stories.

 

Any message to the readers.

Ans : Mathematics is a very easy and interesting subject. However the fear of it has prevented many students from exploring the beauty within it. So let us all spread the word that maths is as easy as any other subject.

I would also like to mention that Hariyo Makha is a very small project where we have taken a pledge to work for just 15 minutes on a daily basis. As most of our works are start-ups, we expect common people to guide us with their valuable suggestions. We have a Facebook page and a blog, and we would be glad if we could get feedback so that we can improve our work in near future.

 

 

Singtam Sakha: Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi

I had always believed in documentation, we need to document things for the next generation. Even if the matters are smaller and unnoticeable, we should never ignore them.

Continuing to my last week's article on the history of Newar Sakha of Singtam; time took a major facelift, Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi, Singtam was formed in the month of December 2018. The first meeting was held at the premises of L.N Pradhan and was attended by Binod Pradhan, Singtam Bazaar, Bijay Pradhan, Golitar, L.N Pradhan, Shantinagar, Hem Kumari Pradhan, Lower Tinek, Dhiraj Pradhan and Manoj Pradhan, Lower Tinek, Shital Pradhan and Sishir Pradhan, Shantinagar. They were the founder members.

The name “Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi” was chosen among a list of names suggested by Bikash Pradhan, Newa Language Coordinator, HRDD. “Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi” means an institute of learning the Newa language and culture. L.N Pradhan was selected as a Chief Advisor while Binod Pradhan was nominated as its first President. The rest of the executives were also designated. Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi came together to work towards the preservation and conservation of the Newar culture and tradition of Singtam. Over a short period of time, many activities were accomplished.  

 

A month-long Newa Language Speaking and Learning Course (Jan 6 – Feb 3, 2019) was held at Singtam Senior Secondary School. Around 57 students of all ages of life participated. Some students came as far from Dentam, Khamdong, Rangpo and other places. The teaching lessons were guided by Bikash Pradhan and his group of newa teachers. The small effort of NBB was appreciated at the 1st Sikkim Newar Youth Convention 2019 held at Nepali Dharamsala, Singtam on February 24, 2019. They were awarded the Best Upcoming Sakha of Sikkim for the year 2018-2019.

 

Twenty days of Summer Classes for Newa Language Learning, Traditional Dance and Recipe Cooking Class from July 1, 2019, was organized. Laxmi Sakya, Member, Newa Deya Dabu, Tamsipakha, Kathmandu and Yogbir Sakya, Kalimpong were the teachers. Thirty individuals had registered their names for the classes. NBB had taken a permission letter from Sikkim Newar Guthi to visit Nepal to look for teachers.

 

The popular Newar festival "Kwati Purne" was celebrated on August 18 with great enthusiasm at Nepali Dharmasala by Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi, Singtam. A team of 10 members of NBB went on to attend the first-ever Bhimsen Jatra held at Rongli, East Sikkim. They handed over the contribution of Rs 8,000 to the Bhimsen Jatra Committee.  Members of NBB were invited to participate in a programme organized by Akhil Bharatiya Newar Sangathan at Chilauney, Doars, West Bengal.

 

At the Annual General Meeting of Sikkim Newar Guthi held at Gangtok, Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi represented Singtam Sakha. Members of NBB participated in 207th Bhanu Jayanti Celebration at Shantinagar, Singtam organized by Shantinagar Gaon Sudhar Samiti. They participated in the 73rd Independence Day celebration in Singtam and sponsored the winner trophies of the cultural programme. Activities of NBB were moving from strength to strength; here a suggestion of an NBB T-Shirt was pondered. NBB T-shirt with the logo was officially released on the auspicious occasion of Indra Jatra 2019 where the members were divided to attend both the events at Dentam and Gangtok. At Dentam Indra Jatra, members of NBB participated in the culture program and were awarded a souvenir.

 

A major contribution to the construction of the Newar Bhawan at Gangtok was completed by Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi, Singtam when they contributed One Lakh towards Newar Bhawan Fund.  The activities of NBB extended beyond its community when they contributed Rs 10,500 towards the relief fund for helping landslides affected families of Tshong Village, Yuksom, West Sikkim that occurred on September 16. On October 17, 2019, two members of Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi, Aadarsh Pradhan and Reshma Pradhan visited Ranka SSS to teach the students Newari Folk Dance for the Kala Ustav 2019. A letter of appreciation was sent in the name of President, Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi. Towards the end of the year, the election was held; Binod Pradhan was further nominated as the President for the next two years.

 

Corona pandemic knocked on with the start of the New Year. In March, Singtam District Hospital was looking for volunteers to help them with the safety measures. NBB came forward and volunteered for two weeks helping the patients in and around the premises. NBB conducted a one-day blood donation camp at District Hospital Singtam (June 1, 2020). Twelve individuals both male and female participated in the donation camp. During the plantation drive month of July, a plantation drive was organized at the premises of Karma Thuje Choling Monastery, Shantinagar, Singtam (July 12, 2020). More than 60 different varieties of saplings were planted. Presently, members of NBB are quite busy organizing Lumanti Phykhyn 2020, Online Newa Folk Dance Competition. When this article was written, the first round of the competition had ended where 75 newa participants from different parts of Sikkim had participated.

 

As the old phrase goes by...if you rest you rust, following it, the members of Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi, Singtam is regularly having meetings through WhatsApp and discussions for the encouragement of Newari tradition and culture.

 

Published in Sikkim Express - 06.09.2020 

Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi, Singtam Sakha of Sikkim Newar Guthi presented Rs 50,000 to the four affected families from Singtam Lal Bazaar late-night fire incident on June 16, 2020.

A team of NBB participated at Rangpo to welcome Boxing legend Bhaju JL Pradhan to becoming the Vice President of the Boxing Federation of India. on February 10, 2021. NBB congratulated Bhaju Prashant Pradhan on becoming the Chairman of NHPC and visited him at his office.

A Meritorious Educational Grant cheque was presented to Bhaju Pravesh Pradhan and Meiju Sushmita Pradhan on July 14, 2021, from the hand of Alankar Guruji. The sponsors of the grant were LN Pradhan and Bharat Pradhan. A general meeting was held on September 5, 2021, where teacher members of NBB were felicitated on occasion. 

Blood Bank, District Hospital Singtam felicitated NBB on the occasion of National Voluntary Blood Donation Day at Singtam Hospital. NBB had sponsored the cash prizes for the top three winners of the marathon event on the occasion of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav organised by Singtam  Nagar Panchayat. 

A team led by President NBB, Binod Pradhan attended the Annual General Meeting of Sikkim Newar Guthi at Tadong on December 19, 2021. The team provided their best wishes to the newly formed Executive body of Sikkim Newar Guthi and extended their support.

On January 30, 2021, Newa Bhay Bowneykutti on its annual general meeting elected a new committee headed by Bhaju Gopal Pradhan as its new President and Bhaju Manoj Pradhan as the General Secretary.  Six members of NBB participated in the blood donation camp at District Hospital Singtam, 

Newa Bhay Bowneykuthi, Singtam Sakha of Sikkim Newar Guthi presented its Annual Meritorious Educational Grant cheque to Bhaju Pravesh Pradhan and Maeju Anamika Pradhan on March 3, 2021. On April 3, 2021, Members of NBB led by Gopal Pradhan, President and Binod Pradhan, former President joined the rest of Sikkim Newar Guthi to welcome Everester and Mt Kilimanjaro winner Meiju Manita Pradhan at Rangpo.

On this day, Newa Bhay Bowneykutti has taken an initiative to set up a Newa Mandir in our jurisdiction. Gangtok resident Meiju Karuna Kumari Pradhan, her husband Bhaju Leela Pradhan and her son Bhaju Dushyanta Pradhan have donated their land at Tenek, Chisopani GPU for the purpose.