Sunday, January 25, 2009

Darjeeling Registered Postage Cover



This time around Kolkata i found a registered cover from Darjeeling...what interested me the most the letter was send from Greenland Tea Company.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Suresh Kumar's Love Songs (nepali MP3)

When i was at Class X studying at Singtam High School, the only nepali singer we used to follow was Suresh Kumar. His melodious songs were such that as if..... it was for us. His first album " Love Song" released in 1994 was well appreciated. When one of my friend from Orkut asked me the song "Fika Fika" i had a thought why not download the entire song album. In such i could also recollect my old memories. These are really gem of songs anyone would love to hear.

'Gorkhaland': Netting support

Statesman News Service SILIGURI, Jan. 23: The communication revolution is now making its presence felt in north Bengal. Along with the agitations in the Darjeeling Hills and Dooars in support of Gorkhaland, a movement for the demand is silently taking place on the Internet. Gorkhaland supporters based in different parts of India have created several community groups on social networking sites like Orkut, Ibibo, Myspace and Facebook to enlist support for Gorkhaland from non-resident Gorkhas all over the world and generate international opinion in favour of the demand. 

The groups, with names like 'Gorkhaland', 'Jai Gorkhaland', 'Free Gorkhaland', 'Gorkhaland ~ Our Birthright', 'Gorkhaland Awareness Campaign', 'Gorkhaland ~ QA New Beginning', 'We Support Gorkhaland', 'Gorkhaland On The Way' and 'Gorkhaland ~ Final Countdown' have members in different parts of the world. As is clear from the dates of their scraps and postings, the groups were created soon after the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha launched its agitation in August 2008. 

Though the identities of the owners of these communities are unknown, the fact that some diehard supporters of Gorkhaland maintain them, for the most part, is evident from their group descriptions. Like the contentious "GL" number plates, these communities have already created a lot of resentment among a large number of Internet users belonging to various ethnic and linguistic groups in the region. Said Mr Santosh Sarkar of Jalpaiguri: "The scraps, postings and introductory descriptions in these groups are replete with false claims and provocative propaganda, which are a veritable threat to communal harmony among Indians." 

 Mr Ranjan Jha of Siliguri suggested that the administration should take immediate action against the moderators of these communities because their contents were misleading the members of social networking sites, most of whom were young people in the age group of 15 to 25. Mr Kundan Lal Tamta, IG, North Bengal, admitted that the police were unaware of the development, but made it clear that unless someone lodged a formal complaint to the police against these communities, they would not enquire into the issue. The IG argued that until it was proved by an incident that these communities were stoking communal fire there was no point in blocking them.

Friday, January 23, 2009

my rss feed size problem got solved

I had been facing problem with my rss feed for over 2-3 months and i am happy finally it is all solved. I am thankful towards Vin from Blog Doctor. I had tried with every where but i could not had my problem solved but when i received a mail from Vin and when he had asked me to follow just few lines i was simply surprised. I never had thought it would had worked but i am glad it finally happened.

My feed size was larger by 512 and i was not able to know how to decrease it. It seemed very simple at the final so to anyone who has such problem i share with you the formula.

Settings---->Site Feed---->Post Feed Redirect box


Delete all that is in that box and save settings.
So my new rss feed url is

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/RDUn

http://sikhim.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss



What is Sikkim History all about?

updated on 22.05.2020

I am not an expert on Sikkim's history, nor am I a prolific historian; my interest in Sikkim’s past makes me feel, there are various vacant spaces yet to be filled. When I was going through different pieces of paper on Sikkim's history, I felt we knew very little about our country. Time has come, and the account of Sikkim's history should be reworked from its primary period, though we know that we have inadequate resources with us.

I am sure that capturing the early days of Sikkim (from that era where we find the first settlements on this land) in 2020 isn’t as easy as it seems, but we can make an attempt. As a student of Sikkim history, I feel it is not within our perimeter to come up with the entire scene from the beginning until now at once, but we can create a room for our coming generations to carry forward those works we shall leave for them. 




Today, we hold ourselves accountable to our ancestors (I am not referring to Rishley, Das, Ray, and others; I believe our local people could have come up with more exact and prominent accounts of our past) for failing to record their times of yore, and who knows what future age groups interested in learning about Sikkim will do to us if we fail to record what little we know about our Sikkim.

I am sorry to say, but I personally discovered many events of our past missing from the pages of Sikkim's history. Just to say that we know little about Sikkim’s prime is more of a layman's excuse. If efforts are to be taken, I believe we can make the most of them. Until now, we had looked back at Sikkim’s earliest record, dating back to the 9th century, when Guru Padmasambhava had his mysterious flight to Tibet via Sikkim. Well, let’s not make our prime much of a folk tale; we had the evidence of the findings of the Neolithic tools from the state, which says that the earliest men were present in Sikkim prior to 10,000 BC, and I believe that is much before Guru Padmasambhava’s visit. But after that, what happened with those tools is little known. Those tools are the valued assets of the government of Sikkim, and they should be brought back to where they belong. How often do we come across news about such prized digs? But are we really concerned about it?

Another instance, the discovery of a murali maize fossil in the 1950s in Sikkim, which has placed Sikkim as the secondary origin of maize; also takes our existence towards 5,000 to 10,000 BC. If we only dare to discover our ancestors, we have a good chance of tracing our roots, but is that the big question? To add more to these findings, how do we fit the result of the fossilised algae rock discovered near Namchi into the present scenario? Isn’t the land of Sikkim much older than we had ever assumed?

Let me talk about a few stories that try to defy what we have been following so far. Let’s begin with Kabi, a journal that mentions that the blood of a Limbu woman was used for the treaty, while there are other books that mention the blood brotherhood treaty was held between Lepcha, Bhutia, and Limbu; one book on Sikkim history mentions Chanakya’s death was successfully planned by the Lepchas, our so-called history says the generation of Khaye Bhumsa was predicted to rule the mountainous region of Sikkim; it is strange that it took 300 years to rule; what happened to those missing years?

How many of us have knowledge of the then-Sikkimese Lepcha population sharing refuge at Antoo Hills in Nepal after the death of their Lepcha Prime Minister during Chogyal’s timeline? We never knew who that Lepcha man was who helped Joshep Dalton Hooker identify the names of the floras he collected in the Himalayan belt of Sikkim.The list seems long. How many of us know about S. Mahinda Thero, a Tibetan Buddhist from Sikkim who is regarded as a nationwide hero in Sri Lanka for spreading Sinhalese literature during the freedom movement on that tiny island.

A mountain featured on the revenue stamps of Sikkim since their first issue has not changed, it is a record! How about the Sikkim Rocketmail Experiment (1935), which made Sikkim the first country to have the world’s first parcel mail dispatch over the river? The majority of the books written about early Sikkim are referred to in H.H. Rishley's "Gazetteer of Sikkim," which is considered the mother of all Sikkim-based books.The book is no doubt very neatly written and very informative, but can we consider it the final output of our history?

The stamp-sized state of Sikkim had undergone many major transformations from the small Himalayan Kingdom to the 22nd state in the mighty Indian Union. Much like folklore, the history of early Sikkim is divided between facts and uncertainty. Sikkim is mysterious and very rich in legends, and yet we have never presented ourselves in scientific ways. We never tried to collect the exact data from that considerable folklore that had been part of every man’s life for ages.

Defining the exact time of events - those of the pottery pieces found around the fields of Daramdin and stories of the Great Flood at Mt. Tendong could possibly put the state of Sikkim on the map of the world in a different dimension. The footprints found at Chungthang have developed a sort of controversy over the two scholarly men of bygone centuries. There is disagreement over whether those footprints belong to Guru Rimpoche or Guru Nanak! These are only a few of the legend strings associated with Sikkim.

From my little knowledge, I have tried to classify Sikkim into three parts: the early, middle, and modern periods, just to ease out my research work. The primary phase, or the early days of Sikkim, starts from the time this mountainous land was created until the episode of Kabi, where the Blood Brotherhood Treaty is said to have happened. This phase shall look for the folklore and legends associated with Sikkim and try to give a proper explanation for them.

To some extent, we can say that Sikkim was reborn at Kabi; we do have certain information in sequence on Sikkim’s political, and socio-cultural environment after that. Due to this, I filled up my middle age of Sikkim from the Kabi Brotherhood Treaty towards 1950, when Sikkim agreed to be the Protectorate of India. I believe the seeds of statehood were very well planted in 1950, and the year 1975, when Sikkim merged into the mighty Indian Union, was just a formality. The period from 1950 until now is my modern period of Sikkim's history.

My only institution for remembering the importance of understanding Sikkim is our belief in age-old ethnicity and the words of scholars, but the real truth remains that our future generations need to be explained the mystic forces of time immemorial that build up our Sikkim, from the days of the so-called earliest life of the first men in this land to the three-century-old Namgyal Dynasty and further towards the making of the Sikkim that we li

The history of a place seems incomplete without proper documentation. Let us say we have old photographs related to Sikkim at our houses; can we not share those immemorial treasures? The history of Sikkim is not confined to you and me; it is more ours, for our coming generations.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Amazing quotes


This is an amazing web site for inspirational quote and i simply cannot help myself without going through it....i am sure my readers shall too enjoy these pictorial quotes.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Magnificient 80s : A Sikkim Trivia

  • January 9,1981- Homi J.H. Taleyarkhan was appointed as 2nd Governor of Sikkim.
  • April 13, 1981- The Union Finance Minister, Mr.R. Venkataraman inaugurated the Central Blood Bank of Sikkim.
  • November 6, 1981 - His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa passes away.
  • January 30, 1982 - Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal passes away at the age of 59.
  • May 1, 1982 - First Helicopter service between Bagdogra and Gangtok was inaugurated.
  • June 5,6, and 9,1982 - A portion of Tsongu Lake turned red.
  • August 22,1982 -Chief Minister, Mr. N.B. Bhandari inaugurated R.D.D. Complex at Jorethang.
  • May 23, 1983 - The Eighth Finance Commission headed by Shri Y.B. Chavan visited Gangtok.
  • June 13, 1983 - The 691 ft. long concrete bridge over the river Teesta at Melli was inaugurated. The bridge was named after Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru.
  • January 16, 1984 - Enforcement of the Cardamom Act, 1965 (42 of 1965) for the benefit of the poor cardamom growers of Sikkim.
  • April 7, 1984 - A pioneering collaboration was signed between Sikkim Research Institute of Tibetology and Nalanda Mahavihara at Patna in the presence of Dr. A.R. Kidwai, Governor of Bihar and Mr. Homi J.H. Taleyarkhan, Governor of Sikkim for collaboration in matters relating to exchange of scholars, information and other literary data.
  • May 11, 1984 - Mr. B B Gurung was sworn in as the third Chief Minister of Sikkim.
  • May 25, 1984 - President Rule was imposed in Sikkim.
  • June 17,1984 - Kona Prabhakar Rao was appointed as the third Governor of Sikkim.
  • March 8, 1985 - Mr. N.B Bhandari was re-elected and sworn in as the Chief Minister of Sikkim once again.
  • May 31,1985 - Shri. Bhisma Narain Singh was sworn in as the new Governor of Sikkim.
  • October 7, 1987 - President Mr. R. Venkataraman inaugurated G.B. Pant Leprosy Hospital at Sajong, East Sikkim.
  • October 9, 1988 - New Sikkim House was inaugurated in New Delhi.

Sikkim student wins award

FROM Mizo Reporter

GANGTOK, Jan 21 – Vineet Kumar, a second year IT student of Sikkim Manipal University, won the award in the social work category for his nationwide campaign on spreading awareness of cyber crime.

He has conducted hundreds of cyber security awareness programmes in schools, colleges and banks.

The award comprises Rs10,000 Lenovo laptop and a trophy. “The objective of the award is to give young Indians a platform to showcase their ideas and achievements,” said Kal Raman, CEO of GlobalScholar.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

My 10 best photographs from Kolkata Tour

Howrah and a ride in a ferry...awesome combination!!

What is pasture better than this act....

Never late to be with Dhoni

Something never changes


If you are in Kolkata you do not want to miss a tram!!


Every tree has its own day

God does'nt need a home

World is changing in South City

Does these boxes still fethches letters!!


Kolkota or Calcutta: the beauty of the city is still alive

I am back from Kolkata this evening and the most off all i missed was my small blog. For my readers this is mine 10 best photographs that i had from my Kolkata tour.