Two amazing tales of Pasting Village

Sikkim is a mystical land with a rich heritage and culture. Discovering its legends mixed with magical phenomena has always been my passion. Sharing stories that are unknown to people around me makes me a happy man. I have tried to visit places that have mystery woven in their footsteps.

I was at Pasting, a small village near Rongli with 50-55 houses in the forest region, when the white champ flower was in full bloom then. 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 to the small bridge near Lingtam. After that, 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 her shoe, making 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, where he had been staying for a few days during the cardamom season a few years back. After taking a rest, Aja (grandfather) took four of us to show the cardamom field. Strangely, no one had ever visited the whole cardamom field apart from Aja until that day. The field was really big. The flowering buds of cardamom plants had started to bloom. He showed us a variety of diseases that affected the cardamom plant. He seemed to be like a cardamom expert. Aja narrated there was a time when the field would yield 14 to 16 maund of cardamom, but this time, 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, the villagers nearby said the ‘thing’ looked like a Sankha (conch). It was fascinating; 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 that a few centuries back, one of the army generals from Nepal was flown in a flying sankha couch to Kathmandu from the Darjeeling region. 

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, pointed to it, and said this is our Devithan (worshiping place). He then pointed to the marks on the rock and said this is Shivji's footprint! I asked Lord Shiva! He looked at me and said yes!

People have worshiped this “footmark” for centuries during purnay and aaushi. He went on to say that, in 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 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 our grandfather's house. 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.