Kuenza's Diary

Being a farmer, my mother has the obsession of staying occupied – all the time. And as a farmer, her concept of land is that it has to be cultivated or else it is wasted. So every year, we fuss over her plan of cultivating potatoes because while she considers it important, we don’t see it that way. And more so because the yield is less than the amount of seed used. But this time, last Saturday when she was making plan of going out in the field to work again, I told her that I would accompany her. This I must say is the result of my being in RIGSS (Royal Institute for Governance and Strategic Studies for one month). We have always tried to reason: we used to tell her that our main occupation isn’t this; that it is a waste of time; we even cited the bad road, the fuel consumption etc. But once she has put her mind into something, she will never give up. We have known her stubbornness and determination all this time, but still, every year, we would oblige to her only after...

There are times when I think that I am probably different from many people. There are also times when I think that as a human being, and a social animal, I am probably similar to all other human beings. I am not even sure if it is good to have such thoughts. It is probably the way I am brought up, values and principles I hold which direct me into how I live and how I see the world. In some ways I have always thought that I did better than many others in fulfilling the social obligations, especially in keeping touch with my friends and families, and also making the social bond live, as well as happen. You see, I find myself organizing many events for family get-togethers, and I also do my best to make time to be there for my community in times of death and sickness, and also in joyful times of my friends, families and the people from my community’s achievements. And I thought I was above average in all this. But I think we often misread ourselves. I did read somewhe...

I’m writing this post with so much emotion. I feel so much pain for the subject – a fish that has been caught and cut to pieces and laid out in the bowl to fry. Let me hold my emotion and let me give you the background. My survey team is now in Punakha. We got here on 17 th evening. We are put up at an apartment at Jigmethang. We got a comfortable accommodation here because our next-door neighbor is my friend Ugyen, who works as Kidu Officer. Last night she went to a remote Nunnery and did not return – thus having to sleep alone at her house – a bit sleepless because it was my first night and did not feel much at home. Because of that lack of sleep, I had to sleep this evening at 3:30 p.m. I had a very repulsive smell of meat being cooked that it woke me up. In half sleep I asked the girls in the same room with me if someone was preparing a meat curry. They said yes. I woke up and went to the kitchen to find those pieces of fish in the bowl. One boy frying them in hot, hot ...