THAT LAST DRIVE ( Isha Mandal)

I have almost all the habits that the society claims it wrong; I usually got drunk, smoked and also drugs. In a pretty small age, I have almost all the habits to lead my life to darkness. “All our society can do is claim us wrong”, that’s what I thought, having a less maturity level and effects of adolescence going on. I used to be advised but I never cared or being more precise, I did not want to care “I suffered a lot! I can’t handle it anymore” I said myself almost every night and then blew all the sufferings away by just getting drunk, having a puff of smoke or dose of drugs.

Then came one night, that changed everything. On a rainy day around 8 pm I got in my car to reach towards a club. There was a celebration going on and for me one more excuse of getting drunk. So, I got drunk, more than usual and more than I could bear. Then around 11pm I left the club and got in the car. While trying to keep the key in the ignition, my hand trembled I thought “Would I be able to make it home?” I puffed that thought away and feeling better I started the car. Since the road was almost empty and also slippery due to the mist rain, I drove at a high speed. During this drive different thing started coming to my mind, I started remembering my old days when my life changed from a beautiful dream to a worst nightmare.

I always used to be cheerful girl, I was happy in my world. I felt that I had everything, a perfect life: A family who loved and cared me and a best friend who was more like a sister. It was more definitely a world where only happiness existed. But soon everything started changing, was I the one changing or the others I never knew? I started getting less attention, less time. My best friend without whom my life used to be impossible to imagine started going away from me. We knew each other for about 2 years, since then we always were together, we went to one another’s home, shared our feelings, problems. There was nothing that could affect our friendship. We just would wake up till 12 just to wish each other new year, Christmas or birthday. Everything changed; everyone stopped caring about me or even worse stopped talking to me. With my best friend I could feel an unknown wall separating us. We talked less often; slowly we stopped talking and giggling all around. The conversation would last for the least of the time when once it used to last for hours. I tried not to think about it, but couldn’t help it. Just going in the way of unnecessary depression feeling, I then started smoking, it relaxed me. Slowly towards drinking and to get into drugs was no big deal. 

A horn from another car distracted my thought, after then I again got lost to the train of my memories.
I could now feel the pain of loneliness, feel of pain how a good girl changed up being a bad girl. I never chose to be one; I had some dreams some aspirations which were all locked by my depression. Just to hide my loneliness I put on a mask of arrogance. I tried to prove others that nothing bothered me, but in reality I wasn’t even able to prove it to myself. I still woke up late night just wishing that she would call once in our special occasion. I missed the every night gathering around the dining table and roar of laughter echoing around the house. It hurts me a lot. With all those pain and agony tears filled up my eyes and I accelerated the speed. Soon enough I saw a truck coming so sudden. I didn’t know what to do; I was so drunk that I no longer could handle the steering wheel.
With a loud thud the car crashed on a tree; while I tried getting out, the smashed glasses cut me all over, my head banged so hard that the pain was unbearable. I now lay in the pool of blood, little droplets of rain falling on my face. The next moment people started screaming then I was rushed to the hospital. I was pretty sure that no one was coming that moment, “Everyone are enjoying their celebration, who’s going to bother coming” I felt. After I reached the hospital I was rushed towards the Operation Theatre, having lost a lot of my blood, doctors were finding it difficult to operate me with no sufficient blood of my group. To reduce my pain I was given pain killer then I did not realize when I felt asleep. 

Later when I woke up, I was broken; I saw my parents crying. I thought my mom must have been crying for so long, her eyes were extremely red. The thing that hurt me a lot is seeing tears in my dad’s eyes. I also thought that my dad was the strongest person I knew, having seen tears in his eyes and the reason was me. That hurt me the most. I saw my best friend standing beside me saying with tears rolling down, “Enough od Drama! Now wake up and let’s go and gossip and talk all day long.” Then the tears I could not hold it anymore. Then they were forced to stay out because my health was deteriorating.

My heart pained the most that time; doctors were giving me pain killers to help me resist my pain, but the interior pain was unbearable. My parents cried a lot looking at my condition, but I consoled them not to cry. I always had listened to what I feel and reacted according not aware about the reality at all. My parents were giving me less time because they wanted my dream to be a cardiologist to be fulfilled; studying cardiology is not such an easy task, its takes a lot of hard work and finance. My best friend thought I was degrading in studies due to her company and she forcefully had to leave my side. Due to my immature thinking and irrational action I ruined everything.

I apologized but I knew it was already too late. My face was getting sallower and sallower and today all I felt was that I want to live. That entire worried look, my mom’s continuous praying for a miracle, my dad assuring me nothing would happen with tear drops escaping his eyes and my best friend grabbing my hand and sobbing unconsciously. Today I felt my foolishness and immature thinking ruined everything.

Now, I was counting my last breath. I now tried to smile with tears drops rolling all around. Then I said, “I am sorry, I gave you all lots of troubles. But I always and will always love you all.” I now looked towards my best friend and said,” My parents always considered you as their daughter, do me a favor! Look after my parents since I no longer can. ” with this my eyes closed forever, leaving all the people around in agony and unlimited pain. I could do nothing; I could not lift my hand anymore and wipe their tears. I was now forever gone, even if I wanted to live. 

This is the story of not only one teenager who ultimately lost her life just by some misunderstanding, getting involved in hazardous activities. Hence, if a teenager ever has any problem then they should consult with an elder, parents or any trusted one. Life is short and beautiful just by our irrational and immature thinking we should not lead it towards darkness; getting involved in hazardous activities should leads our life to a dead end. People should avoid drugs, smoking and alcohol. Teenagers should not get unnecessarily depressed and try out social evil and ruin their life, they should rather talk about it and leave a happy and better life.

SOCIAL INSTITUTION—MARRIAGE

In most cases, a marriage is arranged by relatives and pals, the persons concerned usually having no choice in the matter. In some communities, betrothal takes place at the age of five or six, and is regarded as binding (marriage follows later). A man may remarry after being widowed, but customs forbids the woman to do so though the laws allow it. Because betrothal takes place so early and whilst a man remarries there is often a great disparity in age between him and his bride, there are many child widows in the tarai region of Nepal. Although occasionally treated with pity and sympathy, they are regarded as persons of ill-women, and are often abused until life is made almost intolerable. 
It was the traditional belief that a woman’s duty to her husband is to bear him sons (not daughters), who may be profitable in life and who can offer panda (small balls of rice placed on the anastral shrine) to him after his death. The law of Manu said, ‘Women were created to be mother’ and the mother is still looked up to buy all right-thinking sons. But the position of a wife may be pitiable if her children are only girls, or if she has none at all. The fact that a doorway must usually be provided when a daughter is married is one very practical reason why parents prefer boys to girls.
Marriage is expected to every Muslim. The Prophet is reputed to have said, ‘Many women who will love their husband and be very prolific, for I wish you to be more numerous than any other people’. A Muslim may have as many as, but not more than, four legal wives at any one time. Apart from these, Muslim women, he may marry Jewesses or Christians and these may continue to practice their own religion, but a Muslim girl may be given in marriage only to another Muslim, and her for her there must be no intermarriage of any sort.
When a man has more than one wife, he is supposed to divide his time equally between them and to treat them equality, if he fears that he will not be. A Muslim may divorce his wife at any time and for many reasons. Divorce caused great suffering to Muslim women today, whereas polygamy is rarely practiced nowadays. It used to happen that a man would try a girl and then after she had borne him several children and become prematurely aged, he would divorce her in favour of another girl. The divorced wife could only return to her father and brothers, to be greeted without enthusiasm and married off, if the opportunity occurred to a second husband, however, undesirable. Such cases are uncommon today. But it is not surprising that Muslim women have no sense of marital security, and normally feel more affinity for their blood relatives than their husbands.

Amar Sherma (Limbu)

This article appeared in Republica on July 16, 2012.

LANGUAGES ARE PROBLEMATIC

amar limbu (immortal)


Language is a system of communication with the "means" of verbal symbols. But language is complex and paradoxical. Hopi, the language of Pueblo Indians of Arizona in the US, consists of various grammars. For instance, the Hopi language doesn't have the same tense system, and a similar expression to express ideas like that of future and neither does the modern English language. They are expressed in different ways. In the Nepali language, there is a future verb but not in English. They express future tense saying either I will go home or I am going home.
On the ground of different grammars of languages, the speakers of different languages have different observations and evaluation of externally or physically similar acts of observation. The Chinese people say that the "grass greens', instead of saying that it "is green". They see 'green' as a process rather than a 'state'. Moreover, Nepalese speakers say 'My brother hungers", and are likely to think that it is brother who does that, and so on. Another striking example of dissecting the nature along the lines of language is with colours. We say there are seven colours because we don't have the idea of other kinds of colours.
Likewise, Black English speakers do not use "if" to make conditional sentences. Rather, they use the rising intonation to signal the conditional connection. In fact, modal auxiliaries in the English language are derived from content words. People can say one thing and mean another. They can use language connotatively, suggestively and in many other ways. Though the English speakers say that they take exams and the Nepalese speakers say that they give exams (as students), some Nepalese say they returned back to their home or home came whereas the English speakers say they arrived home. As we know home is static. It doesn't go and come elsewhere. It is after all the same thing they understand.
Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction who accepts the language as a system of communication, yet extends the problem of it. He claims that the knowledge of language and communicability and its meanings don't give the desired relation. Of course, the knowledge we acquire is not reliable because the language itself is problematic. When the bus we are getting on is not safe, how can you say that you are safe?
Language conveys a number of meanings from time to time and person to person. A question arises: Does the word "communication" give that determined meaning? Western metaphysics believes that communication is a vehicle for thought and passage of meaning. So, communication is polygenic or plural in nature. It is difficult to bridge gap between a reader and a writer. A text is implied by a writer and its readers infer from the text which may be different of the writer. Innumerable meanings can be produced from the text. We can say that communication depends on context but the context is never fixed, hence, communication doesn't communicate. This language is incapable of communication. In addition to these, underlying and surface meaning have, to an extent, helped to simplify the English language. "A fish is ready to eat." It is ambiguous.
We think also that communication conveys the intended meaning, but actually it doesn't. The person who we speak understands it in accordance wit the concept, thinking and context. What matters more is that limitations or orientation in language are not absolute, for, as long as competency is there. Performance will take place in whatever way. This is why it is wise to deconstruct the traditional idea of fixity of knowledge of language and communication capability or meaning. Today's knowledge will be insufficient for tomorrow and tomorrow's for next tomorrow.

THIS ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE NEWSPAPER, REPUBLICA ON JULY 5, 2012.

TOSSING TO BE A TEACHER

Teacher" Sounds normal, the one who teaches, everybody knows it. Once someone said-“Everyone and everything is a teacher”. Sounded normal so didn’t have any note of decent. I nodded yes. There wasn’t any reason to probe whether it's true or false, so I agreed.

"Everyone and everything is a teacher". Why? Now I got a good reason for it.

Being a teacher myself, I feel proud to be called as a teacher but still afraid of not being able to fulfill requisition to be a genuine teacher. I am not teaching my students only the curriculum but also the way I treat people, the way I love people, the way I behave them and the way I speak. My every words count because someone is listening to me, may be trying to improve vocabulary, trying to copy my words. My every activity is being judged and they are likely to be repeated by my learning pupil. The way I walk, clumsy or careful, the way I talk is being imitated. The way I dress is being considered. So, everywhere I am teaching.

I learnt cycling from my friend in an old courtyard of ASON. That was my school and my friend was my teacher.

I learnt to cook food. My mother was a teacher.

I learnt to cry, my pain was my teacher.

May be "Everyone and everything is a teacher".

When I was a student myself, I often used to learn new words from my teachers using in the classroom. Next day the word would come in my exercise book used in sentences.

I was highly influenced by Albert Einstein. He was my childhood fantasy and idol. I wanted to be a scientist and Albert was the one who inspired me because I thought he is a super genius scientist. I was influenced the way he dressed, the way he kept his hair scruffy and the way he wore unpolished shoes. I copied Albert Einstein, I started to be untidy. I let my hair scruffy, left my shoe unpolished………unfortunately I didn’t become scientist. The mistake I committed was; I didn’t copy the way he devoted his time in thinking, reading, investigating and developing theories. He sacrificed luxury to enlighten himself. He gave mare priority to combing hair, polishing shoes and selecting costumes and devoted his entire life in studies and findings. I copied only the things which he thought useless and time consuming, so I failed.

I myself can be an apt example. This way we learn either good or bad. This selection ultimately leads to success and failure of life.

In order to teach, one should not be a teacher. A dog can teach how to recognize its owner where a son doesn’t recognize his father, mother and let them die in an OLD PEOPLES’ HOME. A five years old cutie can teach you how to be happy with her doll in contrast to all available gadgets and possessions we all are eager to compete, buy and to be a so called HAPPY ONE.

It’s all about learning which doesn’t have time bound, no age limitation, no gender prejudice and no racial hatred. Learning is free and inevitable.

At the end…………I dedicate this article to my known and unknown teachers, who and which made me able to write this.

subhash thapa magar