The Sherpa Ponbo of Sherpagaon: The Last Keeper of the Invisible World

When I stepped back onto the village road, motorcycles continued to pass, children still laughed somewhere down the slope, and neighbours greeted one another before continuing home. Nothing suggested that, inside one ordinary house, sat the last practicing Ponbo of Sherpagaon, holding a lineage preserved not through books but through memory, apprenticeship, and family. Whether another Ponbo will emerge after Pemsangay Sherpa remains unknown. But one thing is certain: traditions disappear long before the last practitioner dies, when their stories are no longer remembered.

Read More

Dazzling Darjeeling

Lodhoma Quarantine Facility – Amidst beautiful mountains

A one of a kind quarantine facility has been set up in a football field by the local villagers of Lodhoma, for their residents returning home. The said Quarantine Facility has been temporarily constructed using locally available materials like bamboo and tarpaulins. They have been supported by Rammam Hydel Project, WBSEDCL.


Karna Thami Sir – In Memorium: वरिष्ठ साहित्यकार कर्ण थामी प्रति नेसासको श्रद्धाञ्जली

TheDC team joins Nepali Sahitya Sammelan Darjeeling in mourning the death of our Sahitya Akademi Awardee Karna Thami sir. He was one of the pivotal figures in the Nepali Bhasa Manyata Abhiyan – which was instrumental in getting Nepali language recognized under the VIIIth Schedule of our Constitution.


In Memorium: Kumar Subba

There was something about the voice that felt so heavenly the first time I heard it in the National Panasonic tape recorder that my family had recently bought back in the mid 1980s. I was barely 12 then, and I had just started listening to greats like Mohd Rafi and Kishore Kumar, along with new singers like Kumar Sanu and Udit Narayan Jha. However, the Nepali songs like the ones sung by the legendary Kumar Subba were something else, and they swam through my cerebral cortex like a wakeful dream, the lyrics, the voice quality, the music notes, all easy on the ears and relaxing me to the hilt.