It was just another March morning. My eyes were half awake and my fingers were already scrolling the phone screen shuffling between the headlines and news articles corresponding to my conventional practice of starting a day. Just then, I happened to come across a picture of a bhangera – sparrow. The moment hit me hard somewhere and took me for a long travel down my memory lane.
A roundup of this week’s political events and stories from Darjeeling
Back in 2017, when the agitation of Gorkhaland was going strong. People were killed, jailed, the internet was banned but the hope then was strong. At least for me- I had an entrance exam at Shillong. A good escape from the reality of being inept to the land, which I loved the most.
Damber Singh Gurung was the only Gorkha in the nation’s Constituent Assembly, which was setup to draft the Constitution of Independent India. It is in his name that Kalimpong’s famous Damber Chowk has been named… Yet there was no commemoration of his birth anniversary
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.
For many TheDC might just be a page and a website posting news. But if you look deeper enough, it is a voice – yours, mine and everyone else’s. It represents independence, freedom and truth even when there have been uncountable attempts to shut it down and destroy it. It represents hope to endure, with nothing in hand but a pen, passion, an idea and the truth.
There’s not one but three good news for Darjeeling. Fashion influencers namely Nirjal Basnet, Priyam Yonzon and Shrawan Chhetri will be seen on national reality show “Myntra Fashion Superstar” season 3 airing on November 11, 2021 on Voot and Myntra App.
Rubi Kumari Prasad an alumnus of St. Michael’s and St. Teresa’s school has been selected to participate in the Senior Women National Championship, which is a gateway to National Team selection.
People around the world create fences, walls, and boundaries, not so long ago in our villages of Darjeeling and Kalimpong we did it too, although naturally!
Much has been said and written about the so-called ‘Permanent Political Solution’ from many quarters. There are online discussions, zoom meetings, and political rallies galore, on ‘Permanent Political Solution’ (PPS). Some seem to believe it will be the panacea to all the issues confronting our region and people, while others believe it will be just another ‘Hawa-Mithai’.