Nawang P Phuntsho

Rural-urban migration is a good indicator of many things gone wrong. People just do not leave their ancestral homes without solid reasons.  In Bhutan there is an old proverb, which goes rang yue zampai woglu inru ga (རང་གཡུས་ཟམ་པའི་འོག་ལུ་ཨིན་རུང་དགའ།) – one would love his/her village even if it is located under a bridge. And that says a lot. People just don’t abandon their homes without concrete reasons!  And some of us blame these people as if most we are born and bred here altogether. I think when people make that big move of abandoning their ancestral homes and leave for cities, they will have thought a lot about it. People just don’t leave their homes!  My grandmother, after spending many years in the city, with her sons, and daughters and grandchildren, two years ago, decided to go home in  the village. That is where her heart really is although half her children and almost all her grandchildren are in the city!  That goes to show how ...

This is in continuation of my previous post where I mention that with the onset of winter the potholes on some sections of our roads "are finally giving us true pictures of how deep they are as the water in them dry up."  Like the dust in the air, potholes are undesirable; they are nightmares for the drivers, fatal for the cars and spell danger for the pedestrians. I say dangerous because there are chances that drivers might lose control of their engines while trying to avoid these potholes and such incidences would lead to loss of human lives.  We all know that the Department of Road (DOR) is doing an excellent job in building our roads. And the magnitude of the work they are executing everywhere, even as I type these lines, is truly impressive. Thank you, DOR for that.  And potholes, I believe, are like wounds on a human body. If we take care of wounds from the beginning and treat them with care, they heal in time. Such wounds, when healed, leave no vis...

It's been a long and unforgivingly wet summer! Now, our wet roads are drying up. Our swollen rivers are subsiding. Our muddy footpaths are solidifying. Potholes are finally giving us true pictures of how deep they are as the water in them dry up.  And our biggest fear now is the rising level of air pollution.  Winter scares me for it brings more than cold weather; it scatters plenty of dust and pollution in the air. Why do we have so much dust in Thimphu? I think dust is in the air mostly because of so many construction sites. They dump the unrequired mud everywhere. Sands, gravels, and cement are left in the open air. While we may not be able to stop people building houses, don't you think we need stricter (assuming we have one at the moment) rules on this?  Because we cannot see it with our eyes, we believe we live in a place devoid of pollution. At Babesa, for instance, due to numerous construction projects, our clean verandahs are lade...