The Centre fruit Ambassadors

Many a time, when I am out for a shopping spree, I end up receiving centre fruit - the most ubiquitous Indian-made chewing gum in our indigenous marketplace- in exchange for my balance money. When I am on a roller coaster ride of ‘retail therapy, I don’t even mind brooming all those colourful tasty rubber from the counter table and instead, entomb those incidents into the wallet of forgotten stories.

Because there’s nothing that we can do at our own disposal, it is by far, easier and cheaper to fall prey to this formulaic business ethos of accepting the colonization by gum money. Our native retailers and entrepreneurs have largely consumed this as a commercial right ever since our coins or (the less usage of currency with lower denominations) vanished into thin air from circulation in the economy.

In the nations abroad, the primary lifeline of the economy and of course the delivery of various public services are sustained by the obtainability of huge volumes of coins. Transactions are rapid, businesses are swept, and service deliveries are elegant, since the value of money, either to be paid or received, can be easily translated by using the coins. 

But in our marketing picture, in the absence of having no coins or denominations that can substitute our exchange, we either risk surrendering the commodities, thereby triggering the anger dynamite of the shopkeepers, or wait for them or run ourselves to nearby shops and persons to rescue us in finding convertible payable amount. 

If the use of the coins in our business fair is still prevalent, the purpose of minting our coins will be served besides aiding to reserve its flow and make it visible for all the generations. It is nevertheless, acceptable for this generation to know that the Bhutanese coins existed, but it would be painful that the forthcoming generations would not even hear of its fateful existence, let alone see it. 

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Till the homecoming of our coins into the theatre of economy, the salespersons can dance on their feet as ardent Centre fruit ambassadors, either by design or by accident. While it is certain that the gum money given to compensate our balance money cannot be used to purchase the goods even from that same shop where we obtained it, as a customer, the least we can do is to forcefully never forget the revolutionary story of centre fruit progress, in terms of its colour, size and taste.

“God is not against money, He is against the money being used outside His purposes”- Sunday Adelaia

The Philosophic Calmness

A student of grade 9 hit me with a blackboard duster right on my face while he was playing with his friend, as I was about to enter the class to teach Physics after the morning recess. Though I succumbed to the pain of that semi-wooden duster, seeing the inflamed face of the child with fear and guilt, I rather crafted some irrelevant flesh of conversation with the class to settle the dust of fear in the mind of that student. Subsequently, that episode of the woeful incident was altogether translated into ancient history and thus remained completely forgotten.

And bizarrely the wick of my temper, which normally is highly inflammable and explosive was frozen during that moment by remembering the word, “The Philosophic Calmness” as described in the book, “Disturbing the Universe” by Freeman Dyson.

Within the small canopy of my forbearance, I tried to view that unfortunate accident by my student with calmness and then hyperlinked to the things I did as a student 12 years ago. In doing so, the realization equation I established was that all he did was the mere manifestation of the teenage mischiefs.

In the crux of psychology, he was rightfully playing a healthy role as a juvenile by portraying the rudimentary teenage characteristics. He was demonstrating the behaviours that were expected to witness during that age. In other words, he was modestly living his youth.

However, the unremitting inflammatory sensation of pain on my face which was further galvanized with an embarrassment for dishonouring me and the classroom rules necessitated me to bathe him using the soap of positive disciplining so as to curb the future relapse.

I am narrating this story of mine not because it recounts the ritualistic behaviour of our students in today’s classroom but, it clothes itself with some flesh of profound punchline. The message, if consumed on proper prescription would overwhelmingly aid (we as parents) as a tangible alternative in understanding our adolescents. 

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In contrast to this incident, sometimes when the students embroil into a business that is legally grave, disciplinarily sensitive and societally intolerable, the parents are often summoned to take up the baton of accountability for their child’s gaffe. During such times, the parents blame the school organization regarding the penalties imposed for the wrongdoings, not realizing that it is intended to lesson the wrongdoers and threaten others to refrain from committing the same. 

In some situations, the parents aggravate the conditions of the child with additional humiliations and apprehensions. They do not view with a certain degree of calmness that it is the way of growing up. So, we need to accept that it is sometimes OK to be caught puffing off or taking a sip or caught dating, after all, how fun-less would life be without the excitement of living it your way, the guilt of breaking the rules, and fear of being caught and the consequences that follow.  

  

Because we have gone through that same stage of troubling our parents as a teen, we should realize and view with a philosophic calmness that, so long as the child does not cultivate a criminal mindset, a certain degree of impishness during adolescence is anyhow acceptable. Having said this, even at one’s narrow interpretation, it must not be misunderstood as cheering to buoy up those disruptive behaviours in our youths. In simple language, as responsible guardians, we ought to respect the age they are going through. Using one’s own philosophic calmness, we have to understand that they are teens and that they are undoubtedly living their age.

“Calmness is the cradle of power” – J. G Holland

Why Enabling Conditions?

For over some months, numerous inevitable factors have cocooned and fenced my energy and enthusiasm to work on my dreams to a dead full stop. And consequently, each day, it became a ritual for me to amputate the limbs of my dream that was woven many moons ago. Regrettably, by now, most of my resolutions are at standstill. 

This process of amputating my dreams all started after I got the new placement on my return from my studies.  A great deal of stuff has to be removed from my resolution basket owing to an inescapable tempest of disappointment triggered due to this dreadful posting. A series of my professional plans and activities have suffered a huge massacre, let aside the burial of my personal imaginings. In the simplest equation, it became a bedrock cause to engulf all the ‘enabling conditions’ for me to execute my plans, both professional and personal. 

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Today, I have learnt that just having a sketch for myriads of a plan to do something is never sufficient. Domestic comfort is absolutely necessary if one wishes to deliver the best of our professional services to the optimum level. Otherwise, when one is deprived of such luxuries, even in the timid heart of a poor man, the seed of hostility and imperviousness grows. So, it is vital for one to have those enabling conditions to make the pictures of our dreams transpire to a full life. Enabling conditions are indeed equivalent to the salt in the curry of fulfilling one’s dream. 

However, when those enabling conditions have to pass through the teeth of people on the power and greed, even the strongest fibres of the blueprint to do something either suffer from a fatal bite or croak undigested. And such abortion of plans due to those external threats is so painful and disgusting. 

I have survived those fatal bites for the last 8 years in the service. I am, even at this present moment, sustaining it. I have echoed my dreams of growing tall to those powerful ‘responsible ears’, to which few heard but ignored, while some turned a cold shoulder. But each phase of those dramas is all scripted into the library of my memory, which one day, will feature in a form of fiction.

As of now, I am enduring with wounded dreams, praying to the Almighty to grant me an enabling condition, at least to enable me, craft those factual stories of mine to a fiction- after all, all fictions are based on facts.     

“Success is a science; if you have conditions, you get the result”- Oscar Wilde.