What gives

You paint life's picture With myriads of emotion. You started work With an object in mind. Unaware, unknowingly You've portrayed your persona In colours of feeling And sentiments That filtered throughYour mind While you were at work. That extra stroke . . .. . . that excess shade Reeks of you As the words you speak Don't And perhaps will never do. Chering Tenzing Copyright ©2009 Chering Tenzing

Alone by: Chering Choden Tenzing I stand alone here amidst cannon balls and gunshots that whizz past me. screams that defy reason and people unable to see. "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." Oh lord why did you have compassion on me??? Copyright ©2009 Chering Choden Tenzing

Eversince I have come to Jharkhand ,I have been in the middle of an exciting poutpourie of events ,sometimes too stark even to entertain for too long.I come from Sikkim where a single murder gets discussed for generations,the pot-boiler for the season would be a group of children entering a shop at an odd hour to do away with the hard-boiled sweets from the vendors. Here in Palamu.every other day , some kind of anti-social activity goes on.There are several takes to it-that is what I found out over the years and so now I take special pains to get an opinion from everyone I come across,whether it be the poor villager who walks into the hospital, our drivers or my maid and then there is the local paper which has it’s own take –the TV channels seldom give us the in-depth ground reality-it’s just ‘bomb blast in Chiaki railway station in Dto by the naxals’,etc. Take for instance the now existent indefinite bundh in Palamu.Nothing moves when there is a naxal bundh here. Why was there a call ...

It's election time in India-you listen to the news and you shudder to think what kind of governance we'll be looking at in a month's time!Everyone predicts a hung parliament-everyone is making the wrong type of noises-noone sounds sane anymore. Indian democracy-the largest democracy but must be the maddest too. Here in JKD,the place is in the news for sure,albeit for all wrong reasons.My school friend in Doha sends a message asking about my well-being-she is relatively new to the idea of my being in the middle of all the chaos. The district has been in a state of freeze for a month now. My heart-felt prayer for the moment is -'Oh lord,please restore some kind of sanity to this entire electoral process and for once let everyone when they say- "country first"-truly mean it'. We do not want to end up like our neighbouring states.

Second year into the leadership at Nav-jivan,the audit is over.I scan the reports of the various departments-criss-cross of figures formally put across professional account's lingo.I am learning and have learnt to interpret it quite well.I am not a left dominated person by nature-I am a dreamer,a poet and I am more comfortable with the fuzzy things in life. The auditor sits across the table and beams a bright smile and says -good job!! Who is he talking to I wonder for a moment!. I see a trail of faces in the canvas of my memory of the past two years-Albert,Colin,Jone Wills,Augustine,Emmanuel...and now Pramoth.All administrating to the best of their abilities under extremely difficult,difficult circumstances. I was the one who had it easy-I had that deep,deep assurance , I just had to stand in obedience. Thank you lord-for making us a part of this process.

Was it yesterday? We walked the streets like vagabonds, Eating half-crushed samosas over sweetened cold-drinks, Between procedures and gallons of patients literally. Sat by the road-side dhaba drinking coffee from tumblers, The vendor mixing the coffee from one feet high As the froths settled on the surface,steaming sweet. Dragging our beddings to the roof-top ,counting stars in the night. Aurion,dog-star,venus…..endless sparks in the dark,dark sky. Voices of our culture,background,individuality….all melting …into that single quest we had for discovering our humanity. Was I different then?I thought not- till I saw people who looked exactly like everyone else stop at whatever they were doing -to stare at me.

Epil is a colleague who has worked with me in the hospital where I am now.A conceintiuos doctor,involved to the point of taking responsibilities much beyond her duty.She is a good doctor.She had to shift base after marriage to be with her husband.She stopped working for almost a year.When she visited us after marriage she seemed to have lost touch with medicine so I suggested she join up some hospital near her home. She gave a serious thought to it and she called me up to give me the news that she had got a job in the government primary health care centre ,fifteen minutes walk away from her home.I was glad that she would be in touch with medicine again. After being at work for a month she called me up again. The first day she joined the set-up she got a word of advice from the doctor who had already been there for umpteen number of years.-‘Don’t do a good job of the work you are doing-don’t spend too much of time with the patients or else everyone will want to see you and you will e...