What gives

"Samay cha samay cha bhandai thiyye, Thaha napayi tyo saal biti gayo, abha tyo saal lai bida garao, ani pasi jao naya saalai ma, hidna lai ishwar ko agwai ma....." Translated reads- "We kept saying there is time..... Unaware,the year has gone by,, Let us bid farewell to the year gone by, and enter the new year, to walk according to the Lord's leading......" Amazingly simple song ,i have heard it every year,sung sweetly by the faithful local church .........every year the people I associate with the song become fewer in number.Every year I listen to it with a totally different heart,it always touches me to see the eagerness of the old faithfuls who have lived the song faithfully all their lives. May it be my prayer for the new year...and a resolution too.

Pastor Paris Lepcha is an original Lepcha from the village of Ringhem in North Sikkim.He is the assistant pastor in our local church.The north of Sikkim has a history of christianity which runs to the 1800s when the first missionaries set foot on the soil ,most of them with their eyes fixed on the tough tibetain plateau .The first christian convert in the north of Sikkim was from the village of Rimghem,in and around 1854,an old Lepcha couple who remained a christian in their lifetime but somehow could not pass it on to the generations that followed. My father rightly observed that hundred years hence, Ringhem has it's second convert and that is pastor Paris Lepcha and his brothers.That is what makes them special.He is an assistant pastor to Rev.Jonathan Lepcha ,who took over the baton from my grandfather. Mangan Local church has developed over the years from being a small local congregation to a church which already has branches in four other places in the North of Sikkim and i...

Was wondering what I had let myself in for when I agreed to spend four days of my short Christmas holidays in Bhutan with my family in exchange for the haven called home.Mymother,sister and my aunt picked me up in Baghdogra for a night of halt at Sikkim house in Siliguri.We mentally geared up for the travel to Bhutan ,a country so close in distance to India and in culture to the land of Sikkim which has a history of matrimonial alliances with the country amongst the royalties then. Phunstoling was a four hour’s drive from Siliguri .We crossed Doars,a stretch of tea estates,Binaguri,where an uncle of mine had been posted as an army officer long back,Jalgaon,a border of sorts infamous for giving shelter to the dissidents from either side of the border.Incidently,it also had a historical connection to my family.My great grandfather,had apparently been a missionary in the area.I heard it for the first time from my sister.Just prior to reaching Jalgaon we lost time about a kilometre t...