this time when i went home i had taken a small Dictaphone with me. this is basically a device people used to record voice memo etc. i didn't know as to how and where i would use it when it took it. but when i was in the village after sae thum etc people would sit together in the evening and there were some singing and general conversations. during these gatherings i recorded some songs and also some old stories retold by elders. i tried to record some of my conversation with my mother also but Dictaphone ran into problems so couldn't record it all. i wish i had more time at hand and a good recording device. point i am trying to make is that we have our history mostly in oral tradition and today's gap between generations is ensuring that we would not be able to pass on much of it to next generation. normally i have seen that every wedding has video coverage today and which i believe does concentrate mostly on song and dance stuff. these gatherings are really the places where one can record quite a bit of this history in sings and banter of older people. i hope the people who are going to get married this season and people who are going to attend these wedding can find ways to record some of it. just hoping. also i was talking to one of my elderly Bhai saheb (phal singh rautela ji) and was exhorting him to write his own autobiography. thats one way we would get some of that history. i think we all should tell our elderly people ( at least the literate ones) to spend sometime in recording their past into some journals etc. even if they are not published they will make interesting cross references for future generations. we are working on digitizing this stuff and put them on the site later in some edited form.

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I was going thru new uploads in photo section. There are some nice photos of our young ones. They all look like ( or try to look like) latest bollywood sensations. This i guess is the trend that has gone on for generations in our little town. There was time of rajesh khanna, amitabh...now it is turn of the rithiks of the world. When i look back to my adolescence days, i think maybe i too was wanting to do all that but couldn't do it as my parents didn't have money to accessorize me back then. But i think given the choice between these accessories and sports equipment i normally would have gone for sports equipment or books. ( i did hanker for my first pair of jeans and disco shirt for a long time though ). What makes me ponder over this major preoccupation of young ones with fashion and other things is that all this is alright as long as they also follow their passion. Everyone should have some passion in life, some driving force. looking like rithik will help only when you can achieve what rithik has achieved or at least 10% of it also will do in real life. In my opinion this the balance is what is missing in our dharchula environment. As you see the children of people who are staying in cities they are better balanced in their approach to life but in dharchula we still have children whose minds are fogged with different ideas ( excepting the idea as to what they want to do and realization if they have the talent to do it or not). I indulge in this thinking aloud process, if my thoughts echo with yours , i hope maybe you could make difference to the life of someone you know. I remember advising a few of the young friends many years back and I am happy to see that some found right direction in life and have managed to achieve something for themselves. The credit is all due to them for what they did to achieve the results, i am just happy to think maybe some of my words or deeds played a miniscule part in it. Just hoping for a day when i go back to dharchula and see it as a town with young people buzzing with energy and activities that would change their own and our community's future for better.

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khaaye...kha lhyang ... i wonder what will happen.... que sera sera.... whatever will be, will be ; that seems to be the answer. everyday morning i wake up for another day on planet earth. life has set into routine, morning tea, newspaper, ablutions and then rush thru breakfast.  the day actually begins for me when i enter office and sit in front of my computer. thats when i start being myself, my e mails, my blog, my favourite web sites. its like till then i was just bootstrapping myself and now all my programs have come alive. if i wasn't living in these times, i wonder what drab life would have been :)

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