The Night I Slept under a Tree

“Have you ever come across a situation when you felt yourself too vulnerable at the mercy of Mother Nature?” 

Today, I am going to share with you all the “scary” night I slept under a Tree!!   

I am going to walk you through: How I landed in the situation? How I dealt with the situation?

It was in the month of February 2009, I was assigned a task to visit a remote place in Mid Western part of our country. The objective of my task was to supervise and monitor a district wide social program. My destination was a small town called Gamgadi in Mugu district. To reach the destination, I had only two options. The first option was to take a flight from Nepalgunj or Surkhet to Gamgadi or a nearest district Jumla. The second option, the hardest one, was to walk all the way from Surkhet to Gamgadi, Mugu. I chose the second option – to take a flight. After many uncertainties due to rough weather, I could fly to the nearest town call Jumla.

Once I landed in Jumla airport, I immediately headed uphill for Gamgadhi , Mugu, which would take to me 2 complete days. Since it was already late afternoon, I had to speed up my pace. Sky was clear with no sign of clouds. My only concern was that I needed to cross the hill before 5:30 pm. The hill stood towering at an altitude of 3000 m. The uphill ascend was tough – natural cardiac exercise. My target for night halt was Village A. The locals assured me that I can reach the village before night.  At around 5:45 pm, I reached the peak and refilled myself with biscuit. 

After minutes of rest, I walked through the dense jungle. It was dead silent. Now, I could even hear my own breathing and heart beat!! Suddenly, I could feel gush of cold wind and trees began to sway breaking the monotony. Somewhere I got an uneasy gut feeling – what if? After half an hour, I was still in the jungle walking and begin to hear crickets - slowly raising their voice. My god, the visibility was slowly vanishing in front of me. My heart started to beat a bit faster. I prayed, I could meet somebody or even an animal from the nearest village. Sadly, I met nobody. Suddenly, it was pitch black and from nowhere, the whole of jungle was covered in evening fog. Now I was in a mess. No GPS, no mobile tower, no people or animal around!! 

Fortunately, I had a torch but I could not see feet away because the visibility was very poor. I came in an open field. I shouted here and there, hoping someone will hear me. I stayed still, hoping somewhere in the distance I could hear people’s voice or animals. I was also hoped; I could see light in the distance and follow there. I failed and I was loitering here & there for almost one hour. Now I was convinced, I am lost in the wilderness and. I looked at my watch – it was already 9 pm.  I knew, wild bears are rampant and on top of this, there are cliffs nearby. Anyhow, I needed to survive this one night!! I decided to stay under a tree hoping to get cover the whole night.  Sadly, it started to shower lightly. I became wet and fortunately, I had a plastic cover. I used to it along with all the clothes for some warmth. Till 1 am, I could not sleep because the place was getting slippery.

Finally, the only help that I got was at 1:15 am; a lonely horse was came from nowhere and stood beside me the rest of the night. I was so delighted and stayed still for a cover waiting for morning to come.  When the morning welcomed me, I was the happiest person, I survived!!

For me, the lonely horse was the God, no one else!!

ABC

03 August, 2014

BarnaMala: My Journey Learning English

These days I am in total mood to write whatever that pops up in my mind. I am really enjoying the true gift that we as human being are bestowed with and that is language skill. I need to sharpen the writing skills. There is no short cut other than to write, write and write. No less !! Today, let us travel along memory lane - my journey learning English. I have to say up front whatever I learnt basic of English is through “BarnaMala”. Hope some of you remember your childhood, when you hear this word. This word has a Sanskrit root - “BARNA” means letter & numbers, and “MALA” means garland. Therefore, BarnaMala is a garland of letters and numbers in literal sense. It helps you teach your kid read, pronounce and write any letters & numbers in any language in a fun way. For me, learning English was both fun and great learning experience.

In Early 1980s, I developed a deep desire to learn English after I got inspired to speak like any other people, who were speaking good English. In our government school, the only language of teaching and learning was in Nepali. But that would not stop me from learning; people say “Necessity is the mother of invention”.  I began looking for an opportunity to learn English. It is also said, “Prepared mind are lucky for an opportunity”. Wah… what happened was that I was lucky at the same time that my grandmother bought me an English BarnaMala book as a gift from a nearest city.  I was so happy that I literally digested every letters, word and numbers from it. Any chance to converse with trekkers from various countries like Britain, America, and Australia was utilized to its fullest. I wrote ABCDE… whenever I got chance in walls, wooden plank and wherever I could with “stone chalk”.

One day, my enthusiasm was noticed by an Engineer, who visited our village to construct a government building. He volunteered to teach me English and I learnt well. Sometime, I used to see him reading a big thick book and enjoying the stories. I used to love seeing him reading books and I also used to PRETEND I was reading a thick book and UNDERSTOOD everything written on it. But it was not that easy, I had to struggle for long years, so I could read and write meaningfully. It was only when I reached University that I finally felt I understood English well. I came to realize and understood English as the main language of books, newspapers, international business and academic conferences, science, technology, diplomacy, sport, international competitions, music and advertising. I also came to realize that English as a universal language connecting people across different religion, people and geography.

Finally, I am confident & qualified enough to say that my journey learning English language has been a story of every fortunate or unfortunate boys and girls from low income setting with dreams striving to better their life by learning English. I again stress that sharpening your English language skill opens you with a world of immense opportunity. 

A = Apple B = Ball C = Cat D = Dog and E = English 

Thank you !!

My story: Learning English

Let me start with a couple of questions to you all. Can you remember the first sentence that you boldly used or phrased for conversation and felt so happy? For me, I can tell, English is my 3^rd language and the first sentence that I learnt was “My name is ABC”. So story goes like this – I come from a rural part of our country. Our village is located around 300 km away from a nearest city and lies between 2 towering Himalayan ranges – Mt. Dhaulagiri (8,167 m) and Annapurna ranges (8091 m) and Mt. Nilgiri (7,061 m) in the North. Along our village flows a ferocious river named Kali Gandaki, which is both a source of water, inspirations, recreation and sometime, pain & misery due to yearly floods and landslides. 

To reach our village, it takes 6 – 7 hours of rough bus ride from nearest city. But, when we were children, it used to take 4 straight days of walk from morning to evening each day to reach that nearest city. Sometime, one whole day of uphill walk and sometime, one whole day of downhill walk. Life was tough and still, it IS to some of us living there.

In early 1980s, I was studying in a government primary school, where the medium of teaching and learning was only Nepali. In those days, life was beautiful, full of innocence, playing along river, rivulets and jungles that surround our village. I was no different to any child. I was a curious boy with lots of questions.  At that time, we did know much outside our village. We thought this is the only world!! Can you imagine? We did not know what video game is, we have never seen what a TV is like, and we have not seen a bi – cycle or car or a bus. We were living a life of middle ages. Rarely, we used to see some rich people carrying a funny chatter box called TAPE. We used to get so amazed with this fine instrument that we used to follow him hours to get the glimpse of it and hear the NOISE that it produced. And for few days, we used to get hypnotized by the magic that TAPE displayed and used to think hard, “How can any person be so tiny and sing a song from that TAPE?”

With childhood innocence, we grew up together with our friends INNOCENT of outside world of invention and development happening at speedy rate. Fortunately, our land was & is naturally gifted with majestic Himalayan range. Many trekkers and mountaineers visit our village to climb those mountains. We were starting to see them quiet often and used to get amazed at their health, clean dress, shoes and of course, the LANGUAGE they spoke. It was very new to us. One courtesy, we learnt from our seniors at least to say “Namaste to all” who used to stay in our village or met them on the trail. 

One fine day, I was on my way to school and I met a young trekker with a big bag pack and I greeted him saying “Namaste”. He also greeted me back – “Namaste”. After our exchange of good word, he was somehow interested in taking a picture of me. He took my picture and asked me – “what is your name?” But, at that time, we were not taught English so I could not understand but I tried to comprehend what he was trying to say. He also tried very hard to make me understand in sign language. Somewhere by click, I thought, I understood what he was asking, so I boldly said – “ABC”. “Yes” he said and he was very happy finally we could at least exchange few words. He again told me patiently, “Tell me – My name is ABC” several times. After minutes of trial and error, I finally said – “My name is ABC” with mixture of my local accent. He was very happy and gave me a CHOCOLATE as a reward. I also felt very happy and remembered that sentence very dearly with “sweet reward” in mind and heart. 

Thereafter, I began to learn English very hard. I have to say, this beautiful language opened me to world of knowledge, be it science, geography or literature. Without it, I would have been loitering around village till now. Finally, let me say, “Language is the best invention that human beings have invented. There is nothing near to it”.