My Limitless Gratitude to Mother BHUTAN:

(A Letter to to A Mother)

Dear  Mother Druk Yul,

It's been nearly three months that I have taken leave of you, physically only, never ever mentally. For that can never be! I am still unemployed as I should be. You want to know why? For the simple reason that my appointment anywhere would have thrown me headlong into the hustle and bustle of a mechanical life. I'd have had little time to reflect on how much I owe to you. THERE IS A GOD ABOVE. He is watching our every move. He wants me nerve ever to forget my gratitude to YOU, MOTHER BHUTAN, better known as The Happiness Country. You have loved me unconditionally, generously, given me more than I could have asked for, instilled self-belief in me, making a man of me in the process.

Let me tell you, Mother, that my first remembrance of electronic goods happened when my Barda, eldest brither, would come down to India, all the way from Australia. He would cram his leather suitcase with staff like calculation, DVD Player, digital camera, 6” TV (it had a name!), electronic watch, taperecorder and what not! It is human nature that instead of showing our gratitude, we always tried to find faults with those foreign gifts! I for one, misused the watches, calculators and even the tape recorder he must have taken a lot of trouble to pack his suitcase with! We humans are weird, queer, the most ungrateful creatures. We expect others to be grateful to us for ever, being mindful, at the same time, to show the least bit of gratefulness to others!

Anyway, as I was telling YOU-  the first person to introduce me to electronic goods, was my Barda. But the first one to introduce me to the IT world, was no less a human for me. I have always considered her to be a mother figure. She is none other than YOU, THE BLESSED COUNTRY.

The year was 1997. I had just been taken up to the high school in Bumthang when towards the fag end of the year, it was made mandatory for both the teaching and the non-teaching staff to attend the 5-day IT Workshop. If my memory serves me right, some students were also introduced to the world of the information technology at the sane time. We had to go down, after school, to the post office for the course in batches of 8-10. It, I mean, the experience was great fun. A lifelong learning process, in the truest sense. We learnt how to open an account with Yahoo.Com; how to write an email and send it to friends to every nook and cranny of the world; learnt new terms like ‘the computers’,’ the mouse’,‘inbox’,’chatting’ and a lot more. The 5-day Workshop was what landed us on the very promising, exciting Land of the ICT. As the seeds were firmly sown, it was only a matter of time before we started sprouting like there was no end to learning about the big, vast World of ICT.

It was much later when I was working at CCS, Chukha, that my nephew, a computer engineer himself, while on a visit to YOU, The Last Shangrila, showed me the way to Facebook. The world couldn't have been the same anymore after that, could it?

Today, if I have become widely known, if I can do the basics of computers without seeking help from anyone, if I can channelize all my energy for various purposes to various channels of the social media, to curb my anger, frustration, sadness and envy; it is all thanks to YOU- MOTHER BHUTAN, for you have been no less for me.

May you grow in strength and stature, year after year. May you make a man of many RNBs like me. May the Sun of Peace, Progress, Prosperity never set in YOU, The truly Blessed Country in the World.

With heartfelt admiration, love, devotion and reverence,

I remain,

Yours till eternity

Rathin Bhattacharjee