There are people who look at negative side of everything
and they love criticizing things. There are also people who see the positive
side and love appreciating things. Those who see positive sides are found to be
more optimistic, confident and social. I want to be that guy who looks positive
side of the things. People say there is no career and future in Manipur, there
is no growth of industries, there is no job, government officials, departments
and ngos are corrupt and law and order is not good etc,. However, I see
positive side and have been working here for almost one year. I am seeing the
positive changes happening around and meeting wonderful people who are smart,
sincere, industrious and willing to accept the challenge and bring development
to our home state. There are so many good things happening around but we ignore
or just don’t give proper attention to those. When I started appreciating those
good things, I started seeing a good future which many people don’t see.
But it doesn’t mean I don’t see, feel and experience
negative things happening in our society which are acting as bottle neck to our
development. There can be two reasons for not functioning a computer, one is
problem in hardware and another is problem with software. The problem with our
society is with the software part. When I say software part, I mean the way we
think, the value we give to things and things that we appreciate and how we
define happiness. In this short article I don’t want to bring everything at one
time. When I try to be realistic rather than being a blind optimist, I find few
disturbing things which I think we should change it.
It is a festival season, so let me focus only to our
greatest festival Yaoshang. Here I am not saying anything on religion. And
views are personal, you may have different view, and you don’t have to accept
what I am saying here.
Yaosang is resemble to Holi festival of India, festival of
colours. In Manipur, it is quite different therefore saying Yaoshang is similar
to Holi is wrong. Yaosang is indeed bigger and more beautiful than Holi. Yaoshang
is celebrated for five days. It is not only playing with colours, it is a
mixture of sports, colours, get together, dinner parties and lot many things. When
you see small cute kids coming to your house with beautiful dresses and
abundant of happiness in their pure and innocent faces, and when they give you
blessing for the little money you give to them, you will feel as if God itself
is giving you his blessings. There are other many things which adds beauty to
this festival.
But, there are few things that we should avoid. Two days
back I went to home, it is 50 Km away from the place where I am staying. It is
a national highway which also connects two major city of Manipur. Yaosang is
not yet started, but I found young girls, age between 12 – 18, coming on the
road and blocking the commuters and asking for money. Isn’t dangerous? How come
their parents allow such things to do by their daughters? If it is not in the
name of Yaoshang festival, will their parents allow them to do such things? In
Yaoshang, it is a part of the festival to ask money from commuters. I have
heard passenger vehicle drivers cursing those kids and their parents, if any
accident happens their parents will blame only to the driver.
Why our happiness is causing lots of disturbance to others? Why
can’t we teach our children not to disturb others for getting the happiness we want?
There are many friendly and lovely method for raising fund, why don’t we teach
those to our kids? Our Elders teach their Youngers to take the easy route, to
snatch if they don’t give, to cause disturbance for getting our benefit. That
might be the reason we are so good at forming JAC and blocking the road,
without having an empathy that their action is causing lots of disturbance to the
many innocent commuters.
