Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Wish you a Happy Good Yaoshang!



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.