In
Praise of Salmons
Tashi Wangdi
Sometimes I am grateful to the many benefits and
opportunities I take for granted. Nobody wants to know or investigate how and
when we were fortunate to be beneficiaries. It is always owed to a few people,
unsung and yet unmindful, who had the moral uprightness to stand up for what
they believed as unjust, unwarranted such that it changed the course of our
lives for better. These people lead their lives without the pomp and ceremony
only to speak when the equilibrium of their scales get upset.
I like to refer to this tribe of people as salmons, the fish that swims
upstream to spawn after travelling across oceans. What feat of nature or
madness of flesh that salmons must endure thousands of miles of journey and
predators along the way only to swim against the current and give birth where
its own life once began. Thus continuing a natural heritage and imprinting the
future generations with the same genes.
Most of us are happy in a herd and go where others go. Our direction is
bereft of independent action and limited to that of the herd. We take the
softer option, pluck the low hanging fruit and walk the much-traversed path.
Our souls are anemic, irreverence is not our creed, stubbornness of heart not
an ideal and perseverance not cheered upon.
Unbeknownst to most of us it is this very irreverence, stubbornness and perseverance
of these salmons so adept in swimming up current that ironically ensures that
people like you and I continue to live in our cushioned world without exertion
or need to invoke our rights. To have a meaningful progressive society it is
therefore imperative to have the naysayers, to ponder on an alternative view
and champion an incorruptible voice of courage.
One such salmon I know swims everyday upstream in the streets of Gangtok
and our well being as Sikkimese people, however immediate or remote is somehow
somewhere connected to his very existence and his name is Jigme N. Kazi. He is
the holder of our conscience and keeper of our stories. There could not have
been a more apt tribute than Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, the author of “Smash and
Grab – Annexation of Sikkim”, a Bible for Sikkimese students in those days,
when he anointed him as a true and loyal
son of Sikkim.
(Courtesy: TALK SIKKIM, The People’s
Magazine, Vol. 6. No. 5, September 2013)
