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)