www.kalimpong.info

Charisma K. Lepcha

“Kalimpong: where time and tide waits…”

Painting a dreamy picture of this enigmatic haven, Praful a local blogger titles his online journal while describing his hometown. “It is where tourists are seduced by some inexplicable mystique of this sleepy little place. It is where the fun loving locals willingly sketch maps for tourists wanting to go to monasteries. It is also where the pace of life slows down, as people here have “oodles of time because time and tide gently quiver to halt as you enter Kalimpong.”

Remarkably true and many would agree without doubt.

But once a year, this sleepy town redeems itself. It wakes up to prove otherwise and the celebration is more than grand.

Drumbeats welcome the morning sun as the marching steps find rhythm to the swinging arms. School children are up before the rooster crows. With ironed uniforms, polished shoes and perhaps a new pair of socks for the occasion, they line up with their classmates and march towards the one venue where almost all of Kalimpong is bound to assemble.

It is the Mela Ground. Hosting nearly all the major festivities in town, it is a “must-be” location for anybody and everybody. It is the stadium where our fathers played soccer while our uncles cheered with ecstasy. It is the stage where local rockers performed while the fans had their Woodstock experience. It is the podium where politicians made promises while the citizens said Amen to that. It is indeed the same hallowed ground where all school children are amassed to exhibit their marching skills.

Villagers have walked miles and parents have traveled from neighboring countries to witness the grand festivity. School principals have devoted time and teachers have invested energy as students practice with aptness. Vendors have long waited as local restaurateurs prepare to feed the hungry crowd for the day. There is a certain air of anticipation that brings this day. (more…)

Statesman News Service
DARJEELING, March 28. — Despite forceful attempts to open the town by the GNLF, Darjeeling remained closed like most of the Hills today in response to a bandh call by the Opposition parties on the issue of the Cinchona Plantation.
Led by GNLF leaders, Mr Dipak Gurung and Mr Pranay Rai, party cadres went this morning around the town trying to forcibly open the shops. Using heavy hammers they broke open locks of many shops in Chowk Bazar, Ladenla Road, Robertson Road and HD Lama road.
As GNLF cadres appeared to turn destructive, a spontaneous protest rally was brought out by local businessmen in Chowk Bazar. They were afraid of their establishments being ransacked. Eyewitness said GNLF leaders personally assaulted some of the protesters.
As terrorised businessmen scampered away, so did the police force present at the scene.
The role of the police was much criticised, with traders accusing them of being mere bystanders when GNLF cadres ran amok in town breaking shop property.
Even as tension mounted in the town, commercial establishments, including banks, continued to remain closed.
Government offices were also virtually closed and so were most of educational institutions. Despite GNLF-affiliated All Gorkha Hill Transport Joint Action Committee protesting the bandh and promise to keep vehicles plying, roads were largely empty.
This is the second time in as many months that the GNLF has failed to thwart Opposition bandh calls reflecting on their dwindling hold. Kurseong too remained closed today. Kalimpong, where GNLF supporters reportedly came out with kukhris to intimidate people, remained open. However, it was mostly deserted. Notably, the Opposition did not organise any pickets today.
“We had decided yesterday that we will not confront the opposers of the bandh, because this was a trade union related issue,” said Mr RB Rai, general secretary, CPRM.
The bandh was called by United Forum of Trade Unions at Cinchona Plantation to press the government for revival of the institution which happens to be the largest PSU in the Hills. Major Opposition parties, including the AIGL and the CPRM had lent their support to the bandh. The plantation itself remained closed today.
For their turn, Mr Gurung did not agree that the business people today had been made “innocent victims.”
While noting that the state government was already making efforts to revive the Cinchona Plantation, and that the bandh was “unnecessary,” he added: “Only a few businessmen with vested interests today closed their shops.”
The GNLF asserted that “everything, including the Cinchona Plantation” remained open today.
A senior police officer denied that the police had done nothing to stop the GNLF cadres from damaging shops. “We could not be at every place at one time,” the officer noted.

We all know that Kalimpongeys have this special undefinable brand of humor!!

Here are some examples… btw, if you don’t get them.. nothing I can do! Sorry.

New meaning # 1
Condolence- Hi-tech eyewear for your arse !!!

New meaning # 2
Chuiyamaha haha haha Chuiyamaha !!
Tamang dude on a Jap bike laughing away to glory !!!

New meaning # 3
What hairdo? – Kharayo le ke garcha ?

New meaning # 4
Bombastic: Bombasty ko jumra !!!

New meaning # 6
Adidas: it’s when you cut Narayan Das in half !!!

New meaning # 8
Karaoke: Gari thikai cha ??

New meaning # 9
Meaning: Mero naam Ning !!

- Niraj Lama
www.thestatesman.net

Water gives life. But when scarce, makes savages of people. Last week in Kalimpong, the infernal problem of water scarcity drew it’s, perhaps, first blood. There have always been skirmishes among residents of neighbourhoods in hill towns during the lean months. However, murder was unheard of.
According to newspaper reports, two men fought over water in a nearby dhara (spring). Such fights are a daily fact in the hills. No one expected that it would end with one of the men brutally murdering the other.
The incident took place when the town was going through a torrid time. Everyone was complaining about water problems. It forced the normally silent-sufferers to come out on the streets and demonstrate. People with empty buckets marched to the Kalimpong Municipality and gheraoed authorities there.
The water situation is getting worse with every year, because nothing is being done to alleviate the long-standing crisis. The only thing that our ostentatious VIPs who occupy chairs of responsibility can do is look up to the sky and wait for the rains. They do keep up the pretences of course. They will tell you they are talking to this agency and that agency at the Centre, at the state level, and have extracted this and that assurance.
But this brood of so-called authorities are not bothered, which is best exemplified by Subash Ghisingh’s repeated denials of water problems. Until of course, he could not resist the temptation to be present at the foundation stone-laying ceremony for the Balason drinking water project recently, forcing him to grudgingly accept that there is indeed water scarcity in the hills.
However, people of Kalimpong and Kurseong must know that Ghisingh did, on that very occasion, say that these two towns did not have water problems. There was no need for him to make that call when he was actually speaking on the occasion of the Balason project’s unveiling. The only thing that could possibly be the reason for his utterance is to reassure the chief minister that he comes cheap.
While Ghisingh continues to dwell in his make-believe world, our other authorities refuse to move their backsides on the issue because they all have their “special arrangements.” These people either have tankers regularly supplying them water at no cost, less cost or official cost; or, they have illegal hook-ups directly from the water mains.
They have no clue what it is like to regularly have a pile of dirty dishes, dirty clothes, not enough water to cook or bathe, or even shave. How these “authorities” under such bleak circumstances, still go around self importantly this mind will never grasp.
Congratulations to Kalimpong for having organised a demonstration against this glorified ineptitude. (Here and in Kurseong, we just bitch and whine, which reflects more our impotence than anything). Kalimpong citizens have always been more responsible, ready to defend their rights and self-respect when challenged.
Recently, a retired-marine engineer from Kalimpong took a well-known private bank to the district consumer court for delay in services. The district court ended up ordering the bank to pay compensation for the harassment caused to the customer. How many of us like the engineer would bother to complain? In other words, how many of us possess the integrity and the self-respect to revolt against things that demean us?
For two decades now we have been humiliated by having to wash, cook and bathe with a water supply that is nearly 70 per cent below the national average. We have been reduced to existing like savages. Or is this the precursor of things to come under Sixth Schedule tribal living?

www.telegraphindia.com

Kalimpong, March 13: This year’s World Theatre Day (March 27) will have a special treat for the cultural circle of the hill town — a six-day theatre festival.

Organised jointly by the information and culture department and a local theatre group, Bhadreko Toli, the Kaleybung Natak Utsav will start on March 27. “This is the first time that a theatre festival is being organised here. The best part of the festival is that it will not only have Nepali plays but also those in Bhojpuri, Hindi and Bengali,” said P.D. Bal, the subdivisional information and culture officer. (more…)

www.telegraphindia.com

Bingbong (Kalimpong), March 8: Women of Sangse gram panchayat, 12 km from Kalimpong, today kept alive their decade-long practice of celebrating International Women’s Day.

Women from all the eight villages in the panchayat area together organised the programme with a gusto that was missing in Kalimpong. (more…)

 For Pradhan special effects like those have nothing to do with Computer Generated Imagery. Remember the painted backdrop of the song Kuch Na Kaho in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 1942-A Love Story? Or the sensuous lighting in the love-making sequence in Chopra’s Parinda?

Pradhan’s camera work in RDB is comparatively subtle. He’s got the grammar of his craft—right from the hues, palette, lighting, camera speed and movement—down pat. But the most defining visual aspect of RDB is the way he shot sequences of the freedom movement. ‘‘Most people would’ve shot it in sepia tones. I visualised the scenes as if they were old black and white photographs that have turned yellow with time,’’ he explains.

(more…)

www.telegraphindia.com

Kalimpong, March 6: Himalayan Organisation for People’s Education (Hope) plans to involve residents and unemployed youth in a project to keep the town clean.

“We have just started a pilot project at Topkhana, here, yesterday,” said president of Hope C.K. Shrestra. “Depending on the success of the project there, we plan to carry it out in other areas, too.” (more…)

www.telegraphindia.com

Kalimpong, March 3: A three-day children’s film festival held at Town Hall here concluded today with the screening of Chicken Little.

Organised by the state information and culture department, the festival aimed at giving children studying in primary schools in the rural areas nearby the opportunity to watch movies on the big screen. (more…)

www.telegraphindia.com
REZA PRADHAN

Kalimpong, March 2: Visitors to the archery competition held at Bombasti here yesterday were greeted with the sight of foreigners taking aim dressed in traditional Lepcha costumes.

The hospitality of the people of the hill town has earned them a few friends from across the ocean who have decided to work voluntarily as teachers in rural schools. “More and more people from Europe are now coming here and helping as volunteers,” said Thendup Tshering Lama, assistant regional director, Africa and Asia Venture, an NGO based in England. “Earlier, they would go to Himachal Pradesh and Nepal. We brought them here for the first time in 2003 and since then, they keep coming back.” (more…)