Service and its return
It has almost been nine years that I started serving community on selfless foot, which started with the initiation of The Shangrila Sandesh monthly newspaper. Even before that as a child rights activists and HIV AIDS awareness campaign volunteers, my service to the community continued for four years. Subtracting one year of overlapping my service at TSS and HIV AIDS volunteerism, I have received not a penny in the last 12 years.
In contrast, had I summed up my monetary expenditures, it will cross well over 200,000 in Nepalese currency. Family pressure to leave the work and health damage all through these years are never taken into consideration. Can anyone believe how malnourished had I gone in my early days of these services? When I passed my secondary level, my weight was 36 kg.
It was my tryst to get organized for social cause – public awareness. My involvement in awareness campaign for child rights gave me impetus on importance of media for public awareness on any issues. Well before me and my nearest friend Tej Man Magar (now in Germany) began publication of TSS, we had attempted similar publication through the formation of Bhutanese Youth Literary Forum but failed due to fund crunch. My tryst with TSS was rather quite successful until I remained in Jhapa but I am very much panicked when I heard the closure of the paper whose whole responsibility was handed over to C. N. Timsina and Indra Timsina yet I appreciate their effort to keep it alive.
My efforts for bigger media campaign could not be materialized through the formation of Bhutan Press Union. As a young boy, my repeated appeals for regular activities were turned down by BPU seniors though it was me and Tej Man who coined the need for such an organization. The only option for me to put my plans into action was formation of APFA.
With the formation of APFA, media in exile took a magic turn, in fact, I say it proudly. Most of my earnings in Kathmandu have been invested in APFA activities but I never came to public as APFA executive. I had experiences of living several hungry nights and days as I invested all my earning to APFA. In one instance, I even failed to get Rs 500 credit from my nearest neighbor whom in promised to pay in week’s time. That’s how APFA came to surface but I never. I remain hid and many of the reporters working with us did not know who I am.
I wished to work as backbone, which now I think has turned to be bad for me. It was my compulsion and still is. Fruits of my hard work were being reaped away. There are rare people who know of my contributions and efforts. The more I worked, more I became panicked, miserable. My economic conditions further worsened and my health continued deteriorating.
Of late, I began to feel being sidelined and ignored, which has exhausted my energy for additional social service. Rejection of my proposals for good works, lack of cooperation and support from whom I seek are some of the reasons I remain quite desperate and silent these days. Most reports that I prepared over the last few years had to be a personal toil. I think, it is due to differences on how an advocacy is done. I believe in production of reports, based on fact, not at least surfacail, and then countering the facts produced by the Bhutan government. Whether I am wrong or my approaches, I only face rejection to my missions. Yet I don’t get suggestions on them. Most reports produced in APFA’s name have to be finalized with my single efforts. It is my claim that more than 75 percent of the news produced from APFAnews and BNS are my creations, yet I get little credits for all those efforts and far less support.
I fell now that time has come to see for personal future as well. 12 years of service, not only physical but with personal investments, yielded less fruits for me. I promoted many from who I received nothing, not even thanks. Hopes have all gone, and likely that they will be regain only for personal benefits.
One thing I learnt by this time is: work is not how people are recognized. The more you talk, people pull you to the top of the list even with little contribution. I lack skills to talk and thus is why I am sidelined.