My childhood in Nuwakot

This is a photo where I used to play hide and seek in my child hood, so I am used to missing those places. These places are still energizing me a lot. I got a chance to capture those places in last winter season. This is a river side in village. I and my friend used to fishing there, too. In our holiday times, we used to go there for entertainments. These places are not much far from my home and it is very famous for not only entertainment but also for irrigation. With the help of the water current from this river, people have produced electricity.

In this photo, you can see pure and natural water flowing. This is upper portion of the river. After flowing from this higher belt, it reaches to the lower belt in our area. The temperature of these water is not much low even in winter season and not much high even in hot season. These are originated in the higher forest area. Although these are just small rivers in arid season, but after mixing with different river, their size sometimes troubles farmer for crossing. It becomes great affliction for farmers and civilian in summer season due to its high current of water and deep, though somewhere, they have bridge there.

My Walks of Village, Nuwakot, Nepal.

Figure 1: Nuwakot, Nepal

This is a photo taken when I had gone to my village. The scenes really attracted me much when my camera kissed such view from my village.It was cold winter morning when I had been moving there with my friend.The shining cloud and silver colored mountain made me romantic and pleasant. We can view more than a couple of mountains from Nuwakot.

Figure 2: House syle in Nuwakot.

Typically, we can see these types of home in village. Thatched roofed home are prevalent in village. Due to problem of less availability of roof material, people are slowly shifting zinc plate instead of such style. Although the complexity of these sort of houses are very high and tedious, it is more beneficial to health. It is very good in hot season and cold season both. Normally, in hot season it protects us from extreme hot and in cold season, it provides warmth.

My Walks of Doleshwor

 This time I am going to explain about my walks in religious place called Doleshwor, considered as a head portion of shiva, located in Bhaktapur, Nepal. This place was not so popular till the pilgrims were swallowed in Kedar Nath, India.  When hindu people faced such disastrous incident, they came to know that Nepal has another option of Kedar Nath.After identifying  Doleshwor as an another substitution of Kedar Nath, one of the four dham to be visited by every hindu in their life, this temple is  being very popular in Nepal after Pashupati Nath temple. The high density of hindu people around the world are used to coming here for worshipping lord shiva. The main importance of this temple is that it is taken as the head portion of lord shiva. Considering these things into my mind, I was moving there with my sister’s family.

My sister, Kalpana Sitaula, had a dream to burn one tenth million numbers of threads , which is called Lakh Batti in Nepali, made by her own hand and the location was Doleshwor. 

 It is believed in hindu culture that after burning such numbers of threads, our dreams and expectations gets fulfilled. So, I, being a Hindu culture follower, was also mixing with them for celebration. After completing some sort of worshipping by priests, we were allowed to burn such threads.

With the burning threads, you can see people are doing some sort of touch in the flames with the sugarcane. It is Hindu myth that we will easily pass the hell river after doing such activities. So, people seems curious to touch.This is a complete photo of Lakh Batti, one tenth million threads burned my sister, Kalpana Sitaula, who is currently residing in Spain. Really ,it has crucial importance in Hindu culture because these are the burned after dipping completely in pure oil. It has a lot of importance as well which is beyond my knowledge. An expert can further elucidate the importance of this sort of celebration.

Each burning flames of this sort of celebration signifies the power and energy in Hindu Community. To make such large number of threads by hand is really the toughest job. They make it after spending a lot of time and strong determination in their mind.

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Compulsions of Nepali Lecturer

Being a lecturer, I must understand the obligation of Nepali Lecturers. Putting myself into their shoes, what I feel is that they are compelled to be busy. It may be not their intention to teach in various colleges but the different circumstances are making them do so rather than solely selfishness. In this post, I am trying to clarify some of the main hurdles due to which they are not being able to give full time to the same college.

Teaching in the same college full time is very important for student and lecturer both, but, the things are not as easy as we are saying here because due to its seasonal nature, lecturers are used to searching in various colleges. Once they get a class, its duration will be within particular month only. After completing the courses, they remain futile and unemployed. They even do not know whether they get another class to teach there or not because of nepotism and relativism. So, they do not want to lose the classes as far as they get it somewhere.

Furthermore, the salary, we get while teaching here, is not so handsome and we get salary lately due to which it is our necessity to seek another option to maintain their hand to mouth. Lectures’ life is not so fancy in Nepal nevertheless some bright hope still persists. While observing even in India, the case is just opposite to Nepal, they are highly paid with handsome salary.

Likewise, we are used to moving into various colleges to establish link with them. It creates the environment to show acquaintance with more students, too.  Moving into different colleges helps us to be familiar in the market. We will get a chance to proper exposure in the market. With the increase and more experience, it helps us to foster our career so that the jobs remain stable in another way.

But, this sort of moving may not be suitable for all. Those who are perfect in their subject can do such job which may not be appropriate for other lecturers. It deteriorates their career rather than upgrading. It would be very hard to maintain if we do not have strong knowledge of the content we are teaching. In this situation, it is better to study hard first and teach students wisely.

To conclude, though we are being besieged by such hurdles and complexities, we have to try to give much information to our students wherever we teach. We should not play with their lives. We have to create the environment for them even in phone, email, chat, et cetera.

Major Problems of Teachers.

With the course of my life, I have linked with many teachers in Kathmandu. Being a Computer Science lecturer, my linkages are with only those teachers from those subjects. Studying about these problems among those teachers, I have enlisted some of the important points here.

Firstly, the teachers here in Kathmandu are being focused on money. What they want is money rather than students' career. We can see few availability of the teachers due to their busyness. They want to  take a lot of classes to earn more money. Sometimes, they can be termed as helmet teacher.Students can not find them whenever they want, thereby creating the problematic environment for students.  Due to the less availability of teachers, students are being in a situation to use internet, which may not be always perfect way .

Secondly, teachers are not understanding about students psychology. They are not trying to get their students intention. Due to their gap between students, students are not being satisfied.  Thus, they are being rejected by students.

Thirdly, core contents of the course is main deceit for them. They are not studying the contents properly due to their less time and attention. They do not have enough time  to pay attention due to their hectic schedule of teaching in various colleges.Rather than providing quality, they are emphasizing on quantity. The more class they take, the more money they earn.

By and large, students are the pillar of a nation. Earning money and maintaining life style may be one part for teacher, but cheating students and their lives is no more than killing pollard of many young plants. Consequently, rather than emphasizing on money, pay attention towards your students because a lot of plants will give  you some sort of shade in future.

Handling difficult questions while teaching

Obviously, sometimes, its innate human nature to be in difficulty in the course of teaching. Some childish students' stupid questions leads such problem in a classroom. Since I have been teaching in Nepal, I have faced a lot of such silly questions raised by students and many of my friends quit their job due to stress. Thus, I am giving some strategies for proper handling of difficult questions while teaching.

First strategy to handle the difficulty is finding the relevancy of the question. If the question is not pertinent to the particular area where you are teaching, you can tell them to answer after completing the formal class somewhere outside of your class. And, if the topic is pertinent to your topic and  you do not know the answer, you tell them to answer tomorrow and give them other practice questions like this. Then, student may think you are smarter.

Second strategy is to identify the type of students who are raising you the questions. If the student is asking  you just to be smart, detect and ask him other questions to defend. Otherwise, if the question is from genuine side, give them extra practice work, thereby pondering about its solution. Then, they will ramble on their practice work.

And the last strategy is creating the environment of competition among students for difficult questions. You can create the ambient of competition if the question is very hard. You can generate a lot of solutions from students side from their heterogeneous ideas. They forget all for competition and bury themselves in the topic.

In conclusion, the main strategy to handle problematic situation is to make them even more busy on that situation.

Young lecturers are in demand

I had been mulling for several years about why young are being accepted by Nepali students. I had also been in search of finding the reason behind the rejection of an old experienced lecturer. I do not know how much I am correct into my digging but it is a reality in Nepal. And, it’s true that most of the colleges have more young lecturers than many years experienced ones. The main reasons for rejecting old experienced lecturers are as follows:

Initially, it matters a lot about in which level we teach because if we teach young people, obviously they need teacher of their time rather than old one. They do not want to give their time for study merely but also other recreational activities which were not provided by our traditional teachers. What our old teacher wanted was that to exploit parrot learning and showed atrocious behavior in the name of punishment. They did not like to be according as students wants.

Furthermore, simply experience doesn’t matter at all if they cannot enjoy with their students. What I found in Nepal is that owing to lack of peripheral knowledge, even experienced teachers are being rejected. They were not updated with the latest technology and system. They used to teach in traditional system which was not preferred by student today because we must update with technology.

In the contrary, young lectures are being successful here in these cases. They are doing what young students wants. They are trying to give their time for not only study but also other recreational stuffs. They are making nice team work with students for academic and professional activities. Similarly, young lecturers are updating themselves with the latest technologies and modern teaching paradigms. Thus, they are succeeding in their way.

In conclusion, it is not always good symptom that callow lecturers are in great demand here if they do have sufficient knowledge. In the name of preferring young ones, it is not good practice to discourage an experienced one. Instead, old experienced should learn from youngs’ exemplary works and update themselves.