The ever-present past

BW&Gray

The ever-present past

These are fast times we live in and anything not on the fast-track is old and obsolete; they are basically ‘in the past’ and has minimal weight of relevance. Here’s a food for thought though – without the past or the old, where does the foundation for anything spring from.

In that manner of speaking, the past is more intimately attached than one is willing to admit. The past never passes.

If the legendary Indian saint did not visit this nation in the eight century, fly to a rock face riding a flaming tigress and jumpstart Buddhism, the country would not have the presently existing noble practices.

Jog dial to 1907, when a king was crowned, civil wars came to an end and a long-lasting era of peace and stability came into motion. Minus that bit of detail in the past, it’s easily said, the successive line of kings who contributed every ounce of possible efforts in ensuring the general status quo would not be reality.

By that reason, the country wouldn’t have been hailed to greatness with the legends of a visionary king in the person of the Fourth Druk Gyalpo and the great monarchs before that.

The romance with the past strikes wholesome if we take into account the nation’s even now quite the infant democratic institution and how it is perceived.

The institution is seen as one of the most peacefully transitioning among others in the world, and for starters, the whole process was as oft-repeated ‘gifted’ not born out of struggles as has been the convention for others.

Attempts to bury matters in the past, things that should not actually be silenced; the outcome for such cases in the present is usually a forceful burst of pent-up angst and judgment.

The Gyelpozhing land case that got top officials tangled in legal loops and commanded answers and accountability is not a very distant memory past. Similarly the Lhakhang Karpo is freshly in the past, but for everybody’s general knowledge, this past will always rub elbows with its present, always.

The present is always the collective consequence of the events passed or actions accumulated as is for individuals, like wise for institutions, for nations.

An immortal song playing almost at every trending place in town is on someone’s least favorite list, because it reminds of certain faces he or she is trying to bury forever in the past using time as a chosen device. Yet again, this or that flash of the past always comes around.

Ensuring the presence of a comforting past, is not entirely an obsolete idea after all.

Published as Column in Business Bhutan on July 4, 2015

BW & Gray or Black, White & Gray is a column published in the Business Bhutan and solely tagged with the pieces written by this Author.