All for nothing

A friend called me and informed me about the Trongsa Penlop scholarship at RCSC website. She felt that I should give it a try though I had already talked to her about taking a break for a year from studies. I had been pursuing bachelors degree  for the last three years and a three year diploma course before that. When I told her about my decision, she asked me to give it a second thought.

I had almost forgotten about the scholarship when another friend called me up and said that she was sitting for IELTS and persuaded me to join her. What started after that was a long huddle. I have been posted to such a place where electricity is almost nonexistent and I have no access to net and other facilities.  After getting myself registered online (my friend did that for me) I had to pay the fee to the British Council in Rupee and the Rupee crunch in Bhutan had me calling every friends living in the border town asking for rupee. Darn! It had to happen when I need the rupee. Countless calls and I could finally pay the fee and get confirmation letter from the council. The test date was just two weeks away.

The next huddle was how to prepare for the test. I had no idea about the test and didn’t know how to prepare. My friends said that I could practice online but as said earlier I have no access to net. L I didn’t lose my hope. I was hoping that I would get time to prepare for the test when I reached the test centre (Kolkata) but to get there was another huddle.

A couple of days before test date I got leave from my principal and tried to arrange for my transportation. But as luck would have it, there wasn’t a single vehicle plying out of town. I wondered whether the people really travelled in this dusty dead town. At the end I decided to have a driver drive my vehicle till Rangia ( a town in Assam where I could get a lift from the Bhutanese vehicle coming from SJongkhar). On the set date, I travelled the Assam road and the drive was very bumpy. When I reached Rangia, there wasn’t a single Bhutanese vehicle seen. I was too late. It took another two hours to reach the place called Chapaiguri where the Bhutanese travelers lunched but there again I was late. I decided that I would take the vehicle till Phuentsholing and send it back the following day.  Having made up my mind, I continued my journey. In the midst of the paddy field, I was two Bhutanese buses stranded due to some mechanical problems. Phew! That was a blessing in disguise for me for I could finally send my vehicle back and move on.

It was quite late when I reached Phuentsholing and to my shock learned that my friends coming from Bumthang were stranded at Trongsa due to landslide and had travelled to Gelephu. They said that they would make it on time to travel to Kolkata the following day. They reached Phuentsholing around noon the next day and we could resume our journey. What happened at Kolkata is another story.

After the Kolkata we started our long huddles of collecting the documents. The countless calls and visit to offices and we could collect all the documents except for our degree certificate. It was shocking to learn that the certificates weren’t ready. The RUB personnel said they were sorry and couldn’t help.

It is disheartening when we are the part of such system. Today I am affected ... tomorrow it could be you...  We tend to bring lots of new ideas from abroad. Why can’t people bring the sense of responsibility and time bound result in our system?  Who is responsible for the lapses?