Books in a remote village.

Born to a simple peasant family and growing up in a far flung village in eastern Bhutan, it was beyond my imagination to hope for an opportunity to study outside Bhutan. I never even dreamed of life outside my beautiful village. But when I started reading lots of books, things changed for the better. Reading changed my life for ever. The habit of reading opened my windows to the outside world. The result of my voracious reading habit began to reward me in early 2010 when I was selected for Royal Government of Bhutan Scholarship to study in Goa, India. Today when I look back, the only thing that brought me out of my village and out of Bhutan is my habit of reading. After reading multitude of books, I could express my own ideas more clearly. This translated into getting good marks in Board exams and securing the highly competitive scholarship. Though I have miles to go before I sleep, I have at the least started my journey towards a better life-a life free of ignorance and delusion in a remote village.

For quite a time now, I have been thinking about setting up a small library in my village so that children can inculcate the habit of reading from an early age. I believe that, just as the habit of reading changed my life, it will change the lives of hundreds of kids in my village. I believe reading is the only way of opening the windows of opportunities in the world. In a place where there is no internet, reading books can be game changer. I feel that if I succeed to make a library, no matter how humble, and if children of my village pick up reading as their hobby, their future will be completely different. In towns and cities of Bhutan, children have access to libraries and internet. But in remote villages, they hardly know about internet. They have never heard of public libraries. They have never thought of reading a book and its benefits. In such conditions, putting up a small library and bringing all village kids under one roof to read some good books and letting them share their ideas and dreams will go a long way, I am convinced.

But as of now, I am myself a struggling student dreaming of good things to happen. I know no person who can help me realize my dream of making the library. I have no budget to start the work myself. But I have the idea of building this library and making my fellow little brothers and sisters read books and change their lives. And I will keep this idea alive and flames hope burning so that one fine day, when I am well off, I will materialize this idea. This is the only way of paying back to my beloved village. This way, I will have contributed to the process of building our great nation by a small step in my own way.