There is great public cacophony about the comment made by Seema Subedi Shrestha on social media who is believed to be an Indian of Nepalese origin.

In her video she has disparagingly commented on Nepalese citizens who have been indulging in menial work in India such as washing dishes. It is quite understandable that Nepalese citizens are feeling sick in the guts when having to hear this kind of malicious hate speech from such a personality of India.

I firmly believe her words are venomously insulting more to India than Nepal because she is sullying and treating her Miss India Badge as toilet tissue paper. We don’t need to be active in such vitriolic attacks by wasting our precious time. I suspect she may be propelled by her post traumatic disorder into venting this ire which has resulted in erosion of her personal integrity.

It is so shocking to learn that some online media are behaving amateurishly by exploiting the innocence of kids into egging them on to say insulting words in a counter video reply to Seema Subedi. I would say this doesn’t make our society civilized because using kids for fueling the issue is also a kind of child abuse.

I knew and had an experience that more than a decade ago there was Hrithik Roshan scandal to which I was encouraged by elders to tear his posters. We should not act like headless chickens. We need to have the patience to get over issues that are poisoning our quality of time.

I understand that we are allowed to be upset about what’s going on, but we should not waste our time on such matters which are not legitimately and officially endorsed. In the ocean there are some sharks though there are millions of schools of fishes.

So this is exactly what’s happening with the social media users.

Shiva Neupane, Melbourne

Plantation day

According to the Nepali calendar, Ashar 15 is marked as National Paddy Day across the nation. Paddy is one of the cereal crops and planting paddy in the neatly prepared muddy fields is our life and culture.

The event is also celebrated with Asare Geet with special focus on planting paddy and upcoming days of joys and happiness. Officially, they have started observing it since 2004 BS in Nepal. People take part in rice plantation programme, have curds with flattened rice, chiura, on this day.

In Pokhara the paddy plantation is observed as a festival in which even foreigners take part with great joy. However, the peasants are worried about the delayed monsoon that brought less precipitation.

Half of the paddy plantation should have been completed by mid-Asar or by June-end in the hills if there is an adequate amount of rainfall. Sad to say, we still depend on monsoon rains as the government has not been able to develop irrigation canals adequately.

Despite all odds, farmers are busy in paddy plantation as it is associated with food security.

Abhishek Kunwar, Pokhara