Apropos of the news story “West Seti deal with Chinese company likely to be scrapped” (THT, October 12, Page 1), with every new cook concocting their own individual broth on issues such as a 750-MW power project and removal of public servants as their preferred ministerial agendas, Nepal will lose face and credibility.

It does not seem likely that we will see power from West Seti at least in the next 50 years. The invitation fiasco at the recently concluded UNGA where an important member of the Nepalese delegation was made to wait and eventually turned away from an important dinner speaks of the most casual manner in which new Nepalese public servants are treating their important responsibilities.

In other countries, heads would have rolled, which some of us were frankly anticipating, but in our Republic it just passed off without a whimper. So, do we have reason to be remotely hopeful for a bright future. I doubt. For during my visit to some important government offices, I was shocked at the wayward casual attitude of the servants of the Nepal government. I had to raise the ‘janata’ bogey on top of my voice for a government servant to actually fish out the copy of my wife’s citizenship record. Before that I politely asked the clerk to help, and after wandering out of his desk for a few minutes he returned to say the records are lost. Can a country lose its citizens record? One scream and he returned with the record, and a joke. I gave up my hands in despair.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu

Happiness

We find the greatest pleasure when we get ourselves totally engrossed in our work. It really does  magic by vanishing our entire self or earthly existence. Sometimes a sudden noise makes us realize that we indeed have transported, as it were, to a different world as created by the author of a book in which we have sublimated our mind energy.

It is like leaving our own body, so to speak, to go to the world of imagination! We get the taste of infinity when we do or enjoy some creative work or even do our household chores with deep concentration. At that time, we tend to lose track of time or even our ego.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Claremont Graduate University described this as the happiness of flow. He said that we could train ourselves to often experience such a flow to make us really happy. This highlights the need to wholeheartedly concentrate on our work or job and to cultivate a hobby to get happiness.

As a matter of fact, our pursuit of pleasure can give us only temporary happiness as just after getting the object of our desire, we tend to lose interest in it. Whereas, happiness of flow can take us to the world of harmony in tune with the universe.

Sujit De, Kolkata