BirKrishna,

As you already have stated that you don’t promote the Pankaj Joshi culture, but in one or the other way you are justifying his deed, and the excuse is really weak compared to the sinful crime he committed. He took an easy way out here, but it should not be forgotten that he crushed the hope of the guy who used to buy lottery for like 8-10 yrs hoping that his sufferings would end, and it was like a lifetime investment for him. Imagine if you were the guy that was supposed to win the lottery, and would you still advocate this?  I don’t think that’s what Nepalese are known for, at least not in my blood.

Your story can’t be much different than many students from Nepal here, and so is mine, except the few lucky ones whose parents can afford to pay tuition in dollars.  The root cause is every one comes here with high expectations, and since they have heard that US is land of opportunity, they expect the opportunity to come to their door just like that. Wish it was so simple and life would change just being here. With every person in the world eyeing the life in US, you should be well aware of the level of competitiveness and the talent that you should possess to grab those opportunities.  And few people can think of going back to Nepal, rest have to find some way to stick here, in every means they can think of and that’s where all the difficulties and the complaints arise.

Technically the US government cannot be blamed, because we all knew as a student you are allowed to work 20 hrs a week, and while applying for a student visa, you have to have proof that your family income is sufficient for the expenses incurred while you are in F1 visa.  What if they had a rule that as a F1 student you cannot even work?  Even though they have defined the guidelines for every visa types (F1, H1B), immigrants have managed to squeeze around some loopholes and that’s what is leading to the stricter and harsh rules.

Let’s for example, if you are travelling the same road every day and there is a stop sign at the intersection, and no matter what is your hurry you have to stop and let’s say, one day you did not stop and got cited. You cannot get an excuse that you used to stop there every other day, but today you did not. So in this case you will think that you were not being rewarded for being a good driver all these days. But wait until the citation is forwarded to your insurance and experience the premium going up.  So I think your hard work is or will be rewarded eventually. Life was not easy for most of us, and it’s not going to be easy so soon, but that doesn’t mean that we should give up or should take an easy way out which leads to few moments of rise and then downfall for rest of your life.

 I wonder why people don’t idolize Indra B Tamang, he is a Nepali as well, and a perfect example that hard work and dedication pays off.  May be because lot of us don’t have the patience and the perseverance; we want to be rich and successful in a jiffy. It’s up to an individual for the route to choose, but I am sure I won’t choose the path of stealing and tricking others to be rich, as it would be a disgrace to my hard work and the dedication this far. If my life was only concerned about making money , may be I would have done drug dealing or some other quick ways to make money at an early age and if my parents would have been happy with that, they would have encouraged me to do so, rather than investing that amount of money and time for my education.

But I know what you are going through and wish you good luck.   Personally for me, it’s always inspiring to hear some Nepali landing a better job or something creative and it always hurts to hear about a Nepali in a crime page, as it certainly hurts our reputation abroad. 

So there is no excuse for a crime, as there is no justification for terrorism.