Empty roads!

The memories of my childhood are so vivid that I often wonder if it is all a déjà vu. I remember the friends that came over to my house or the time when we went out diving in fish ponds, riding a buffalo and stealing rice with the sole purpose to sell and buy back candies.  A couple of weeks back I was in my hometown that lies two kilometers away from Birtamode in Jhapa – called Buttabari. Being out and about 12 hours a day was how I spent my vacation – a rare occasion for children these days. Happy were the days when I would ride my ‘hand me down’ (from my brothers) bicycles and ride with my best friend – our cook’s daughter who was known as Kanchi (common name for the youngest for a female child).

Round about 20 years later and I often think about that friend. It kind of sucks that I never bothered to ask her name – her real name. Did she have one? Of course, she did. Because she went to school, I say to myself repeatedly. Last I heard, she had two kids and it’s been almost two years no one has seen her.

Every time I visit my hometown I make sure to ask our driver about her and the answer has been the same – no one has seen her. I pray that she is safe and I hope that one day she will return home safely. There are numerous unanswered questions. Why would she leave her children? Why doesn’t she contact her family? Where could she be? Is she alive?

While there, I visited my relatives that I hadn’t met for years. I drove around the village aimlessly trying to chase the emptiness it bore. The place was silent – the laughter and chatter from the kids playing in the locality was only a memory. The pipal and bar tree’s shades in the chowk were empty and the roads now are broad – but deserted. Where have all the people gone? Its hauntingly silent.

I know that almost all the households here have one or more youth working in Malaysia or the Gulf. What is worrisome is that their young families have moved to the capital. Their wives and the young ones alone, in the city. I wonder how many families are torn apart due to migration. I heard stories about wives who have left their young children in search of a better opportunity – to earn money that can help them buy better education for their children and a better future hopefully. Equally, repetitive are stories of young girls and women being trafficked every day. Almost 1,200 youths leave for Middle East every day searching for better opportunities and almost 12,000 girls and women are trafficked in Nepal every year. Many will not return. Ever. Many will be nameless!

I travelled to Panchthar and Taplejung for work and I met a group of young mothers. There too, their husbands have left for gulf. I met a new mother barely 17. Her husband and her father are both working in the gulf. Her mother is barely 38 years old. I asked if she has left school to give birth and she answered yes and that she wouldn’t be going back. I just pray that the cycle of bearing children barely at 17 will stop with her and it won’t pass on to her new born daughter.

These empty roads are galore in Nepal. Every district I visit, I ask if the trend is same. And I don’t need answers because I can feel – the emptiness. Gone are the days when you would walk around the village and just meet people you knew. Today, the farms are empty. My mother was successful in planting the mustard but couldn’t find a single youth to thrash the mustard and transport it to the mill. She showed me half the mustard still intact in its branches lying almost rotten in the field. I couldn’t find anyone she said. I pay a good amount she added plus we have a tractor to transport. I wouldn’t have understood the significance of a perfectly healthy harvest lying rotten in the field a decade back but today I feel a deep sense of pain – pain that every ageing parents must feel in our country. It is obvious that the next season of plantation will not take place in my mother’s farm – the money she has is deemed useless.

Last week was the two-year anniversary of the fateful earthquake. Many tweeted the facts around rebuilding and funds disbursement. We all know that only 10 per cent of the destroyed houses are rebuilt. The lack of coordination and determination of our government is the greatest tragedy after the earthquake but an even greater tragedy is the lack of young powerful hands to rebuild those houses. Migrants going to other countries send remittances which per one World Bank study comprises 28% of our National GDP. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to appreciate this boost to our ever-dwindling economy. Our government is inefficient in every manner we can think of. What they don’t realize is that keeping these young men and women from leaving their nation will be one of their greatest achievements –next to effectively using the money that is being sent by the struggling Nepali migrants to development.

In Panchthar with the young mothers, pic Manoj Bashyal