The question of identity

The streets bore the same rush, the season’s Sun was high above the head of the passers by and at distant heavy clouds seemed to be looking for a proper time to veil the Sun. There was no hint the clouds will succeed soon, but then there were sounds in the sky, back in our childhood days when the sky roared we said God’s stomach was upset. This thought left a smile with tints of embarrassment. But these innocent things are what make our childhood so special. There was more traffic in the road which suggested the fuels may have been available more easily. In a police truck the Tibetan refugees chanted the slogans of free Tibet waving the flag of free Tibet. I am not a stern believer in patriotism; to me it sounds just propaganda. But for the Tibetans the fight was more for the identity than the voice for patriotism. To being swept away from one’s culture, to be cut from one’s root is unbearable. During the days of conflict here in my own country, there was a man who lived in our neighborhood who earned his livelihood selling fruits in push cart while his wife roasted maize under the scorching sun. I felt pity for them not only for them for every other person who had to engage is such a tiring and painstaking manual labor. World is not just for everyone. Later this man came to work as a laborer when we were building the fence wall. One evening I overheard him talking with my father, he was from remote district of the country where he had plenty of land, a house of his own and herds of cattle. He was well off with the paddy, wheat and milk he sold but then he was exiled by the Maoists. He said his only fault was he worked hard and even his luck favored and he managed to earn a good fortune. He said the local rebels held every well off men as the oppressor and they claimed their property as the property of the people. He had three children, a daughter and two sons. When he fled into the city he stayed at his relatives’ place but he could not stay at somebody else’s home so moved from there. He said he had three servants including a shepherd and two domestic help but there he was working as a wage earner himself. It was terrible for me. The victims of wars are not the ones who are directly involved but those who come between the warring factions. His two sons were enrolled in a government school while he could not afford to send his daughter to school. Whatever be the situations the first victims are always the women. I wondered why didn’t he send one son and daughter to school. More than that I believe government schools are cheap and till some grade they do not even take fees. The daughter was deprived from education because she had to assist her mother in roasting the maize. He had lost his identity. He said back in his village they called him ‘Thula ghare karki dai’ (Karki brother with the big house) but here every body called him ‘Mote Ram’ (Fat Ram). He said in his village no body dared to take his name and here he had to bear with the insults, reproach and hatred. He said his heart wreak when he remembered his village, his home, his cattle, however far he was from his home and his village he had left his heart back there. To leave a place by choice is different from being exiled from that place. Usually a place where one lives is not a cluster of few buildings, trees, fields etc. it’s a place which has given him/her the identity. At Kathmandu, I always felt the place was worse, it is crowded, it stinks, its noisy and heartless. When I went to Trishuli which was peaceful, in the lap of green hills with the mighty Trishuli river snaking its way to the sea hundreds of miles away I missed Kathmandu. This is the place I was born, this is the place where my parents lived, this is the place where I went to school, this is the place where I learnt to speak. I complained about Kathmandu all the time when I was here but when I was away from the place and anyone spoke ill about the Kathmandu I used to get defensive. Yet Trishuli and Kathmandu belongs to same country. Even when I was in Kathmandu I was in Nepal and when I was in Trishuli I was still in Nepal. I wondered how would the refugees feel when they are living on the mercy of another country, where no one knows there identity, wherever they go they encounter strange faces, people with strange culture, who speak strange language and who treat you like a stranger. Mind it they are not on vacation but it’s rather a kind of arrest. They do not know where their folks are, what has happened to the home where they had imprinted their first footsteps, where they had started witnessing the world, where the sun woke them up every morning, where the moon tucked them to bed. They couldn’t measure their land in their feet back at home and here they are confined to handful of earth. Somewhere someone is crushing their culture, their identity, their home.