6000 miles across the seas came we. Geographically we could not
possibly any further from home. Whether you go east, or west, its 6000
miles home.
Offcourse I'm talking about the majority of us
Nepalese here in the United States of Amrika. That doesnt mean that we
miss home more than someone, say, who's in Bangalore, or in London, or
in Sydney, Berlin, Lima, Toronto, Moscow, Guanxi, Kyoto, or wherever
else in the world, but home. The nostalgia is mutually equal. Infact,
its incomparable.
And whether you've thought about it or not,
you do crave, subconciously or uncounciously, to return home to see the
kites fly high in the sky, to walk the littered streets of New Road, to
sense the feeling of being at home, wherever in Nepal that may be.
Chitwan, Nayaranghat, Kathmandu, Nepalgunj, Biratnagar, Itahari,
Kakarbhitta, Mahendranagar, Chainpur, Butwal, Bhairava, Tatopani,
Cheesopani, Dhankuta, Dharan, Birgunj, Janakpur. Wherever. Home is
where the heart is.
There may be money here. There may be sex.
But something is a-miss here. Something that we value greatly.
Something that can be found nowhere in all seven continents except in
our insignificant (to the world) little piece of land smack in the
middle of the Himalayas. Its that inexplicable feeling, that sensation,
that everyone around you feels along with you. Its not just the place,
you miss the people.
You miss the love.
And here, all
the way across the seven seas, we expect to find the same amount of
love and respect that we had once before? It's NOT going to happen. Not
anytime soon. Love is gained, and respect is earned. What love you have
gained, you've left behind thousands of kilometers away, and whatever
respect you had garnered remains there. Here is a foreign land,
definitely not hostile, but foreign nevertheless.
And
what does the future hold for us brave explorers? A hidden bounty
perhaps? A pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? A genie ready to
grant us three magical wishes?
The future is decided by the
present, which borrows ideals from the past. Like a mason looks at the
bluprint and lays out bricks so that a house can be built. We have a
lot of blueprints. Communism? Democracy? Socialism? Dictatorship?
Republic? And we also have a lot of dreams about the house we are going
to live in. Its going to be a big spacious bungalow with lawns with
automatic sprinkler systems. Big Roman architectural windows and doors
and arcs with fancy Italian staircase in the middle of the living room.
All sorts of souveniers adorn the dressers and tables. The tapestries
are made from the finest of silk and depict the greatness of our land.
But
no one is laying any bricks. Theres a BIG pile of bricks just hot out
the kiln waiting to be placed into its proper location but everyone is
busy fighting what color they want to paint their dream house.
Brick
laying offcourse is the simplest, most mundane of jobs, and its not
particularly difficult IF done by a good number of people. By YOURSELF,
building a house is IMFRICKINGPOSSIBLE. Every little thing integrates
with the next little thing and is equally important in the overall
success of the job.
But here we are, in a land far away, the
blueprints at our fingertips, the dream house in our head, but the
bricks are all the way across the oceans. What a tragedy. And the
houses that have been built by our fathers and forefathers stand in
rubbles, as if proof that there was some sort of civilization there.
Proof that once upon a time in the annals of history, children and
women and men stayed there. And the children ran around the houses
screaming and shouting for no apparent reason. They secretly hid in the
terrace to hijack their neighbor's kite's threads. They stole from the
gardens and fought with their brothers. And yet, they were happy, they
were satisfied.
What became of these children, god knows, but what is becoming of the houses that these children lived in, is apparent.
From princes to vagabonds, from citizens to refoogees (sajha doesnt allow the word f ug). Is that the destiny of our people?
For
how long will we pointlessly fight and argue amongst ourselves to prove
who is right and who is wrong while our lack of attention to matters
that matter makes things worse day by day? You've seen it yourself.
Here in Sajha, or anywhere else where you put two Nepalese together and
watch them fight to the death about whether Buddha was born in India or
not. And the sad part is, both of them are on the same side, Buddha was
infact born in modern day Nepal, but they have their own different ways
for arguing about the same point.
Instead of fighting, can you
imagine what would happen if a positive outlook was taken, if
handshakes took place and efforts were joint? I'm pretty sure you've
all heard about 2 heads being better than one. Well, what about a
couple of hundred thousands of heads? We spend more time and energy
fighting amongst ourselves than fighting the enemy. Even the Indians
are laughing by now.
So what CAN we do? We can start by
respecting each other. Appreciating what someone does. Sounds like a
social reform doesnt it? It all begins with YOU. Without YOU there is
no WE. So if YOU are strong, WE are strong, if YOU respect others, WE
as a whole respect and care for and protect each other.
But that
my friends, is a very fine balance that even the utopian cultures that
we read about in books, have found hard to acheive.
I just
don't want to see my country and identity and all that is out there
6000 miles across the sea, dissappear. The time to change is now. 2
more years down the same path and we may fall off a cliff.
Let us find the courage and will to persevere and fight united through this storm.
Always remember, united we stand.
