Rapid urbanization triggered by various social, economic as well as political factors have taken a toll on some of the original features of the festival. [break]
While the bamboo swings and many old favors of the festival are losing popularity for all the obvious reason, the trend among the urbanites to utilize a long holiday for the festival to go on a vacation to some exotic foreign destinations or tourist hubs in the country is another marked change, according to sociologists.
While there is no denying that many people still go on a shopping spree in the run up to the festive season, a lot of them, especially the youth, are no longer very excited about it.
“Gone are the days when people used to purchase all needed stuffs only in Dashain. Every shopping is special now with the change in the lifestyle,” says sociologist Ganesh Man Gurung.
And a growing number of youths, who are into the daily excitements of metropolitan lifestyle, find the disruption of their daily routine during the festive days rather boring.
Habituated to “lively” Kathmandu throughout the year, Sanjiv Man Tuladhar, a permanent resident of Manjushree tole at ward 21 of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC), says that Dashain is not much exciting for him.
While his family and relatives enjoy traditional animal sacrifices and drinking, Tuladhar, though born and brought up in a core Newar family, he is not much interested in such rituals.
Similarly, Dashain has lost its original flavor to a large number of people of hilly origin, who migrated to from the Tarai to urban centers in the hills, especially to the capital, following the Madhes movement.
The rising number of urban habitats at the outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley is making the place less vacant during this festive season compared to the previous years, says Kapil Kafle, a resident of Kausaltar in Bhaktapur.
Most of those who settled in Kathmandu in the wake of the Madhes Movement have no reason to return back to the Tarai for Dashain.
“Though they have their own circle and will celebrating the festival here, they will still miss their old environment,” he says.
And they also miss the cross-cultural elements. “I miss the pandals of goddesses that are so common in Tarai during the festival, but rare in the valley,” says Soumya Dahal, who settled at Imadol in Lalitpur four years ago after leaving Janakpur.
Though most of the people of the hilly origin have migrated from the Tarai, the Madhesi communities have retained the culture of offering tika, a culture of the people of hilly origin, in the pandals and at home during the festival, says Eleventh grader Ranjit Karna of NIST College who hails from Sarlahi district.
Nonetheless, there is no dearth of folk who are eager to get back home for the festival.
Anita Poudel has finally completed her Dashain shopping -- in three installments this year. Twenty-five-year old Poudel, a permanent resident of Putali Bazar in Syangja did her first festival shopping after getting a job in a private school this year.
Now she is all set to return home on Tuesday.
Her little cousins are even more desperate to leave Kathmandu as their vacation began on Saturday.
However, Anita is a bit worried as to how safe a daylong journey to her home is going to be.The spokesperson for Metropolitan Traffic Police Division (MTPD) SP Basant Kumar Pant told Republica that they have made it mandatory for all the long-route public vehicles to manage two drivers to prevent accident caused by exhaustion.
Similarly, the Traffic Directorate has also established temporary check-posts at several stretches of the highways to curb drunken driving. The traffic division has already declared that over one million people have already left the capital till Monday.
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