Kathmandu, the only metropolis of the country, shelters around five million people of different backgrounds. Hundreds of youth and adults enter Kathmandu from different parts of the country on a daily basis. Some stay here to pursue their dreams while many others use it as a stepping stone to go abroad.For those who stay, Kathmandu becomes the land of dreams. It is a vast ocean of opportunities, where one can make the best career choices. It is the place where you can carve out your unique identity and status. Everyone enters this metropolis with such expectations.
However, this imagined utopia is soon turned upside down. Very soon, people realize that they need to modify their lifestyles to ensure their survival in the fast-forward world of this metropolis. Everything is different here: the people and their behaviors, the language, the so-called etiquettes and so on. Civilization, it seems, is associated with people's flashy appearance, as if people are tired of stereotypes, and have, therefore, discovered new meanings in everything.
Problems define these people's lives in the metro. Water shortage, fuel crisis, inflation and black-marketing, rallies and bandas, traffic jams and many other problems suffocate them. Coping with all these absurdities is tough.
Gradually, they find themselves lost in the city crowd, in this vast concrete jungle. The city continues to turn cold. At last they realize that it's not only the weather, the people are also cold. Despite living under the same roof, people hardly meet or get to know each other. They are too busy even to smile, let alone help others. One who ventures such unsolicited help is thought of as intervening. Individualism here becomes a great virtue.
The employers are cold. They expect you to work like dumb machines but don't entertain any of your grievances, however genuine. Sometimes, they appear to be insensitive to how you are managing your household with your untimely payments.
Most landlords also seem cold, as seldom do they seem to acknowledge their tenants as humans. Even your friends and acquaintances, at times, turn cold. They don't respond well when you meet them.
Life in metro gradually belittles people's ego and dreams. The pursuit of dreams shifts to struggle for existence. The rat race brings about a complete transformation in them. The majority of them sacrifice their ideals to discover new meanings to their lives. The long years of disillusionment, confusion and frustration harden them, ultimately making them perfect metropolitan citizens.
There is a total metamorphosis of the self. Now everything is new: new friends, new relations, and new dreams. They have left behind almost everything they used to cherish in the past: old friends and acquaintances, and sadly, even their families, which had pinned such high hopes on them.
Their visits to the native villages become rare. So many stories circulate about the life and behaviors of city dwellers in villages. The story of a peasant father ill-treated by his city-dwelling son and referred to as his servant among his colleagues is still widely shared in rural communities.
The anecdote of a modern urban daughter- in-law being unable to greet her mother-in-law with respect is still popular among rural women. But life goes on, both in the teeming metropolis and in the largely empty villages.
The author is a lecturer of English language and literature based in Kathmandu
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