Just a few hours’ drive from the capital city momentarily takes one away from the smoke gurgling and choking atmosphere of Kathmandu into a clean and serene environment. With a lush landscape on the backdrop, a small village near Juge Khola in Naubise, roughly 28 kilometers from Kathmandu, feels calm and delightful as the sun peaks lazily from behind the clouds as if playing a game of hide and seek.[break]
“People who pass by keep telling me to move to Kathmandu where opportunities are abound. But I wouldn’t trade our life here for anything in the world,” says Ram Bahadur talking a long sip of tea and letting out a sigh simultaneously.
Photo: Cilla khatri
The young woman behind him sports a welcoming smile, but is a bit shy. You can see it in the way she diverts her eye and lowers her head when she’s looked at. There’s no telling that this lady has been up since four in the morning and has finished all the preparations by eight when it’s time for her husband to enjoy his customary tea and cigarette.
Muna Gurung, 30, has been married to Ram Bahadur for the last 15 years. Her daily routine for the last ten of those 15 years has been to wake up at the brink of dawn and work whole day long till it’s eventually time for bed. Get up. Work. Go to bed. Day in and day out, that’s what life has meant for Muna who’s only ventured out of the village once in her entire life.
But what would she do if she could have a whole day off? At first she doesn’t understand the question. There’s always some work to be done, she says. How could she possibly have a day off? But when asked what if someone else did all her chores; she promptly replies that then she would spend the day preparing more snacks that she could sell the next day.
“Running a roadside eatery is not as simple as it looks. Yes, it’s quite laid back since we live at the same place but life on the highway is always busy and there’s work to be done round the clock,” says Muna overcoming her shyness to explain the workings of life in a village.
Life outside the villages’ boundaries doesn’t even occur to her. “When I was 10, I went to the capital for the first time. I worked as a maid there for six months before deciding to come back to my own village,” she says making her way over to the kitchen to prepare various food items; from a full-fledged Nepali Khana to lighter snacks like aloo dum and fried fish.
The kitchen is in a corner of the yard and the wall behind the stove is black with soot. The fire is going on the large earthen hearth as well as on the small cooking stove next to it. Muna pulls out containers brimming with chopped spices and herbs, from a tiny shelf below a makeshift kitchen counter, that she’s prepared the night before. Usually I make enough to serve a hundred plates every day, she explains as she throws in a handful of spices into the pot to test if the oil is hot enough.
Her impatience is evident. Shaking her head and murmuring to herself, she hastily rushes to fill the kettle with water to make tea and puts some eggs to boil before running off to the communal tap to wash the teacups from the day before.
The busses and the vehicles plying the highway on the way to the Capital or heading to other cities from Kathmandu will start to arrive soon and there’s not a minute to waste. Travelers will soon start pouring in with demands for tea and snacks.
“My mother-in-law helps during the afternoon and evening but it’s all me with some help from my husband during the busy mornings,” adds Muna explaining that she has not a single minute to spare and dwell on life as city people are known to indulge in.
But life in villages is boring as compared to life in cities, say the city dwellers who often wonder how it’s possible to spend years at such lackluster places.
“We often get asked how we can live like this and what we do all day long. But we work to earn money to sustain our families and are content with that. We don’t have aspirations for a huge TV or fancy computers and phones,” says Ram Bahadur adding that city dwellers can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that a simple life is all that they aspire for.
Life in villages is comparatively undemanding and stress free as compared to city life where there’s always a mad rush and fierce competition to excel. The villages, on the other hand, feel like a large well-kept garden that stretches on forever. Every place has something peculiar in its landscape and the residents seem to take pride in their surroundings. But the downsides of this carefree existence are aplenty.
There aren’t as many facilities in villages as compared to cities and communication links aren’t so well-developed leaving village dwellers largely ignorant about what’s happening in the rest of the country they reside in. Another vulnerable aspect of life in villages is that they don’t have access to proper health care service.
Living in cities means having access to a host of facilities like public libraries and parks, restaurants, shopping malls, theatres and hospitals. Also, there are scores of schools and institutes in cities which provide quality education.
But lack of such extravagant facilities is a small prices to pay, agree the village residents unanimously.
“There have been instances where people have died because of simple cases like cold and diarrhea and there’re no good schools and colleges here but we still wouldn’t give all this up and move to bigger cities,” says Anita Rai, 30, another roadside eatery owner at Naubise.
However, she adds that she wishes the government would do something to develop villages as well and not center all development activities and projects in and around major towns. Proper waste disposal system, better education facilities and health care system would definitely go a long way in making the villages better but their lack, evidently, doesn’t even deter the village dwellers from being enamored by the place they reside in.
Sarita Rai, 54, a resident of Malekhu, a little village located halfway between Kathmandu and Pokhara feels that there’s a sense of belonging in life in a village that just isn’t there in cities and that is perhaps why many choose to continue living in villages despite the odds.
“Our whole life revolves around the shop. We begin and end our day here,” says Anita whose children aged four and seven play nearby the shop all day long. Anita plans to enroll them in a local school instead of sending them to Kathmandu.
“Village life is wonderful for the kids,” she adds. “There is a great sense of community here which you can’t find in bigger cities.
Ram Bahadur, however, begs to differ. He has sent his eldest son to Kathmandu to get enrolled in an English medium school since that there are better schools and colleges in the capital.
“We want our children to have better opportunities than those a village life can provide them with,” says Ram Bahadur adding that he plans to send his two daughters to the capital as well.
“They’re studying at a local school and once they appear for their SLC exams, we’ll send them to Kathmandu for further studies,” he adds.
But, on the other hand, he also mentions that city life isn’t what he wishes for himself and Muna nods her consent.
“I’ve been to Kathmandu and Pokhara and people there lead very chaotic, wrapped-up-in-themselves kind of lives,” says Sarita adding that while her children are settled in the capital, she and her husband choose to stay back at their own village and thus escape the trappings of city life.
“Who can describe the pleasure and delight; the peace of mind and soft tranquility one would feel in the balmy air, green hills and rich woods of a village.” – The lines by Charles Dickens rightly describe the mindset of the residents of the places which are just “transit points” for most of the city dwellers.
Like they say, there are two sides to every story!
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