While most that celebrated the festival relaxed with families at home munching on khashi, consuming daru, and dealing cards when not in pujas, few were on the streets. After all, with stores, banks, schools and most facilities closed, including national dailies for over three days, the city has no choice but to slow down to an absolute halt.
And yet, many of of us rolled our eyes at the mofussil and muttered Kathmandu would be better off if they didn’t come back. Apparently, the city is crowded, streets are littered, Bagmati is filthy, lines are long, inflation is rising and we are short of electricity, water and other basic amenities.
Presumably so because the Valley is bursting at the seams as houses beyond its capacity continues to be constructed. This presumption possibly because these additional folks - dare I say - “don’t belong here”.
Of course we all know that with the launch of the People’s War, the city gates were flooded with those who feared for their lives and sought safety. But blaming the People’s War alone is an injustice as is our history to the non-Kathmanduites that make Nepal.
No wonder the insurgency failed to shake Kathmanduites until the Maoists started provoking the Valley. A female rock star supposedly claimed she had never been as scared as she when she saw a Maoist program from her car window after the 2006 April uprising. Samana Group, a cultural wing of the party was dancing to revolutionary tunes and waving wooden replicas of Ak-47s after the peace deal.
The reason why they came was simple; everything they needed was locked up in the capital - from access to basic health care to employment prospects to educational opportunities.
The typical urban society that we are, I’m not sure how hospitable we were to the least of those - Maoist or not. I’m sure we housed our relatives and perhaps grudgingly so even the friends of relatives, but we somehow expected them all to leave.
The capital isn’t home for everyone, but it’s their very presence that makes it home for the rest of us. From their services as porters to waitstaff to construction workers - without them, Kathmandu wouldn’t be Kathmandu.
he peace accord has long been signed and yet Thankot is still a stifling bottleneck. Some arrive fresh in the city with little hope of finding a friend, of making a life here and so are headed straight for Dubai, Seoul and these days even Lagos and Bogato.
And, yet, the city’s cup runneth over, but based on the quality of life of many that reside here indicate, the cup does not overflow with blessings.
So, why is it that they continue toward Kathmandu? The answer is much too obvious, the very reason our insurgency struck in the first place really. Because the state remained reluctant to decentralize, even after democracy was ushered in 1990. Our tradition of patron-power relation that benefited but a select few outside the valley continued to be the norm.
Those entrusted with the responsibility and honor of providing for the country failed to overcome their urban bias - the focus was and is on Kathmandu.
The capital isn’t home for everyone, but it’s their very presence that makes it home for the rest of us. From their services as porters to waitstaff to construction workers - without them, Kathmandu wouldn’t be Kathmandu.
Based on Nepal Police records, a million are here lost in translation. Some are moving on to other parts of the country, overseas for menial labor work, simply visiting to get government papers or just venting at their representatives (who somehow fail to find their way back to their constituency until it’s campaign season again).
But, that’s not it; the gaunles that make Kathmandu home for all are also the reporters that put up with the daily grind of publishing newspapers, top professors at leaving universities and grueling businessmen that try against all odds to positively shape our economy.
So, really, it’s not just the valley denizens that make the city as much as those that uttered “gaun jane” two weeks ago.
Few that live here permanently actually enjoy it and yet thousands of houses are built in every nook and cranny of the city. It’s not just that a mark of a successful Nepali is to plant a house in the capital, but that living in the capital has been the systematic means of making and finding opportunities.
The way Nepal works, you are nobody unless you are somebody, in Kathmandu.
After all, the finest institutions as well as the most lucrative jobs anywhere in the country are all in this city alone. Were we to have decentralized or better yet, designate different cities with different highlights, we’d have better dispersed the population.
Simply managing the city better would perhaps address half our problem, but as we are forced to make do (and miserably so) without a mayor, it behooves us to continuously ask for better management. However, telling the gaunles that Kathmandu-bound this week to go home is hardly logical.
The truth is they have had to come to Kathmandu because of want rather than need. In fact, they’re not too different to many of our own parents or grandparents. Most of the city has only been calling it home, as I have, for a generation or two. Only a few can trace their roots back to this Valley. And, even then they can’t claim to enjoy all that Kathmandu has to offer without the voluntary and obligatory contribution and sacrifice of the “outsiders”.
All goes to show there is no hope but to push forward for influential federal states that are granted the decision making authority at local levels so that all of Nepal isn’t forced to trudge on the back of busses for days on end to the capital to meet their basic needs.
For as long as Kathmandu continues to be the cultural, financial, medical, educational and governmental center of the entire country it’s really quite unfair to complain gaunles return home.
sradda.thapa@gmail.com
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