Home for the holidays

FROM ISSUE # 131 (November 2006) | IN THIS ISSUE
	REFER TO FRIEND		PRINT THIS ARTICLE

After eight years on the road, this time around I finally got to celebrate Dasain and exchange tika at home. I went all the way back to my village near Pokhara for Dasain, rather than stay in Kathmandu. The city is quiet during the holidays, and I remember from the couple of times I stayed there as a college student that there's no life on the streets.

Dasain in the village is fantastic. People come home from far and wide—it's like a grand family reunion. Children have it best of all. Besides tika and dakshina, they get new clothes and new shoes as well. I was born in my mamaghar, but it's a two-day walk from my village, so I've never spent a Dasain there. When I saw kids in my village at their mamaghar, I was filled with nostalgia for something I'd never experienced.

When we were children, we got new clothes twice a year. Dasain clothes were always more interesting than clothes for the new year. Both sets had to last six months, but in the winter, having nice-ish clothes was a spot of colour and life in the cold greyness.

When Nepali New Year came around, we'd had our fill of winter. We'd have played on our empty farmlands with a 'football' made with old clothes stuffed into a sock. It was less like a real football, and more like a very large orange. It didn't matter whether you won or lost, after playing in the dusty fields, we were all a sight. Our hands were papery and dry, and our skin chapped into what felt like buffalo hide.

We always had runny noses and when we sneezed, we'd simply swipe our them nonchalantly across our long sleeves. No one had anything remotely like a leather jacket, or even a windstopper.

Children today don't need to wait till Dasain for new clothes, which is good, but I suspect it makes the thrill of new clothes for the festival less special. Now even in a boondocks village like mine, kids wear hip-hop jeans.

That's just the surface. The grubby little eight-year-olds I remember are now 16, thinking about their futures. Villagers I was fond of have passed away, even those who said they'd wait for me to come back in 2009. My mum was still there, thankfully. This Dasain when I got tika from her, she blessed me, again, so I could continue my journey cycling for peace, and return safely to our village for Dasain in three years.