Dashain Greetings

I'm heading home on Monday to celebrate Dashain. Given the mess our leaders have created, I'm not in a celebration mood. But, as they say, you got to pretend as if you are jolly good. So, I receive tika, eat deliciosu food prepared by my mom esp pakku; talk to my family members and return back to Kathmandu. Dashain has become humdrum as life itself. Someone inside me says: hey Deepak, you gotta reinvent yourself! Ah reinvent, what a beautiful word!

This year's Dashain, however, is a bit different for me because am going to my in-laws. For starters to this blog, I got married last February and am enjoying the conjugal love. My better half had already gone home (short separation). I have Tom Friedman's The World is Flat with me as my Dashain reading. Coincidently, am reading it in eastern Tarai ( a flat land indeed). But, unfortunately, the Tarai we used to live and love (I've spent a good number of years in Tarai while was born and grew up in Phidim, a backwater town that serves as a headquaters of Panchthar in eastern hills)is no longer the same. The hitherto harmony has collapsed and we see Limbuwan, Madhesi, Pahade, Chure-Bhawar activists fighting with one another.

It's been four years since I went to my birth place. I wonder if I can make it to that place this time. But, I don't plan because plan usually fails!

Happy Dashain to you all. Eat, drink and make merry, Dashain is for epicureans!