Happy Dashain 2066

I wish you all a very happy Dashain 2066. Below is a memoir I wrote for The Kathmandu Post on Saturday on celebrating Dashain in Dubai a decade ago :

A Middle-Eastern Dashain

Celebrating Dashain as a migrant worker meant watery-thin tikas, Filipino friends mouthing swear words and seeking out liquor in an Islamic state

Deepak Adhikari

Dashain usually brings back the most pleasant memories of my life. I grew up in eastern Nepal and spent my childhood shuttling around the three districts of Panchthar, Taplejung and Morang--we had our ancestral home in Taplejung, we tilled land in Rajghat, a dusty village in Morang, while my father taught Nepali in a government school in the almost-town Phidim, Panchthar. Life seemed to revolve around these three places as a child. I grew up mostly in Phidim in the late 1980s. Every Dashain, we would pack our bags and head to Thumbedin, a hamlet on the banks of Kabeli River in Taplejung.

Dashain meant the bamboo swings; new, shiny, Rs. 1, 2 and 5 notes compiled from dakshina; and an abundance of food especially home-cooked goat meat. It also meant a long-awaited holiday of kite-flying and other fun-filled activities.

But the Dashain of 1999 was totally different. That was the worst period of my life: my fledgling-career in a weekly Kathmandu tabloid was threatening to die out with an editor-cum-publisher who demanded a lot of work but paid a meager salary, and the hard times that my family was going through. Unsurprisingly, I did what most Nepalis do--I sought a job abroad. To my family’s delight and my journalist friends’ surprise, in the autumn of 1998, I boarded a Qatar Airways flight to United Arab Emirates (UAE). I landed in Dubai to work--where else?--in a McDonald’s restaurant (we called it a store). The whole process was nearly free: I didn’t have to pay for the visa, for the air tickets or for the sundry payments to the labour agency agents. A village boy from the margins of the eastern corner of Nepal, and someone who hadn’t travelled much beyond Kathmandu--I grabbed the moment as a golden opportunity.

There were three of us Nepalis who were sent to Al Ain, a small desert town in Abu Dhabi, capital of the seven emirates that make up UAE, to work as a crew at one of McDonald’s dozen stores in the whole of UAE. The first memories of that dusty desert town are the many lonely moments wondering if we were the first and only Nepalis there. We were delighted on the rarity of our tribe, but also feared the claustrophobia it entailed.

A year later, I was transferred to Sharjah, where the cricket stadium nearly brought a slice of homely reminder, though I was never a cricket fan--but more than that, it was a gaggle of Nepali friends that seemed to make life easier in Sharjah. There were also the amicable, even effeminate, Filipinos who because of their Mongolian features reminded me of my Limbu friends in Phidim. The sturdy South Indian colleagues who followed Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, were in contrast to them. It was hard for me to maintain a delicate balance between these two sets of people who were often at odds with each other.

But the Dashain of 1999 changed it all. We turned our accommodation into a hub of festivities, bought chicken from the nearby grocery, and cooked Nepali dishes. As if that was not enough, we also asked a few Filipino friends to join us. Prem Gurung, a very jovial fellow from Tanahu, managed to conjure the tika--which was not as dark red and thick as in Nepal, but the best that we could manage in the alien desert. We also convinced our Filipino and Syrian managers that Dashain was akin to Christmas or Ramadan and to give us the day off--and then, went to a coastal bazaar called Rolla. Boats were anchored; but the area also reeked of fish and slaughtered animals. But on the roadside and near the shopping mall, it was surprisingly green--a temptation to believe we were not in a sandy desert town, and instead, at a so-called Arabian oasis.

Eric was a lean Filipino and even a just-arrived-from-home Nepali could have mistaken him for a mate because of his fluent Nepali. Of course, the fact that he was taught the choicest of Nepali swear words didn’t help much--he often mouthed them liberally and embarrassing us in front of a few Nepali female colleagues at times. Like the Nepali language that he had mastered, he relished the dal-bhat-tarkari. We had smuggled very-sour tasting liquor from the neighbouring emirate of Ajman (alcohol was not allowed in Sharjah). A few pegs down, I was gripped by nostalgia, with the recollections of good times back home flooding my mind. Then, someone began belting out Nepali numbers from the DVD player that almost every Nepali working at McDonald’s possessed. We danced to the Dohori tunes, our bodies sweating in the sweltering heat. We did our best but most of our moves were awkward--the pictures can prove that.

The next morning, we ventured out to Dubai to visit a Hindu temple near a creek. We boarded a boat and were mesmerized by the sight of the never-ending Arabian Sea. Across the creek, Indians who easily outnumbered other expats thronged the temple. The area had an air of a busy Tarai bazaar in Nepal. And after blessings from the South Indian pujari, we returned to the drudgery of McDonald's.

Dashain ecard courtesy: Ujjwal Acharya.

In Memorium: Ashok Bhattarai

It feels very sad to recall it's almost been a year since the death of Ashok Bhattarai, a talented Nepali student who was killed in US. Update: His family has received the compensation from US but they haven't been able to get around 10 thousand USD that Ashok had deposited in his bank account in US. Below is the story I wrote for the Kathmandu Post after meeting his parents:

Mother laments son’s death in US

BY Deepak Adhikari
KATHMANDU, Oct 12 - Sitting on the bed in a dilapidated lodge at Guashala Friday afternoon, Lila Bhattarai, 42, recalled the last words from her dead son.

"I will come home very soon, Mom," he had told her on the morning of September 28 over the phone. "I will regularly send pictures."

The conversation had veered off to the festivals and he had wished his dear ones a happy Dashain. He told her that he had sent two mobile sets--one for his 20-year-old brother and another for his brother-in-law--with his friend travelling to Nepal for the holiday season.

Surrounded by her female relatives and daughter Srishti Gautam, Lila's voice quivered as she talked about her son, Ashok Bhattarai, 21. Just two hours before his death, Ashok had called her in Parasi, Nawalparasi district.

At 3 pm the same day, her phone kept ringing. There were a number of long-distance calls from the US. "First, a friend of his said Ashok had met with an accident," said Lila. "Then another called to say he has died."

Two weeks ago, Ashok was shot dead by a masked gunman, Raymond Whitcher,17, while he was about to close his counter at the First Food Stop in Missouri City, Texas. The killer was arrested last Wednesday.

On September 28 at 10 pm, Raymond barged into the convenience store and opened fire at Ashok. After shooting him, the gunman walked behind the counter, robbed US$ 5,000 and fled. Ashok's co-worker, apparently, was back in the cooler restocking, and didn't hear anything.

The convenience store did not have a bullet-proof glass at the counter, said the slain man's roommate Sudeep Paudel, who is in Kathmandu for Dashain. "It could have saved his life," he said. An undergraduate student of biomedical engineering at Houston Community College, Ashok had dropped him at Bush Continental Airport in Houston, Texas and driven an hour to start the evening shift at the store where he worked part-time for $8.50 an hour.

His relatives and friends described Bhattarai as an honest, religious, hardworking and talented person who loved to sing. "He would hum Sugam Pokhrel's songs," recalled his mother. Soon she let loose a shrill, full-body wail. "Can you feel the pain of losing a son?" she asked, her words punctuated by sobs.

His father, Gyanraj Bhattarai, 53, an accountant at District Land Reforms Office in Nawalparasi, is numb with grief. A soft-spoken man with pepper-and-salt beard, he has been hit by a double blow: loss of a young son on a promising career track and the huge debt incurred to finance his now lost career. Having spent Rs 900,000 for Ashok's dream trip to the US, he expects to be in debt for the next several years.

After completing high school from Parasi in 2002, Ashok had enrolled at NIST in Lainchaur as a student of biology and dreamed of becoming a doctor.

His dream was shattered in 2005. Despite scoring 76 percent in I.Sc. exams, he could neither get admission at TU Teaching Hospital nor a scholarship to India. He did not want to place a huge debt - anywhere between Rs 2 million to 2.5 million - to self-finance the MBBS--on his parents' shoulders.

It was at this point he decided to shift his career goals to bioengineering. On January 2, 2006, Ashok left for Oklahoma, and six months later moved to Texas where he shared a one-bedroom apartment with two Nepali students, Sudeep and Angikar Karki. In Texas, he did not change the subjects but found more Nepali friends to spend time with.

On Friday, Sudeep had come to Gaushala to hand over the two mobile sets Ashok had sent for his relatives. Instead, he found his roommate's grieving parents who had several questions about their son's death. (Sudeep came to know about the death in Singapore while on his way home).

He said black Americans lived in the neighbourhood where Ashok worked. "It's a good neighbourhood," he said. He also said that the two discussed the safety measures of the store. "My store has a bullet-proof counter", he said. "We had discussed whether it would be a good idea to quit the job," he said, "But he [Ashok] thought it [was] safe as the police patrolled the area all the time." Moreover, Ashok also wanted to save money to go to college in autumn.

Ashok's death has triggered an avalanche of Internet activities. A facebook group, "Help send Ashok Bhattarai's body to Nepal," opened by Sakar Bhusal, now has over 1,700 members. A picture of smiling Ashok dressed in a yellow T-shirt, sporting a V sign, is posted on the group's homepage.

Nepalese Association of Houston has created Ashok Bhattarai Memorial Fund that has raised over $41,000 in an Internet based donation drive. According to Kamal Pandey, a Houston based Nepali, a portion of the fund has been spent to ship his dead body to Nepal.

His dead body arrived in Kathmandu Friday at 9.30 pm and was cremated at Pashupati Aryaghat on Saturday morning.

The remaining portion of the fund, according to Pandey, will be sent to the dead man's parents.

The murder has also sent shockwaves to Nepali students in the US. Many of those who posted their messages on the facebook group were furious at the killer. One Nepali student from Colorado was happy that Texas allows capital punishment, hinting that the gunman deserved it. "No one can bring Ashok Dai back, all of us can help ourselves to remain as safe as possible," a Nepali student remarked. "It's a festive season and they (Ashok's parents) had to bear this irreparable loss," one student wrote.

On October 4, Nepalese Association of Houston organised a memorial service in the First Food Stop, the store where Ashok worked and was killed. Pictures of the memorial service posted on Facebook show white and black Americans and local Nepalis, among others, flocking to the store to pay tribute to Ashok. His casket is adorned with Nepali flags, his posters hanging. People with flowers in hands were seen queuing up in front of the store.

While waiting for two days in Kathmandu for her dead son's casket to arrive, Lila lamented the death not only of her son but also of a young man who believed in prayers.

"He would always ask for blessings," she said. "He believed in God. He went to Manakamana temple after receiving the [U.S.] visa." Following her son's death, she said, she has lost faith in God.