To Dashain or not? – “From miles away from the home.”

WRITER: BIKRANT GAUTAM

The early morning cool breeze, the chirping of birds, the smell of the lush green paddy and the festive vibe. Ahh, ain’t Dashain in the air?

Probably you might be thinking what is this writer babbling all about, but strangely enough as someone who is 11600 kilometers away from home (Lets trust google on this), I do get the whole vibes thingy .

The fresh smell of paddy field is something that I miss more. I’ve had failed numerous times on my visit to the country side on any sighting of paddy field. I almost flooded the Mississippi flowing right through the state with my nostalgic tears.

Dashain and Tihar was the utmost excuse for me to be back at Pokhara to my parent’s home. The greenery around, clean and pristine city and lakes, friends, lakeside and those cozy nights spent at home; brings back the memories.

Dashain and Tihar were more of a Zen moment for me, scheduled with the tasks of cook, eat, sleep and repeat. Stay home and your parents are smiling ear to ear, nothing could be more important that seeing for old fellows escalated with joy and laughter.

But since moving here, I’m missing out my second Dashain, and the only thing that makes it more melodramatic is the thought of what your parents are thinking back home. Glad that my parents decided to go with two children and one adopted German shepherd and at least they can now do with the second and third best of the three.

It came to my realization that no matter how cool you try to act about the major festivals back home, the memories from the earliest childhood comes back, especially when you are zillions of miles away from the home.

Most of us might have taken few instances of festival for granted, not caring about what it actually means; it means nothing- philosophically, but it reminds you the memories of the best days of your childhood and the way of life we’ve adopted.

When we were kids, it was all about collecting money and putting on new clothes, as we grew up it shifted to going places with friends, making trips up in the mountains and when adult-age hit hard, we finally realized the most adult-est thing to do; gather 5 people 4 decks of cards and spend numerous hours counting points and losing money, with yummy goat delicacies gulped with variety of liquids 😉

But, it is not that bad at all, the weather is just perfect and you keep on telling your co-workers that the weather now is exactly like how it used to be back home. Apart from that I guess it is up to the individual on how to make best out of these special days.

While writing this whole piece itself, I came to learn that few cool kids over here are actually going somewhere to get a “Khasi” (which I doubt is actually a “Boka”) prepped for the Dashain. That sounds too good to be true, but if it is the case then out of the blues we’ll have a closest simulation of Dashain without the whole rituals things.

Whatever way the Dashain goes for us people away from Nepal, I raise my glass of milk (or could be anything) to the people back home celebrating this awesome festival.

May we all prosper, may we never run short of petrol and cooking gas and hope that nobody calls for any strikes in the country. 😉

If you want to share your story or article then Click here to submit.

If you want to Express yourself, your humor, sarcasm, honesty, innocence, creativity, frustrations, happiness, your emotions, feelings through words then Click Here to participate in Our Wordism Writing Contest.

Click here to read the previous winning articles of Wordism competition

If you also want to participate in different local/global competitions, internships programs, fellowships, scholarships, exchange programs then Click Here to find local and global opportunities.