Picture Courtesy: Sneha Parajuli

He couldn’t wait to reach his village. He had left his village a decade ago in search of a ‘better’ life. After having lived in city for quite a long, he had a good life. He was owner of a big company in city. He had many houses too. However, none of them could make him feel at home. He had everything, but he felt he was missing something, the essence of a place called HOME and hence, he was returning.

He stopped his car and got out. As he got out of the car, he could see hills, forest and fields where he had grown up. He could feel that there was something odd going on. He felt that the forest and hills were sad. They looked like they were missing something very important. He could feel the forest and hills crying, but he could not find a reason. The fields that used to be filled with crops were barren.

He walked a little ahead and reached chautara (A place made for people to rest usually under a big tree). He was surprised to see no one there. When he used to stay in the village, that place was a busy place. People from different places used to gather at chautara and talk about different things, from simple household things to politics and religion. He was surprised to see it empty, but what surprised him even more was that even during the time of spring, the tree of chautara had no leaves; maybe, it was because it then had to provide shed to none.

When he reached his village, he did not see many people. Most of the houses were locked. In those houses with no lock lived senior citizens who were not brave enough to leave the place where they had grown up. He asked where are all the people were to one old man, to which the old man replied, “All the people left the village for better life and never looked back.”

Then, he realized how he had used the name of his rural village to make his achievements sound amazing, as if his village was some kind of a cursed land that keeps people away from achieving greater in life. It was him and people like him who had left that heaven-like village and had made it appear like an abandoned graveyard.