Bikash Karki
As I sit down to write on my first day in Birgunj, the hired help, Patel, a local, mustachioed and smiling Madhesi man gets a phone call after which he resumes cleaning the verandah. He informs me that a part of his house has just burnt down, and that he has to send wood to his village for reconstruction. He doesn’t show any panic on his face, just an odd matter-of-fact calm. He mutters under his breath about how expensive things are getting around here. I nod and smile at him, trying to relate. The entire industrial city of Birgunj behaves the same way. There are smiles and the same expressions that I see on Patel’s face on everyone’s face here. First the Maoists, then the Madhesi armed groups, and now their splinter groups, and even goons from across the border have created an atmosphere of fear and apprehension that is unsettling. People don’t pick up their phones anymore. Everyone has mobile phone numbers that only a few family members and friends know of. Once lavish-looking bungalows stand like haunted houses, not because the people here don’t have money for renovations but because they would rather not attract attention with freshly painted walls. Flashy looking cars are for “emergencies only” situations and stowed in their garages. All windows are barricaded with iron railings.
Stars, KIEC Birgunj win in Birgunj Premier League
On my way to Birgunj, however, the mood was quite different. Entering the Tarai belt, the breadbasket of the country, felt like entering an art class. The riot of colors is the first thing I noticed. The choice of colors with people here has a sense of careless abandon that seems to be muted in cities. Houses are painted in shades of hot pink, forest green, bright purple and sky blue with brown borders. Adjacent to these homes, there are shades of green in the fields that I had never seen in my life. Local dark skinned women walking along the sides of the road wore orange, pink, green, and yellow saris. In clusters, they looked like a moving rangoli, a traditional art form where people use colored powders to draw on their courtyard floors during festivals. Almost all the children I saw were barefoot and smiling. I slid open the window in my bus to take in the sickeningly sweet smell coming from the sugar factory lying on the outskirts of the town. It is this smell that my senses conjured up when I would think of Birgunj. But the sugar factory also means employment for a lot of locals here. Birgunj was once touted to be the next big city, with its industrial area that contains numerous local and foreign goods factories, and also due to its close proximity to the open border with India. Today, many of these factories are closed while some are in the middle of labor disputes. The future of the families whose men and women worked in these factories is uncertain.
I also hear from my grandmother about a huge Madhesi faction meeting in the town hall nearby. Her tone is nervous but her knowing eyes project a wise calm. The accused murderer of a local journalist has been bailed out mysteriously from a nearby hospital after a somewhat fishy sounding heart illness struck him the day after he was arrested by the local police. For the meeting at the town hall, vehicles sped past our house, many with Indian number plates and proudly fluttering party flags that resemble the Indian flag.
What does all this say about the problems here? The free border is more a nuisance than a facility. Impunity has flourished as local goons from Raxaul and beyond in India, wreak havoc here and then disappear across the border. The state does nothing. Best case scenario? The family of the victim gets handed a small sum of money; wretched compensation to a family for the life of a loved one.
Everything in life is dominated by terror here. It easily comes up in talks and is discarded just as casually when a new face joins the conversation. They trust no one, and it’s understandable that they don’t want to take risks. Imagine the terror of jumping every time the phone rings, or every time there is a knock at your door, or of parting with hard earned money for the sake of security of your loved ones. The absence of the state in providing any kind of security to its people is pathetic. There are even stories of local goons mixing up with the police for extortions. I leave conversations amongst locals apologetically. I find myself out of place and don’t want to make sympathetic faces at their stories. It doesn’t seem fair to these hard working, kind, simple people. A kind of depression settles in me that I can’t shake off. Birgunj used to be a vacation spot for me all through my formative years. I would escape from city life and spend every school vacation here. But this time, when I arrive for a holiday after a six-year break, I find people looking for their own escape from here. Many people, both Pahadis and Madhesis, have left – their houses and land sold or rented out – for Kathmandu. Lesser affluent ones, mostly Pahadis, have moved to the neighboring town of Hetauda, where land is cheaper than in the capital. No one dares wear the Nepali “Bhadgaunle topi” any more in Birgunj; the armed groups have warned against the hat. When my grandfather wore it proudly on a casual walk around town, a police officer told him how good it felt to see him wear it. There are lesser Nepali faces, Pahadis, in Birgunj than I had noticed earlier. The Punjabis, too, have left. A very kind Punjabi family rented the flat downstairs when I was younger. They would tie up a fake turban on my head when I played with their children. I think of them as I go through old photo albums and see them in the pictures. We look like one big, multicultural, happy family. During festivals in the town, the streets would come alive with activity, firecrackers punctuating the festive mood ever so often. There would be all night puja ceremonies. Pahadis, Madhesis, Punjabis, Marwaris –. everyone got along and had a good time in the welcome cool of the evening. After the festivities, people would walk long distances to get home. Now the streets are empty by eight in the evening. This used to be such a multicultural, vibrant town. The changes happened fast. Faces move around Birgunj that still carry an expression of disbelief and confusion, wondering what happened and when.
I’m almost sickened by the state of this charmed little town where everyone kind of knows everyone, and you can get from point A to point B in five minutes. Will I get to smell the paan on the streets the next time I come? Will careless smiles return to the people of Birgunj again? I wonder if times will change, if people will pick up their phones again and say their hellos, and that people will repaint the walls of their homes with the same abandon that was in my childhood here. I wonder if I’ll see the long queue of old cycles belonging to the local employees in front of the factories. I shudder at the thought of this town giving in to terror and becoming a ghost town. I question if, when I come back again, I shall find my escape intact. I wish it for my grandparents, who started a life here, working hard to provide for their children. They recall older days time and again but don’t believe anything here could change for the better. I hope they are wrong.
