Corner with a Full View

There are some good and some bad in being left out of the development intersection. You know how it is, the places that never fall into any intersection. The places that escape attention, and lie there all by themselves trapped in time, unheard of for better or worse. There are such places, such pockets in Khotang and Solukhumbu of Eastern Nepal. Those areas which are far from headquarters of both districts or are very much inland from the ever expanding road networks. Those which are neither the High Mountains nor have prominence to any trade route from far and wide. "Hinterland", in sociological jargon. In March I trekked and spent a few nights in this very area during extreme weather. Snow, fog and slippery path through steep slopes made my traverse really dangerous. But I am not complaining. What I went through for a few days, the locales here live that life every day, every month, all their life. There are small villages interspersed like tiny dots throughout th...

For my geography lessons in school, along with my classmates, I memorized headquarters of all 75 districts. I knew pretty well what it meant to be a "capital" as I was studying in the "capital" city where my parents brought me while still young so that  I could have a "better education". Capital meant having roads, vehicles, electricity, kerosene or gas stoves, lots of people in all sorts of clothes, shapes and sizes, having countless schools, and hospitals, having colleges, electricity and so many shops that it was impossible to count them. The difference between my village and capital was that, it had none of these things - no hospital, no electricity, no vehicle, no roads, firewood instead of stoves, only one high school and no colleges, only one shop, neither such throngs of people but people who I knew who wore pretty much similar clothes with layers of chimney smokes and mud.

Its time to prepare the fields for wheat plantation and the job has fallen onto this boys shoulder