Geetanjali Krishna: Home and away

Do you think a man who's seen the brightness of city lights would ever like to go back to a dark village far from everywhere?" Khem Bahadur said, when I asked him whether any of the men who migrated from his village to bigger towns returned to stay. His village was a small settlement somewhere in the hills beyond Pokhra in Nepal, Damoli. It had no water supply, no health care, no schools, no avenues for employment and till two years back, no electricity either.

Not surprisingly, as Khem Bahadur put it, "the only people left there were either too old and infirm to migrate, or too poor to try their luck in larger towns" And the ones who leave, hardly ever return, unless they have landholdings in the village.

Khem Bahadur's father sold off most of their village land and moved to Pokhra when he needed to educate his two sons, about a decade ago. To everybody's surprise, his younger son, after completing school, opted to return to his village and tend the family land. "Few men are like him," said Khem Bahadur, "even we can't understand why he wanted to stay in the village. But today, he's the reason that we keep returning to Damoli "" most other village brothers who migrated to cities, rarely go back. There's nothing else there for us anymore."

Most men in Khem Bahadur's village, he said, looked India-wards for employment. "The main reason for that is that the Nepalese rupee is poorer than the Indian rupee "" so when I earn Rs 6,500 here, it's almost Rs 10,000 "" a princely amount there," explained Khem Bahadur. "Also, getting jobs in Kathmandu and other large Nepalese towns is not so easy, as it is here in India. Neither do they pay as well there, as they do here," he added.

So, when it was time to choose his path, Khem Bahadur too wanted to work in India, like his father and uncles. "They both were in the armed forces, my father retired from the PAC in Lucknow "" so they wanted me to follow their follow their footsteps. But I wanted to learn cooking, so I did a cookery course in Kathmandu."

This enabled him to get a job in a Delhi hotel, quite unlike many of his brethren, who didn't get jobs for months, and eked out a hand-to-mouth existence in Delhi. "Many people from our village came here and suffered enough hardship to be forced to make their wives work in menial jobs. They live in squalid single rooms, worse off than they would have been in Nepal," said he.

At his father's insistence, he applied to the BSF for a job, putting an end to his career as a chef. "I'm grateful for all the good things that have come my way, for the way my life has gone compared those of my village brothers. Amongst the twenty-odd boys of my age from Damoli, perhaps I'm one of the few who's doing so well," said he. Any regrets about leaving his village, I asked. "None at all," said he, "it may be the land of my ancestors, but it certainly isn't my land any more. I go back only to meet my family "" no other reason!"

He thought for a while and said, "the only real regret I've got is not pursuing my cooking career "" by now, I'd be getting at least double of my salary and would have perhaps been working in a five star hotel..." It seemed to me that like many migrants, Khem Bahadur also thought that no matter where he was, the grass was always greener on the other side.

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