I remember the old mansion in Nepal where a local leader lived — a house that breathed with morning rituals. At dawn, people gathered in its courtyard, waiting to greet him, waiting to be seen. The family inside was large and learned: teachers, social workers, political minds, all woven together like threads of a single tapestry.
Last week, I saw him again — not in a mansion, but behind the counter of a convenience store in a quiet Houston suburb. “Hello, brother! How are you?” I asked, startled by the collision of past and present. He tried to hide his sorrow behind a practiced smile. Abby, now fifty‑three, adjusted his dark glasses and said: “I am happy, brother. In the pursuit of life, my family scattered across the world—two brothers in India, one in the UK, me here in the US, and my sister in Australia. Back home, I watched my cousin killed by Maoists. My father was abducted, beaten, and starved for fifteen days. I have peace and hope here. But I still ache for the country I belonged to, for the warmth of a big joint family. And truly… I miss my mother’s kitchen.”
He paused, as if the memory itself had weight. Abby believes that political unrest is almost expected in developing nations, but the suffering carved into society by a failing government and violent extremists cannot be excused as “instability.” It is a wound that spreads — making ordinary life unbearable, turning neighbourhoods into battlegrounds, and stretching fear across entire communities.
His father refused to support the Maoists — neither in principle nor in money — and paid for it with repeated assaults and robberies. The government, tangled in suspicion, believed he was secretly helping the insurgents. So the same family suffered under both hands: extremists and authorities. Arrests, torture, humiliation — a cycle that swallowed years.
His uncle, a student abducted by Maoists for their “people’s army,” escaped once, only to be killed later. And one night, before they could finish their dinner, Maoists stormed into their home, seized the house, and confiscated everything. A respected family with stable finances became homeless in a single evening.
They fled their village to survive. Yet the local police issued arrest warrants, accusing them of supporting the very extremists who had destroyed them. His father and brothers hid in their farmhouse. Abby escaped to Kathmandu. Eventually, he found a path to the United States, where he built a life that was peaceful — at least on the surface.
As he spoke, his dark glasses trembled slightly. They could not hide the tears gathering beneath them. He described the good moments he lost, the rituals he never performed, the parents he could not bury. He had been forced away from every person he loved, and from everyone who loved him.
“Whatever the situation was,” he said quietly, “I suffered an irrevocable loss.”
He learned that happiness does not come from luxury or ornaments. It lives in small, tender places — like the joy a tired porter feels when he rests under a tree after hours of walking in the sun. “Was the track of my life ever mine?” he asked. “Was I even safe in my own neighbourhood? These questions remain unanswered. But when I put ‘Me, Maoists, and Migration’ together, the memories crush whatever happiness I try to build. Every tear becomes an explosion inside.”
He spoke as though he carried the stories of thousands of vulnerable Nepali people inside him. And as I listened, I felt a quiet question rising within me — one that lingered long after we parted: Am I happy here in vain?
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