By Binay Karna, Kalyanpur (Saptari), Oct. 17: While Dashain festivities have filled communities across the country with joy, three families in the Sada settlement at Boriya Tole, Rajbiraj Municipality-16, have little reason to celebrate. For them, this year’s biggest festival will be marked by grief, hardship and deprivation rather than happiness.
More than a month and a half after the floods in Rasuwa on August 26 left three men from the settlement missing, their families are still waiting for news of their whereabouts. Bechan Sada, 40, Shiva Kumar Sada, 35, and Surendra Sada, 32, were working at the Trishuli-3B Hydropower Project in Kispang Rural Municipality-5, Nuwakot, when the disaster struck.
The tragedy has left their families struggling to make ends meet, with the festive atmosphere of Dashain conspicuously absent from the settlement.
The suffering of Bechan’s family is particularly heartbreaking. His 13-year-old son, Subash Sada, and seven-year-old daughter, Nibha, face a festival filled with sorrow and deprivation instead of the joy they once associated with Dashain.
Living in a two-room hut, the siblings have no one to buy them new clothes or prepare special meals for the festival. Their family is struggling even to arrange enough food for two meals a day.
Subash spent last year’s Dashain mourning the loss of his mother. Phuliya Devi Sada died of cancer on September 2, barely a month before the festival. Before he could recover from that loss, another tragedy struck the family this year. “During Dashain, my father used to bring me new clothes, and my mother used to cook delicious food,” Subash recalled. “Now, neither my mother nor my father is with us. We have neither food grains nor money at home. How are we supposed to celebrate Dashain?”
Cancer took his mother, while the floods left his father missing. Having lost both parents at a young age, Subash and Nibha are now more concerned about securing their next meal than celebrating the festival.
Three families in grief
The suffering of the two siblings is shared by 31-year-old Doropati Devi Sada and her three young children.
She has been living in a hut built on someone else’s land, for which she pays Rs. 1,000 a month in rent. Her husband, Surendra Sada, has also been missing since the floods in the Bhotekoshi River in Rasuwa on August 26.
Since her husband went missing, Doropati has struggled to provide for her children and arrange money for the rent.
“With the only breadwinner of our family missing, it has become difficult even to arrange food,” she said. “This year, Dashain has turned into a period of misfortune for us.”
Gudiya Devi Sada, another resident of the settlement, is enduring a similar ordeal. Her husband, Shiv Kumar Sada, has been missing since the floods of Bhadra 10. The 32-year-old is now solely responsible for raising their four young children. She has been relying on assistance from neighbours, local representatives and members of the public to sustain her family.
Memories of previous Dashain celebrations, when her husband would earn money and bring it home for the family, have made her present circumstances even more painful.
“I have received no news of my husband. My days and nights are consumed by the worry of how to feed our four young children,” Gudiya said. “Now that Dashain has arrived, I am overwhelmed by the question of when my husband will return.”
The disappearance of Bechan, Surendra and Shiva Kumar in the floods has not only robbed their families of their happiness but has also cast a shadow over the entire Sada settlement.
How did you feel after reading this news?