Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli is justly famous for his balderdash that his apologists then celebrate as insightful. Just after landing at the airport from his junket, he blabbered to the media that he hadn’t gone to New York to “milk a buffalo”. While in the US, he had reiterated his earlier claim about gaindas not being rhinos.

After becoming the prime minister for the third time in less than a decade, Sharma Oli chose to go on his first visit abroad to attend the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Such a call of duty of the chief executive of the country can certainly be not compared to the mundane but necessary task of dairy farming. His insistence upon using the Nepali terms for greater one-horned rhino, also called the “Indian Rhino”, is also understandable: Deep insecurities of jingoistic Nepalis make them live in the denial of all Indian connections.

The larger point of using indigenous terms for descriptive categories of different localities, however, is perfectly valid. Europe has four seasons in a year—spring, summer, autumn and winter. In South Asia, the all-important rainy season exists between the summer and autumn. The chilly winter is followed by the cool air and invigorating warmth of the sun of the temperate shisir before a windy spring begins to sway the fresh flowers of mango trees.

There is no term for the transition of winter into spring season in the English language and shisir remains untranslatable. Months of sharad coincide with the season when autumnal weather changes the colour of leaves as they begin to fall on the ground. A similar phenomenon isn’t so common in South Asia. Sharad is also the measure of a year in Sanskrit just as the root word of autumn in Latin “autumnus” means “the passing of the year.”

Sharad begins when tiny flowers with pink stems and white petals begin to fall off the branches as rays of the sun kiss the parijat (night jasmine) tree in the morning. How the parijat fell from the heavens to Nepal valley and Indra had to descend to the earth to steal its fallen flowers from the ground remains a mystery. The Indra Jatra, the ritual worship of churning of the celestial ocean on Ananta Pooja, and the Pitri Paksha when homage is paid to one’s ancestors are some of the markers of the season that’s more than autumn and not at all fall but just the sharad ritu. Premier Sharma Oli should insist that it be called sharad and not autumn or fall.

Homeward journey

After paying tribute to the dead, the living begin their festivities with the 10-days of Shardiya Navratri and Vijayadashami, continue with the five-day-long Yam Panchak and Deepawali, and close the season with the four-day observance of Mahaparva Chhath that pays obeisance through the setting and rising sun to the primal force of nature—mother goddess Chhathi Maiya.

The 10 days of Dashain is the biggest celebration of the hegemonic Khas-Arya community, hence sometimes termed as the ‘national festival’ of Nepal. The Yam Panchak, which includes 3-days of Tihar and the festival of lights Deepawali, is celebrated in different forms by almost all Hindus. With the movement of people from the great plains between Gandak and Mahananda river systems all over the globe, Chhath has been transformed from a regional festival to a distinctive celebration of a faithful population everywhere.

Jack Kerouac (1922-69), one of the pioneering poets and novelists of the Beat Generation, wrote the haunting line in his emblematic novel On the Road (1957): “The bus roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.” The context is different, but everybody wants to, plans to, or goes home for the festive season. The most intense rains in over half a century have wreaked havoc in different parts of the country, but the devastation has failed to dampen the spirit of those who want to be home for festivities. Exceptions are the poor who have to leave home in search of work to help their families endure the hardships of the coming winter.

Many people from Kathmandu head home for Dashain: Almost half a million have already left Kathmandu Valley, and the number may cross a million by the day of the tika on Vijayadashami. A smaller number waits for Tihar to get back home. Since Chhath pooja can be performed at any waterbody anywhere, fewer people with their families travel to their hometown or ancestral village for its observance.

Though a nostalgic ode to the landscape of West Virginia, John Denver sings of the universal yearning for home and belongingness inherent in every human being through the moving lines—"Misty taste of moonshine / Teardrops in my eye …” — of “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. But what is home, and where does it lie?

On the way to Simara Airport on Gandhi Jayanti, the taxi driver asked in all innocence whether I was headed home after my work was over in Birganj. In the departure lounge overcrowded with waiting passengers of several delayed flights, a record has been set a day earlier, an acquaintance wondered if I had something urgent to attend to that made me rush to Kathmandu instead of going home for Dashain. Tired and hungry after a long wait and a short but bumpy flight, I headed for the only eatery outside the arrival gates.

A youngster from eastern Nepal sharing the table at the busy restaurant lamented the price gouging by domestic airlines and inquired if I was waiting to catch my flight to my hometown. My perplexities were not over: During the small talk of a slow ride along the muddy Bagmati Corridor through the debris left by recent floods, the cabby wondered if I was coming back from home! What exactly is home and where is it for me or anyone else for that matter? I wonder.

Permanent address

Once names have been exchanged, the first question that an interlocutor must face is, “Where are you from?” It is easy to answer when one is just a visitor in a foreign land—home is the country of one’s passport. It’s slightly more complicated for a citizen of a foreign origin who has to get into the nuances of the source and host country to prove an identity. Inside one’s country, naming the district of one’s place of residence is enough even though one has to sometimes answer, “Where is your Pahad home?”. Sadly, Madheshis in Pahad are often assumed to have Indian origins!

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.” Or so muses Robert Frost in “The Death of the Hired Man.” During the Covid-19, it became clear that the country wasn’t always home: India-returnee Birendra Kumar Yadav died at Jatahi due to a delay in clearance at the check post. “Home is where the heart is …” sings Elvis Presley. But does the heart have a permanent address that many official documents in Nepal want everyone to specify? All questions ultimately generate even more complex questions. On that reflective note: Happy Shardiya fasts, feasts, festivities and togetherness.