8-14 April 2016 #803

Double trouble

Gopen Rai

62-year-old Purna Maya Tamang of Rayale village in Kavre (above) moves around a temporary shelter tending her chicken. She looks forlornly towards the space where her double storey mud and brick house once stood. It was the home her husband Singhabir brought her to for the first time after they got married 42 years ago. Now both the house, and her husband are gone.

Singhabir was one of the more educated people in the village, he had a government job and had voiced dissatisfaction with Maoist threats and intimidation of villagers. 

At midnight 14 years ago Maoist guerrillas abducted Singhabir saying they would bring him back in a few days. They threatened the family not to look for him. Two weeks later, news came from another village that a body had been found in a nearby forest.

“The villagers went to look and it was my husband,” recalls Purna Maya, holding Singhabir’s photograph, “there were cuts all over his body, we had to stitch him up for the cremation.”  

Then, ten years later, tragedy struck again when her house came down in the earthquake. Far from rebuilding, there is no one to even clear the rubble.

“I remember him every day, especially since our house was destroyed,” says Purna Maya. She has a widow’s cheque from the government, her daughter-in-law sends some money from Kathmandu, but there is no sign of the Rs 200,000 the government promised for reconstruction. Her son has been jobless since the earthquake, so there is no money to rebuild.

As for the war, she hasn’t forgotten what happened that night and still fears the Maoist will come for her son and grandchildren.

Sahina Shrestha in Kavre

Read also:

Ex-minor ex-Maoists, Om Asta Rai

Remembering the war, From the Nepali Press