Silence of fear

It is after two years I visited my village, situated in Midwestern region of Nepal on the lap of Mount Annapurna and Machapuchre (Fishtail). It was a cloudy day with less heat and was a suitable day to walk. I started early in the morning with my cousin so that we might not be caught in rain before we reach our destination. We rushed in a taxi with an old man, who was moving vendor. Through the sheets of glass, I could view landscape like a beautiful landscape picture hung on our sitting room wall. However, the wails of this old man sitting beside me make me feel explosion of supernova within this beautiful landscape. I kept on listening to him until we reached Nayapool.
We farewell him and took our own ways hoping to see him again. From this point, we needed to use up our own legs to compete our journey. We both started on foot and as we passed on, I could see roads under construction but halted due to various unfair reasons. When I asked the local vendors about the road construction, they said it was halted due to rebels demand for cash. We kept on moving despite our exhaustion. Compared to previous time that I visited my village I could bypass just a few number of travelers sporadically. Hamlets where I could see children, youngsters…previously now seem doomed and deserted. Lots of them have migrated to urban areas where they can secure themselves these days. We continued our journey trying to view the dead beauty of these hills and mountains, which once injected life and energy, now gave grievance and loneliness. I could not walk like previous times because of the obesity that I had gained; I was dead exhausted and had a cramp on my thighs. However, Despite exhaustion I did not lose a chance to capture the changes of these trails within my camera. As we kept on moving I felt someone was following us, previously I thought he must have been some traveler who was too heading toward Ghandruk. However, his behavior was not that of traveler but of some spy. He had this but sporty body, craggy looking face and clever looking eyes. We kept on moving trying to ignore, but suspicion kept on bursting in my mind. Latter as we reached our destination came to know that they were rebels who kept there keen eyes on every new faces that bypass. Now the village has turned to a pile of skulls everything seems still only this in motion was smoke drifting like clouds from few houses. Due to change in my physical structure in two years time, most of the old people and my kith and kin could hardly recognize me. There eyes seem distrustful, behaviors seem suspicious and there face showed some frustration. Before they had learned to welcome everyone as a guest, now they try to keep themselves away as far as possible to any new face so they will not be in any trouble. Last year rebels executed two local villages suspecting for being spy. Since then most of the youngsters have moved to urban areas for fearing of being recruited in Maoist. As I go around my village and come back home my mom fearfully ask me-“Where have you been?!” However, the reason for her now seem different, before her reason for fear was that I might get astray, now she fears because I might get abducted. Before, when time came to leave my village even after I exceeded my time of holiday she use to say “your holiday is too short!”, Now it has been just a week in my village she feels my holiday is too long.
As I walk back to Katmandu I feel the peaceful looking eyes of Buddha has worn out, human has turned out werewolves for which full is no prerequisite. There is a silence in village it is not silence because they do not enjoy talking, it is silence because it is a silence of fear.

Milan Gurung (Freeman)