Sradda Thapa

An old friend from another lifetime was in town this week. We met for coffee and as expected, he asked me how my two years back had been. Before I knew it, he uttered the well-meaning but dreadful, “Ah, it’s good you’re here. Nepal needs more people like you.”

For the hundreds of recent returnees in town, you know that good old pat on the back I’m referring to. Some of you may appreciate that while others of you cringe. In my two years here I’ve seen quite a few articles written about and written by the lot – often praised and congratulated. This is by no means to counter the positivity catered towards us and the prospective “us,” but I did want to share a different perspective on coming and being back.

While a few assume we failed to get a job and grab a green card and hence we’re recouped into our fetal position at home, most others beam with pride. Families casually, but ever so intentionally, mention their son, daughter, nephew or niece is back. Back. Bidesh gayera harayena. We earned our degrees and completed our OPTs, but we did not get lost in the West - we came back.

Forget families, even employers boast a returnee or team of returnees, comprising their staff. Coming back is such an honorable deed, it seems. And, to an extent it is.

The glory in returning is almost equivalent to martyrdom. I exaggerate, yes, but the key word is “almost.” Coming back to Nepal is something to marvel at as though the returnees sacrificed their happiness, expertise and presumably their lives.

The way people praise us, we start to believe we have achieved something great in simply boarding our flight home. If we were not already sitting smug with our seat belts on, two weeks in the city is all it takes to realize how special we are.

After all, we have supposedly been so selfless as to leave behind the land of the free and home of the brave, where opportunities are plenty. But, would it be a surprise if we admitted coming back is not all that hard? After all, most of us simply trade Starbucks for Java and H&M for Warehouse.

In fact, we can even fund these coffee breaks which take place from the shopping sprees thanks to mummy and daddy. At 20-something, in Nepal there’s little stigma attached to receiving pocket money (forget paying bills and being “in between” jobs). We can even take risks. I could not take a break from life had I stayed in the US. Half the entrepreneurs could not kick-start their businesses if their father’s bank accounts did not stand as collateral. And even less would have been given fancy titles and handsome sums as compensation in the many organizations that dot the valley.

The government officers who could have grabbed scholarship but instead pursued civil service despite condescending remarks made of the corrupt bureaucrat and pittance for pay are the real movers and shakers of this country who can be aspired to by a wider population than the American degree-Nepali job combo.

And, yet we are applauded. We may not need to be boo-ed but, we are not doing something grander than the many others that Nepal actually needs. I too am a member, albeit an inactive one of the Facebook group “Farkeka Nepali.” I even started a googlegroup in 2008 - with a similar goal, but with less focus to connect Nepalis overseas and inland should they desire to enter the professional world in Nepal? Coming, staying, leaving, after all, is relative.

The intentions may be to encourage us, to use as examples of how it is indeed possible to live in our own country, but it does not fail to puzzle us either. All we did was come home. We came back. We returned. Unless you are implying Nepal really is so very horrible, are we not insulting ourselves when we act as those that returned need not have? The pollution, traffic, loadshedding and water-shortage is an adjustment returnees have to make, but it’s something the Nepalis who never left have had to put up with too. Surely it doesn’t come more naturally for some than others.

Perhaps if a significant chunk of us returnees ventured into remote Nepal, outside the comforts of Kathmandu (not the per diem-ed “field” visits) and devoted our talents and future towards the betterment of some long-forgotten community, then tooting our own horn would make sense. However, so long as a good majority of us enjoy living in spacious homes, dining in Thamel and cruising in Santros, let’s remember there are others that Nepal needs, or for that matter, wants.

We simply traded one place of comfort and opportunity for another – the privileged ones of us, anyway. The idea and plan to return is not suffocating when leaving again - for another degree, for a vacation and such is always an option. Perhaps returning is an option reserved for a certain group, it may not be for each I-20 stamped passport holder. For those that put their Western-MBA to good use, start up a coffee shop (and provide employment to others) or join an office (and further project goals), that´s wonderful, but does it deserve the gold medals?

Coming back is not as new as the recent Returnees of us assume. The privileged and the adventurous have been doing it not just for years, but for decades – look at Meena Acharya, Devendra Raj Pandey and Bhekh Bahadur Thapa. People, usually those who can afford to, have been coming back all along.

And then, there are those that never left. Maybe out of fear of the unknown or because they didn’t get their visa, but also because some realized the opportunity to make opportunity in Nepal itself. A good few are not even financially or socially prodded up by name. Like the lower-middle class man who wanted to open a massage center in Thamel despite the smirk attached to the word “masseuse.” Like the government officers who could have grabbed the scholarship, but instead pursued civil service despite condescending remarks made of the corrupt bureaucrat and pittance for pay. They are the real movers and shakers of this country who can be aspired to by a wider population than the American degree-Nepali job combo.

Coming home is fine, but staying is also fine - whether overseas or in Nepal. Those that deserve a pat on the back are not the returnees alone. It’s the ones that do what they can, with what they have, from where they are selflessly.

After all, Nepal does not need more people like me – for whom reading Nepali newspapers is tedious, from whom endless complaints ramble and for whom development is synonymous with western measurement. Nepal needs more people who are willing to take on humble positions as VDC secretaries, police inspectors, schoolteachers and politicians. Unfortunately few that share my profile are invested in these professions.

Published on: 21 July 2011 | Republica