Devendra Gautam

On that day, there was a kind of ‘construction frenzy’ in front of the Vishwaruup temple at the Pashupatinath area. 
Construction frenzy at a UNESCO-designated world heritage site?
You must be kidding, hallucinating or daydreaming. If construction work was going on in the UNESCO-designated site, what were all those capable officials of the Pashupati Area Development Trust doing? That is what you guys will say, for sure. 

Well, yours truly was not kidding nor was he under the influence of any kind nor daydreaming. Trying to whet your appetite for this piece, that is what yours truly was doing.
Without spinning the yarn any further, let me talk about the 'construction frenzy' on that day. 
What day was it? It was the day of Balachaturdashi. 

On the said ‘site’, even grown-ups were acting like children. They would lay one or two bricks or stones for the 'foundation' and add a couple more above them. 
This indeed reminded yours truly of a game called 'run' that we used to playback in our village. For this game, we would make a similar structure using pebbles, run and chase friends.
For winning the game, the player had to either hit one of the players or the rickety structure with the ball, causing its collapse. After that, the player receiving the hit would do the chasing, while other players would do the running part. 

What amazed yours truly was that these folks were not playing that 'ball game'. Instead, they were busy 'playing' a whole new ball game. 
‘When in Shleshmantak, do as the Shleshmantiks do’. The inner voice whispered.
So, yours truly 'rolled up his sleeves, went about searching for pebbles and bricks, chose a construction site close to the temple of Bahiro Ganesh (This Ganesh is hard of hearing, so you have to scream a bit to make yourself heard!).

What made yours truly sad was that humanity was busy pulling down structures that others had built to create ‘high-rises’ of their own.
While engaging in the 'construction work', yours truly struck up a conversation with fellow Homo Sapiens.
‘K garne? Yasai garnu parchha’.  

(What to do? This is what we should do) Saying this, a fellow Sapien 'raged' a structure and erected 'his own' on the same site, thereby erasing a tiny bit of history.
While this selfish game was going on, monkeys of Shleshmantak were watching with keen interest. Yours truly thought he should have taken Professor Yuval Noah Harari, a historian, philosopher and the author of the much-celebrated and critically acclaimed books 'Sapiens' and 'Homo Deus' to this site that day! Most probably, he would have said with a deep sigh: "Humanity is doomed -- and for good."
Remember, there's a proverb in Nepali: Monkeys neither build their houses nor let others build their own. If the apes knew, they would laugh their hearts out at this joke. Sadly, monkeys have no sense of humour, sadder than humans do.

Without running a sweat, yours truly built two structures, typical middle-class ones, by the side of the Bahiro Ganesh temple.
Though a sceptic to the core, yours truly had this faint belief that Bahiro Ganesh would somehow protect those modest ‘dwellings’, that no bull-dozer would thunder into the midnight to rage them.
Work over, yours truly had a short chat with fellow sapiens. According to some of them, these structures were meant for pitris (our ancestors).

Okay, the ancestors also need modest dwellings, if not high-rises. They need them at the sacred woods of Shleshmantak, a bit far from the hustle and bustle of city life. That makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
The pitris have shelter, now what about food? Where’s the source of food?
On the day of Balachaturdashi, the faithful sow different kinds of seeds called Satbeej at the Pashupatinath area. It is believed that pitris feed into the sacred crops grown thus.
While following a ‘Bagmati’ (of the yore, of course) of humanity along the sacred trail on that day, yours truly observed that huge quantities of seeds sown for pitris had become dust under the crushing feet of milling humanity!

An afterthought: Even for the sake of rituals, would it not be good to sow these seeds in the woods and not along the walkways? And what about the clothes? The pitris don’t need them?
This childlike curiosity is not good for you, the inner voice whispered again. And yours truly tried hard to suppress his curiosity while walking all alone along the swollen Bagmati of humanity.
Anyway, inching along the sacred ‘Satbeej trail’ on the day of Balachaturdashi was quite an enlightening experience for yours truly.

Returning from the modern woods via the Guheshwori Temple-Mrigasthali-Shleshmantak forest, the Aryaghat (crematorium) and the Vriddhashram (the government-run old-age home) somehow reminded yours truly of the journey of life. The Shleshmantak woods reminded him of the afterlife, the crematoriums of death and the old-age home as the sunset of the journey called life.

Yours truly requests our capable officials and policymakers to visit this trail every now and then, despite their very hectic schedules. How about taking a walk in the Sleshmantak woods and thinking about life in general and the afterlife? How about stopping at those crematoriums and pondering how hard it is to live – and harder still to die – especially for the lesser mortals? How about inquiring about the state of the old-age home and the plight of its inhabitants? Yours truly hopes that such visits will enlighten them and enable them to formulate and implement policies that address the needs of the unborn, the living and the dead more effectively.
The state indeed has to care for the unborn, the living and the dead, or is it not?

(Gautam is a freelancer)