Dreams Beyond Departure

The airport was a purgatory of hopes and farewells. Saurav stood among the crowd, his rejection slip crumpled in his back pocket, its edges cutting into his skin like a dull knife. He hadn’t left home for days, but today his mother had insisted they see off their neighbour’s son, Pratik, who was flying to Australia. Tribhuvan International Airport was alive with the chaos of departure: tearful mothers clutching hands they weren’t ready to let go of, fathers offering stiff pats on the back, and a sea of young men with fresh haircuts and dreams too large to fit inside their suitcases.

Saurav hated it here. He hated the scripted goodbyes, the hollow assurances—We’ll visit soon. We’ll call every day. Everyone knew the truth: these goodbyes were final. Pratik’s mother, draped in a cheap sari that still smelt of mothballs, held her son’s face as if memorizing it for the last time. “You’ll do great there,” she said, her voice breaking. Pratik nodded but said nothing, his expression a blend of relief and guilt.

Saurav wondered what Pratik felt walking into that terminal. Freedom? Or a growing weight that no one had warned him about?

The road back home was quiet except for his mother’s occasional sighs. Saurav stared out the window as Kathmandu unravelled like a broken reel of film. The air hung thick with the city’s stink—burning plastic, spilt diesel, the collective exhaustion of millions. Billboards for consultancies lined the streets, their promises dripping like fresh paint: “Your Future Awaits—Study in Canada.” “Turn Your Dreams into Reality!” “Sworga jane bato !”

Dreams, Saurav thought bitterly, weren’t built for people like him.

At home, his mother switched on the TV, where a debate show filled the room with noise. Politicians yelled over one another, their mouths moving faster than their minds. The anchor, a smug man in a too-tight suit, moderated like a referee at a cockfight. The topic was migration—the so-called “brain drain” everyone loved to wring their hands over. A young economist argued that the government needed to invest in industries that created jobs. An older politician, his belly pressing against the buttons of his shirt, dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand.

“Why should we stop youth from going abroad? Let them learn and grow. They’ll come back with skills to build the nation,” the man said.

“When?” Saurav muttered under his breath. He couldn’t remember the last time someone he knew came back. His cousin in Texas had a green card now. His best friend in Melbourne had married an Australian citizen for the visa. Even Pratik wouldn’t be back—his parents had sold their land to fund his tuition.

Later that night, Saurav sat on the rooftop, a cigarette dangling between his fingers. The city sprawled before him, its lights flickering like dying stars. The stories of his parents’ generation floated to the surface of his mind: A Nepal where education was affordable, where industries thrived, where people didn’t measure success by their distance from home. 

He thought of his father, who had once been a teacher but now spent his days at a hardware store, his voice hoarse from selling PVC pipes and haggling over nails.

“This democracy has failed us,” his father had said once, after a few too many drinks. Democracy, for all its promises, had become a farce. Politicians treated elections like lotteries, and the winners plundered without shame. The people were too busy surviving to hold anyone accountable. And those who could have made a difference—the young, the educated—were all gone.

The next morning, Saurav met Ravi, his childhood friend, at a dingy teashop near Basundhara. Ravi had returned from Qatar after a year of backbreaking labour on a construction site. He looked older than his twenty-five years, his hands calloused, his eyes sunken.

“Why’d you come back?” Saurav asked, lighting another cigarette. Ravi shrugged. “My contract ended. And I got tired of living like a dog.”

Saurav didn’t press further. They both knew the truth: Ravi had returned because he had no choice. His employer had confiscated his passport, delayed his wages, and worked him until his back gave out. When Ravi finally managed to leave, he came home with less than he had left with.

“They don’t treat us like people there,” Ravi said, stirring his tea with a trembling hand. “We’re just bodies to them. Replaceable.”

The words lingered in the air, heavy and unspoken. In Nepal, they weren’t even bodies—they were statistics. A percentage of the workforce. A line in a remittance report.

Saurav didn’t know when the idea took root in his mind, but it grew quickly, like weeds through cracked pavement. The system wasn’t going to change itself. And running wasn’t an option anymore.

He thought about what Parijat had written in Shirishko phool: “Life is not about seeking the extraordinary, but about seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary.” What if people like Ravi didn’t have to leave? What if Pratik didn’t have to trade his mother’s land for a degree in a foreign country? What if Nepal could be the place they dreamed of escaping to?

Saurav wasn’t naive. He didn’t believe in revolutions overnight. But he believed in starting small. He believed in the power of people—real people, not politicians or consultants or social media influencers.

It started with Ravi. Together, they set up a small carpentry business, using Ravi’s skills and Saurav’s knack for negotiation. Then they roped in a few more friends—one who painted murals, another who made furniture from scrap wood. Slowly, the group grew, not just in size but in purpose.

They weren’t trying to change the world. They were trying to survive. But in doing so, they found something they hadn’t expected: hope.

Months later, Saurav returned to the airport, this time to pick up another neighbour who had left for Dubai. He stood among the crowd, watching as tired men and women emerged from the arrivals gate, their eyes scanning the sea of faces for someone familiar. For the first time, the airport didn’t feel like purgatory. It felt like a beginning.

(Gautam is pursuing higher studies in Tourism at Tribhuvan University and is an intern at Nepal Airlines.)