Sauraha
“Hum”
I left Kathmandu at the break of dawn, after 10 monotonous and tiresome days. “So happy to be leaving!”, read a text that I had so gleefully sent to a friend back in KTM. The continuity and the development of patterns acted as the final push and I set my way to Sauraha. The long and invariably bumpy bus rides are a stimulus for contemplation. I had placed too much reliance on this trip perhaps, I concluded, as the bus made its way from the 4 degrees Celsius of Kathmandu to the 14 degrees of Sauraha.
I alighted the bus with a certain preconceived disappointment as if I had gauged my experiences here even before I could set my eyes on the place. If only I knew what awaited me that night itself.
I have often sat down and thought how expensive and exclusive kind deeds, smiles, and hugs have become nowadays. Being furrowed at by strangers for smiling at them, being asked if I’m okay when I hugged someone, or just fended off as being “too nice” for kind deeds- I experience all this pretty much on a daily basis. If you ask me, I think people have lost the wisdom to comprehend how every kind deed, smile, or hug adds and builds up to this castle, an almost fairytale-like castle. No, I am not preaching, only sketching a picture of that “fairytale castle” that the ids of the orphanage at Sauraha (that I was volunteering with) have built for themselves. My tangible world seemed minuscule in front of their castle of values, smiles, endless hugs, and unnumbered kind deeds.
The journey from “Shubhanjana” to “Shubhanjana Sister” was covered in 2 hours which were spent dancing to my favourite songs with the kids and the other volunteers. However, it took less than 2 hours to shatter my preconceived disappointment and bury it at the foot of this magnanimous castle that I was welcomed in to.
No wonder that after that, the thought of “home” left a disturbing angst, only to be broken by a call, “Shubhanjana Sister!”
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