Feature

I personally became interested to know about the Nepali migrants in Bangladesh. The story of Shyamol was very painful. His father died few years back and now he has to look after the four family members all by himself. He could not study as much as he wanted to because of his economic problem. He is working as an assistant to an astrologist.

After one week, I got a call from a Nepali migrant to attend Satya Narayan Puja. I was so happy to get the invitation because I was very keen to know about the culture of Nepali migrants in Bangladesh. I went to attend the Puja. I was happy to see the process of Puja. There was not a single thing missing as we used to do in Nepal. I felt lucky to meet with around 100 Nepalese migrants that day.

One day I asked Shyamol to take me to meet some of the migrants. First, I met Bhakta Bahadur Thapa Chettri (8)0 in Dayagunj, Dhaka.

He recounted his experience in his own words.

"I was born in Pokhara. I left Nepal the year Juddha Shumshere died in the late 1940s. I was 14. There was a gallawala (manpower agent) from Gulmi who took a group of us to lahur, Assam to work for the British army. Many people from Nepal's hills were in Assam at that time, and Assam was a big state that included large parts of today's Bangladesh. Passports and visas were not required in those days. We could move from Nepal to any part of the greater Indian plains easily. We worked as coolies, labourers, and security guards. In 1953, I started working as a security guard in a ship-repair company in Narayanganj, on the outskirts of Dhaka. Many Gorkhalis worked nearby in leather tanneries and textile and sugar mills. We had a large community, and we regularly held puja gatherings, just like in the villages of Nepal. My wife is a Nepali. She was born and brought up in Bangladesh. We've stayed together as a family with our eight children, five of whom are married to other Bangladeshi Nepalis. We've always lived close to Hindu temples, which aren't easy to find these days in Bangladesh. We wanted our children to grow up learning about our festivals such as Kali Puja and Bhai Puja.

When I think of Nepal, I think of Dukha, of extremely hard work one has to do to survive there. Up in the hills, you work very, very hard to collect fodder for the cattle and to gather firewood. In Shillong, India, I once met a group of Nepalis. Seeing how hard they worked made me realize how lazy I had become living in the plains."

On the same day I went to meet Mir Bahadur Upadhyay (Galu Dai), in Nakkhal Para, Dhaka. His story is somewhat more interesting.

"My father was from Ramechhap. Like many young Gorkhali men, he came to Assam to work as a security guard. He married and I am a second-generation Bangladeshi Nepali. Here in Nakhal Para we have about 42 Bangladeshi-Nepali families. Across Bangladesh, there are about 1,000 or so families of about 7,000 Nepalis who are permanently settled here. We are in touch with one another because we need to know who is where in order to get our children married to others of Nepali ancestry. Whenever possible, most young Nepalis marry other Nepalis of any caste. But lately, some have married Bangladeshi Hindus and Muslims too.

From time to time, we have tried to form a Bangladesh- Nepali Council to air our concerns to the government here, but we have not made any progress due to misunderstandings amongst ourselves. We Gorkhalis can be too touchy about perceived slights and insults. Bangladeshi Nepalis are gradually doing better. One Bangladeshi Nepali, Bir Bahadur Chakma (Lama), represents Bandarban district as an Awami League member in parliament.

The younger ones are better educated. Some won DV lotteries and moved to the US. Others have worked in the Middle East as maids, security guards, and drivers. Some have visited their relatives in their ancestral villages in Nepal. I have a government job. Most Bangladeshi Nepalis do not have their own land or homes. This is partly because Gorkhalis did not understand Bangladesh's land laws, and did not want to get into unnecessary trouble with the law. We follow news from Nepal. When King Birendra and his family was killed, many of us mourned and did not eat one meal. We were ashamed, and we did not know how to explain the killings to our Bangladeshi neighbours. Last year, about forty of us protested the present monarch's rule in front of the Nepali Embassy in Dhaka. In the 1980s, Ganesh Thapa was a popular football player here and Bangladeshis still talk about him in ways that make all of us proud to be Gorkhalis."

The same day I came to meet one younger Nepalese migrant Babu Bahadur Thapa, 36, in Nakkhal Para, Dhaka. His experience was totally a new generation thinking.

"I am a third-generation Bangladeshi Nepali. My grandfather was a soldier in the British Army. In 1950, after the war, some of my grandfather's friends went to other parts of India. Some returned to their villages in Nepal. Some, like my grandfather, stayed back in what is now Bangladeshi. I was born and raised in Dhaka. I have a job with an international development agency here and am married to a Bangladeshi Nepali. I consider myself 'Made in Bangladesh.' Nepalis have a short history in Bangladesh. Because of our facial features, we are often mistaken for tribal people from the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Our reputation here is that of peaceful, quiet, gentle people (shanta jaat). Nepalis are perceived to be reliable people who do not cheat and lie. We do not really have issues with Bangladeshis. When they demolished Babri Masjid in India in 1992, many of our Hindu neighbours were beaten up in Dhaka. But nobody bothered us Nepalis. I see Nepalis here living in harmony with one another not only in Dhaka but also in places such as Dinajpur, Faridpur, and Rangpur. In our Nepali communities, younger ones still take care of elderly parents by living with them, and relatives help cousins to get out of hardships. We have large community gatherings during Satya Narayan Puja, Saraswati Puja, Dasain, and Tihar. All of us speak Nepali, though it's all mixed up with Bangla now. My regret is that, despite having lived in present-day Bangladesh for more than 50 years, we Nepalis have no permanent address here. Most of us have no land to our names. Nobody gave us any advice about how to make progress in this new land. We just drifted from one part of Bangladesh to another like nomads. Looking back, I wish our fathers had sought advice, or that someone at the Nepali Embassy in Dhaka had given us suggestions so we could have done better than we have collectively done so far."

It was really very exciting and disappointing moment for me to meet and know the real story of these people. They are having so many problems in Bangladesh and I am wondering about the situation prevailing with other Nepalese migrants in other countries.

(MBA, AIUB, Dhaka)

With all precincts reporting, John Tyler Hammons won with 70 percent of the vote over former Mayor Hershel Ray McBride, said Muskogee County Election Board Secretary Bill Bull.

"The public placing their trust in me is the greatest, humbling and most awesome experience I've ever had in my life," said Hammons, who is from Muskogee but attends the university in Norman.

The two candidates squared off in a runoff election for the nonpartisan post after neither secured 50 percent of the vote in a six-person election April 1.

Hammons, who will be sworn in next week, said he plans to continue his college education but expects to transfer to a school closer to Muskogee.

"Being elected does not change my desire to continue my education," he said. "We will schedule our time in an appropriate fashion so that I can be mayor and stay in school."

Hammons replaces Wren Stratton, who decided not to seek re-election after one term.

The mayor leads the nine-member city council and serves as a voting member. Hammons said a key to his platform that resonated with voters was openness of government and keeping citizens better informed of city operations.

"I think that's been a detriment to the trust of the citizens of Muskogee," he said. "Once we have that trust, we can solve any other problem."

For Hammons, who will take office for a two-year term, it is only the beginning of a political career.

"I would like to be governor of Oklahoma and president of the United States," he said.