There’s a scene in Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 film Parasite where worker Ki-taek drives the rich Mrs Park to do her grocery shopping.
It rained cats and dogs in Seoul the night before – the deluge forcing Ki-taek to evacuate to the local gymnasium with his son when their low-income neighbourhood flooded.
From the back of the car, Mrs Park phones a friend.
“Today the sky’s so blue, and no pollution! Thanks to all the rain yesterday!” she announces.
Ki-taek grips the wheel silently, Mrs Park’s comment piercing him like a splinter.
For some, rain is the fuel to resuscitate dying flowers in their gardens. For others, that same rain is merciless.
*
It was October 2024 and I woke at 4am, just before my first alarm. Not normally a morning person, I’d set five alarms 10 minutes apart the previous night, but the prospect of going home for Dashain after a year away was enough to wake me for good.
The conductor had told me to be at the bus stop at 4:30, but I know from travelling back and forth all these years that they just say that so there won’t be any delays.
I did the remainder of my packing, changed and got on my way. From the window seat, I looked out and dwelled on the news I’d seen about the highway I was about to bus through.
A week earlier, more than 72 hours of incessant, exceptionally late monsoon rainfall triggered a series of devastating floods and landslides across Nepal. Kathmandu Valley alone saw around 240 mm (9.4 inches) of rain, the heaviest in decades. It claimed the lives of more than 200 people and displaced families in the thousands.
From Kathmandu – the largest city in the valley – I’d been worried but safe: among the ones unharmed by the disaster. But now I had to get home for Dashain.
*
For a lot of Nepalis like me, who are born and raised outside of the valley, we are bound to the overtly centralised concrete capital of Kathmandu. But once a year, during the biggest festival of Nepali Hindus, we count down the days to make it home.
As the anticipatory pounding drums in the city grew louder, those who celebrate Dashain were excited to greet the festival. People were out and about shopping and painting their houses. The already crowded streets of Kathmandu were even more packed, with people like canned fish.
Celebrating Dashain as an adult is similar to Marvel movies bringing in cameos for the fans’ service. You do it to feed your nostalgia. Once you grow up, you are tied to responsibilities and whatnot, so the festivities become an excuse to get some time off from the chains of corporate slavery and capitalism.
But for many families last year, the festival did not bring joy or get-togethers. Nature wrought havoc — which was untimely of her, but not something we could never have seen coming.
There were warnings. This human loss and infrastructural damage was preventable.
When the rains fell, I wasn’t working full-time, so most days I’d be in my room. Luckily, the rain spared the place I’m letting. However, the house right across the street was not so lucky. The family of five renting the ground floor found their place filled with muddy, ankle-deep water.
As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours. But it did not just pour. It flooded and drowned and swept away.
Some people from the neighbourhood waded through the filthy water in raincoats or umbrellas to see the nearby river with its burst banks. I did not even entertain the idea. The comfort of my room won me over, and I idled inside anxiously as fear lashed down outside in the form of liquid.
It had been hours since the power cut. My phone battery had died. Slowly the night progressed, so I lay in my bed, wrapped myself with a blanket and waited for sleep to come.
The next day, the power came back. Quick scrolling over social media, I learned that the over-pouring of rain had turned the capital city into a crisis-filled halt.
*
It had been a few hours. The bus made a stop for breakfast. I ordered two hard-boiled eggs and a small plate of grams sprinkled with diced onions. When the journey resumed, some passengers dozed off, while others were on their phones or peeking outside.
“Yeah, it’s that one!” the bus conductor shouted, pointing out the window.
I paused John Mayer’s ‘Free Fallin’ and took out my headphones.
Several parts of the highway were severely damaged by the rain and landslides. Big chunks of the roads were gone, as if a giant monster had mindlessly stomped over them.
Concrete slabs lay broken on the banks and poked from the river like protruding wisdom teeth.
A “turn left” road sign was sunken in the sand upside down on a corner.
“When you least expect it, nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot,” says André Aciman in Call Me By Your Name.
I was shocked to see a whole house flipped over like it bore no weight, only to realise as the bus progressed that many more were overturned.
I have travelled the BP Highway several times from Itahari to Kathmandu. Scenic routes with beautiful landscapes usually accompany the more-than 10 hours of bus ride. From hills through rivers to finally the plains, the tiring journey used to offer wonderful sights for sore eyes.
Another break, this time for lunch. The scene at these stops is so chaotically organised. Everyone has their purpose, and they get on with it, since time is limited.
After filling my hungry stomach with a chicken meal set, I turned my phone on power-saving mode and closed my eyes.
A murmur-like commotion startled my sleep. The bus was along a riverbank, crawling up a hill in a long line of traffic. Most passengers from the vehicles ahead had gotten out to make the inclined ride less heavy.
Our bus emptied too, and I joined the other passengers to ascend the hill on foot and wait as the vehicles crawled along like ants.
Before the flood mauled the highway like a hungry bear, the dust used to settle here. Now, the road was a carcass being pecked by vultures: the rubble and dirt scattered as if they had no part in making a whole.
I covered my mouth so I didn’t inhale nature’s dry cocktail. God knows how long it will take them to reconstruct one of the country’s most important highways.
Built with the assistance of Japan, the BP Highway is the shortest link between the Kathmandu Valley and the eastern Terai regions of Nepal. It was opened to the public in 2015.
I remember travelling it back then and wondering what socio-economic feats the newly constructed road would help achieve. You see, roads are everything for developing nations like Nepal, where other infrastructural developments are yet to take place.
Roads allow wage workers and commuters to earn a livelihood. From getting groceries to accessing medicine, highways are an imperative part of a functioning society. Even a minor obstruction on the road could delay someone from getting emergency healthcare and push them to the brink of death.
The driver honking pulled me back to reality, and I got on the bus. I had brought a book, but the shaking of the vehicle on the destroyed roads was too disturbing. Though I had music in my ears, my thoughts were louder.
It was spring, right before Dashain and long after the monsoon. It was not supposed to rain. Flowers were supposed to bloom. Paddies were supposed to gleam in the golden hour of sunlight. People were not supposed to die. Houses were not supposed to be swept away. But it was too late.
Nepal contributes very little to global climate change – only 0.11% of greenhouse gas emissions at last count in 2022, but it is among the countries most affected by it. Within Nepal, those hardest hit are from socio-economically marginalized caste and class groups.
In Kathmandu, the flash floods severely affected the settlements close to the rivers. And those settlements were of daily wagers and scrap dealers mostly, who migrated from the Terai region of Nepal to earn their livelihoods in the capital city.
Daily wagers work in fields like construction and sanitation, and get paid by the day. While the work they do is important, they don’t necessarily have job security or insurance. Unsafe work conditions and exploitation is rife. These workers often migrate to big cities from rural parts, and depend on everyday labor-intensive jobs to make ends meet.
Scrap workers collect waste materials like plastic, glass and metals to recycle and sell. They go from community to community, often on bicycles, shouting for scraps. They are also called “ragpickers” or “kabadiwala” in South Asia. Discriminated against due to classism, colourism and racism, scrap dealers are a significant part of waste management in cities.
Often invisibilised by the state, their workplaces do not maintain the safety standards. Scrap dealers usually live in poorly built houses of bamboo and mud in settlements or slums on riverbanks. They endure harsh weather and have to share limited resources with their neighbours.
Both daily wagers and scrap dealers spend long hours working in physically demanding labor, being exposed to varied risks – from polluted environments to social stigma.
We see it all the time – climate change is coming for us all. But who is going to suffer most? And who among us will be able to recover?
Last year’s after-monsoon rain broke a 54-year-old record in Kathmandu. The cold months in Nepal are getting strangely hotter, with the maximum temperature rising at a faster pace than the rest of the world (0.05 degrees Celsius per year compared to 0.03 degrees Celsius per year). The majestic mountains used to be covered in snow year-round, but that feels like a fever-dream now. Machhapuchhre Himal has even been snowless and barren in our coldest months in recent years. Talk about unprecedented!
My rumination could continue, but the stubborn bus had made the stop at my destination. You see, it is all about timing. The bus, like our home planet, was running out of it.
I leapt out with my dust-covered bags and waved at a city safari (an e-rickshaw). After confirming the fare to get home, I nodded a yes to the driver, Dai (brother), and off he went as stretched my arms in the back.
A cool breeze accompanied the smooth ride along the road adjacent to the forest. The lush green swayed, almost as if it was welcoming with festive greetings.
Soon enough, I pointed at where the driver could make the stop. After thanking him as I handed him the money, I dragged my stuff out with a lingering smile.
I had arrived home for Dashain.
