LOCKDOWN IN KATHMANDU-2

The bird is wondering once again. After about three months of polluted air, he could breathe purity one more time. The same quietness, the sound of only a few vehicles, greenery all around and rainfall at times beautifying the environment even more.

I can breathe deeply and feel elated. My folks are happy too and wish it remained forever this time.

It so happened this way. For about a week, the students in uniform could not be seen. But a lot of crowd in the market and bus parks and buses was visible.

At present, I am used to the following scenes here.  The vegetable shops, grocery stores and vendors’ places are crowded in the morning. Traffic and police are seen doing their works in the streets. They stop people and talk to them. Some are let to go while others are made to stand on the side. Hospitals are overcrowded. Many people are covered in white clothes and other people surround and cry. Children/teenagers play outdoors. They shout and scream and create every bit of noise possible while doing so. They seem to be full of life and energy.

Like last year, people can be seen in their terraces basking themselves, eating, washing, bathing, looking at the small screens and making fearful and helpless faces and taking deep sighs. All the sounds/voices within the houses can be heard like the previous year—the kitchen utensils, children crying, people speaking—everything. Sometimes, I doubt if I am in a faraway village.

So, is the pure air business going to be an annual spring affair? When it had happened last time, I wished it would last forever. My fear of it being temporary came out to be true. Humans had come out of their houses in crowd and pollution was back to how it used to be. We suffocated. Nobody thought about us. Isn’t this planet for us too? Things look better now. Hope it always does.