I don’t remember exactly when but at some point in my time abroad and having contemplated, all the while, returning to Nepal at some point in the future, I started asking myself, “Is Nepal home and, if not, could I make it home?” Of course, from some point onward, I also started asking myself, “Will Nepal have me? Am I even for Nepal?”
After all, growing up in Nepal I had come to believe that Nepali society did NOT — or would NOT — accept and accommodate me fully given who I was in the context of Nepali society: a Bhote (a so-called low-caste ethnic Tibetan). So, as a fifth grader, I had decided I had to “escape” from the country for further studies and I did.
But, when that job offer arrived on that fateful day in February 2013, I had a decision to make — whether to continue with my international teaching career or return to Nepal. By then I had gotten very far in life — both literally and figuratively — compared to where I had been expected to get as well as compared to a vast majority of Nepalis I personally knew.
I had spent most of my adult life abroad — almost twenty-five years — and in multiple countries too. I had lived outside longer than in Nepal. I had been educated in four other countries. I had operated in the fourth language I had learned growing up — English, a foreign language — for longer than in either of my two mother tongues (Serke and Nepali). I had celebrated Christmas more than any other festival. Consequently, I had come to see myself as a human being first. I had come to view the world and to relate to the planet and the living beings in it differently from pretty much all my family members, members of Tangbetani community, Nepali classmates, schoolmates, as well as from most fellow Nepalis.
I had gotten so far in life that I was no longer a product of A culture or A society or A people or A place. If I may…I have, in me, I believe, a little bit of Italian culture and taste, a little bit of North-American outlook and way of being, and a little of a few other cultures etc. In the way I speak English I’m more North-American than anything for example. In the way I greet different people I am very international. My music collection represents at least a dozen different languages as well as many cultures and nationalities. The way I view relationships, and the way I see, view, and feel about life, the world and people on this planet are highly expansive and inclusive.
So, when it came to the idea of “home,” by the time I had arrived in Doha, Qatar, in the Fall of 2011, I had come to believe that a geographic location or a political entity couldn’t really be it. I had come to recognize my birth-determined nationality as a random event and so the passport I carried just a consequence of that, not a determinant of “home.” If you must, I had come to decide that “home” must be more a feeling than a geographic location. Even during the first two years I was away from the country, in Italy, I had rarely, if ever, felt “home”-sick, for instance.
In some respects, I could belong anywhere. But I didn’t feel I really belonged anywhere. Sure, I also felt that I could fit in anywhere. Maybe that partly explains my not having made a home of any place or created one anywhere.
Equally, having lived in as many countries outside of Nepal as I had, I felt I could be accepted by any place and any people…more or less.
But the big questions remained: would they, those in Nepal and Nepali society, accept me? Would they feel connected to me in any way, or would or could they connect with me, socially, emotionally, and intellectually? To what extent would they — both who I have known all my life and others who I don’t but would come to know — be able to accept me and relate to me for the person I had become sufficiently?
I was after all, for example, returning to a country that none of my closest Nepali friends had. Not long after my own “escape,” pretty much every one of them had also left the country. One had even left a few years before I had. Every single one of them was settled abroad, mostly in the US.
I would also be returning as an “emancipated” Bhote, if you will! Would they accommodate me socially or would the invisible barriers still be erected by the Nepalis? Above and beyond that, would they cater to my personal, social, emotional, and intellectual needs and foster my growth?
Could it be a home for the vision I had of a society? Of the world? Could my ideas, values, and beliefs also find a nurturing home? For someone who has been voicing his strong opinions about our education system, our culture, our social, political, and economic systems and structures, about the caste system, social justice, gender equality etc. and intent on continuing to do so, would Nepal and Nepalis be amenable to that?
(Little did I know, after just a few years later, I would discover that, by and large, respect for, and acceptance and accommodation of an individual was based on their social capital, which, in Nepal, depends, to a large extent, on one’s caste. I have very little of that.)
Would Nepal be home for ideas such as understanding-based respect, for peace, for building bridges between different peoples? Would it be home for my values such as kindness, honesty, integrity, compassion, peace, justice, humanity, diversity, non-violence, knowledge etc.?
No longer bound to and constrained by the culture, society, and people of Nepal to be, to think, to behave in a certain way, I wondered how that would play out in the day-to-day social, professional and intellectual life in the country.
Exploring — and striving to learn about — the world and people on this planet, I had become a person who I had never imagined becoming. I had gone from denying and doing everything I could to hide my Tibetan heritage while growing up in Nepal and pretending to be more like a Hindu Nepali than the Nepali that I was to reclaiming my Tibetan heritage not long after leaving the country. Following that, to thinking of myself as a human being first, and embracing everything that accompanied that view, such as the belief that humans are more alike than different and that the most important thread that binds us all is our humanity! In spite of coming from a highly religious society, I had come to identify myself more as a humanist who trusts science considerably more than religion. Would Nepal provide the opportunity I sought to continue exploring all that and more?
(Little did I know, not long after my return, still viewing me as the Bhote he had likely always done, a fellow middle-aged man I likely know personally would attempt to “put me in my place” on Facebook by sending a friend request from a profile created just for purpose with the name of “Guu (“shit”) Bhote”!)
Or, would the culture, society, and people make living and working in the country, still, as constricting, constraining, and confining as the way I believed they would be even as a young child growing up in Nepal because of my social identity based on my birth ethnicity and caste?
(Little did I know that after a few years, I would discover, firstly, that Nepalis to be incredibly more closed and inward-looking than I had believed or imagined, and secondly, that, had I not “escaped” from Nepal, my views of life and the world would have been even more cripplingly narrower and limited than I thought they would be when growing up in the country.)
What do you think?
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Additional Materials
Here are the links to some of the other blog posts in the series.
- The Moment of Truth VIII: Is Nepal Home? If Not, Could I Make It My Home?
- The Moment of Truth VII: “Go back where you came from!”
- The Moment of Truth VI: A Universal Conspiracy?
- The Moment of Truth V: “The Time Has Come. The Time is Now.”
- The Moment of Truth IV: All About How And Why I Have Become Who And What I Am And Where Nepal Figured In That
I’m sure that you’re right. Culture is a hard thing to shift. What are your thoughts about how to handle it all?