Nepal's Gurung Community Says Goodbye To A Trying Year

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Anusha Gurung (left) and her friend Illa Gurung take part in a New Year's dance competition in Kathmandu, Nepal. Salim Ali/for NPR hide caption

toggle caption Salim Ali/for NPR

Anusha Gurung (left) and her friend Illa Gurung take part in a New Year's dance competition in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Salim Ali/for NPR

At a New Year's celebration in Kathmandu, people are munching water buffalo dumplings and sipping moonshine while looking back on a tough year.
"So many people died in the earthquake, so many houses went down," says Dil Bahadur Gurung, 45, who ran a food stall at the Lhosar festival — the name of the Tibetan New Year.
"We were thinking not to celebrate this year," says Dil Bahadur, whose village home was destroyed in the earthquake and who lost five of his neighbors. "But we decided to because the government told us we have to. It brings positive energy and honors those who died."
Actually, there are a lot of New Years on the Nepalese calendar. The official New Year comes in April. There are Tibetan New Year dates as well. But the dance clubs and bars of Kathmandu will be filled with revelers ushering in the Western New Year tonight.
Dil Bahadur's attitude reflects the mood of the country. Twin earthquakes in April and May killed almost 10,000 and wiped out half a million homes.
The passing of the country's long-delayed constitution in September should have been cause for celebration, but several groups felt left out of the fast-tracked document. This continued a series of violence that has killed over 40, including security forces and a 4-year-old child. For the past three months, unrest at the Indian border has caused an unofficial blockade and severe fuel crises, which many Nepalis believe are orchestrated by India to show political might. To top it all off, postearthquake reconstruction is painfully slow. The government has yet to release any of the $4 billion donated by the international community; in the meantime, many quake survivors are spending the Himalayan winter in tents and tin shacks.