Ama, I am coming home

Yes, I want to go home. I see nothing to cling onto in town or that I can point my fingers at and count as mine. Except my wife and daughter. Of course there a few things that I could gather in the last few years of living here. They cannot however be counted. Here, everything is about money. And almost nothing else. Our GNH teaches us otherwise, but here everyone is in a mad rush to make more money - more the merrier. But again they are only being rational and wise.

Sometimes I regret that we have spent so many productive years going to school and learning many things that no longer find use and purpose in our lives. Don't you feel that? Our parents sent us to school in a hope that we would have comfortable lives once we get jobs for it was every parent's dream then. And see how wild that dream has become now? Things have moved at lightening speed. But why am I rambling so much here? Anyways - yes I am going home. That is where my heart is. That is where my land is. That is where food is. That is where most of my stories have their beginnings. So, what am I doing in this sophisticated jungle?  

And here in this concrete jungle we drive, fancy and some not so fancy, cars, which are technically owned by the banks. If we fail to pay them on time, they will gladly auction our automobiles to the public and get their money back. Here we live in apartments and continue to pay our landlords. The house rent is often more than thirty to forty percent of what one makes a month. Little that remains funds our families for the month. And at the end of each month we realize that it is just enough to sustain. Aren't we fed up with this hand-to-mouth business? If we keep this way even by the time when old age comes knocking on our doors, we would have nothing to count as our own. And what are we handing to our children to be passed down to the posterity? This cycle must be broken sooner or later. Before our farmland no more recognizes us or we lose our footmarks in the villages.  

That's why I am going home. There in the village, what I grow on my farm will sustain me and my family. Who cares for some physical hardships? After all mental disorder results in many suicides in towns. I have no burden of taxes in the village and the food I grow on my farm does not heed to the ever growing inflation in town. How about that?   

Of course the bigger question now will be educating our children. There are no good schools in rural villages; it is true. Private schools to be specific. But if the end result of schooling is to land up a job, then what is the use of education? What is useful is that one can read and write his or her name and do basic numeracy. If that's all we require, we can teach that to our children on the farms and mould them to good and grounded human beings. 

Ama - I am coming home. 

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