The Story Does Not Lie

The story does not lie, and neither do these photographs. 

A village woman prepares morning meal

During the first half of the 1990’s, political dissent and the struggle for power led a political party to go underground, and rise up in 1996 with arms pushing a violent insurgency movement that the state found rather impossible to deal with. It launched at least two secret operations that led to the arrest, execution and disappearance of hundreds of innocent people. The revolutionaries pushed their atrocities to the limits, setting up parallel governments and passing penalties to the people who dissented with their philosophies.

Locals celebrate the festivities

Deep in the hearts of the Himalayan mountains, the rebels forced the poor people into involuntary recruitments and loaded their hands with .303 rifles. Those who differed in their ideologies were either brutally killed or else forced into exile from their native settlements. The state on the other hand, carried out its operations in a most unjustified manner: it forced the people to make false statements and then executed them in secrecy. It then lied later to the international community as to the whereabouts of the potential victims. Families and relatives waited for their loved ones with a firm belief that they would sooner or later return to their homes; but who knew where they were taken during the wee hours, blindfolded, kicked, raped, beaten, and then buried alive, or dumped to the scavengers…

A villager carries firewood on his back

During this chaos, the nation went into an undeclared civil war: the state passed arbitrary laws that gave its forces unprecedented powers to search all households at all hours, and, at the same time, no rights for the common people to even file a complaint or register a case in court. Very soon, people were robbed at gunpoint within their own households during the middle of the night; many were taken to unknown locations never to be returned again. The rebels set fires to most state infrastructures, attacked and ran down security set-ups out of the capital, confiscated arms in the process, and fought against the state with the very weapon that they managed to carry away during their previous raids.

Porters with medical supplies

The ramifications are too much to describe in one story, or even one book, and spread too far in time: violence and atrocity fueled by anarchy would last for more than a decade. However, some, or rather, a few, always find a way with us and become kept as records: of what was seen, of what was felt, of what was shared, of what was to become… the inevitable. And when tranquility dawns with a false promise, everything becomes changed, forever. 

The people that never had enough to buy even a few tablets of paracetamol, the cheapest among the medicines, (read acetaminophen if you are in North America) to get rid of fever and pain, became pushed to breaking points. 

NandaKala comes with a gangrene

There is TB they have to face, and wounds and tears and cuts, snake bites and bone fractures, malnutrition and even death! A humanitarian organization provided free health facilities for many, and in the shadow of its medical services, the most helpless of people shared their stories. But there are rules and regulations that govern the system in a most bizarre and the most unacceptable way: morally, culturally, ethically. 

NandaKala with her arm amputated

If any justifiable story was written of the few incidences depicting the plight of a people at that time, then they were carried in the nation’s daily newspapers. And whatever filtered through across the nation’s boundaries to the outside world was more of a distorted image than a reality.

You can now read the full story of humanity’s side: of helplessness, of heartbreak, and of the inevitable as it happened in one corner. But there is more to it: you can find the most bizarre, most unbelievable, and also the most humbling of events and incidences from the lives people have lived.

SetiMaya (right) cries with a villager

Even more, there is humour and laughter and fun at the most unlikely of circumstances. Need solid proof? Look at the photographs that accompany these texts. These images have not been released to this scale before. (There are also a few among you who would testify as to the full story, no doubt about that. Without taking names, I can tell, you probably were there!)

A patient who knows there is probably no cure for her illness, an ostracized housewife whose arm needs to be surgically cut thrice sees the wound never heal, an old man who has a cancerous outgrowth, a baby that dies during the hours of midnight...  

Could you have gone through this all? Could you have faced all this? Could you have stood in the shoes of those helpless and endured? The album with some selected photographs related to the story is available on-line at https://picasaweb.google.com/101109100381658727344/APeopleSStory?authuser=0&feat=directlink Please do not forget to take a look.

SetiMaya probably knows there is no cure

   

(All photographs by the author. A few may have previously appeared on-line way back in 2007.)