This year’s Dashain is different

Dashain, irrespective of ethnoreligious alignment, has always been a time to celebrate. This year, it’s different.

Festivals can mean something different for different people. In Nepal, Dashain is the only festival that unifies a variety of people—even though every group has its own way of celebrating. When I was young, the grandmothers would talk of Dashain as being a festival of joy, of the arrival of harvest and the surety of food for the next year. The festival was linked to fulfilment and the power of the different forms of the goddess Durga bestowing their blessings.