Bhagawati Lal Kakshapati, a resident of Bagdol in Lalitpur, arrived at the Nepal Electricity Authority’s training centre in Kharipati of Bhaktapur at around 10 on Monday morning. He was there to receive his daughter, one among 175 Nepalis quarantined in the centre for the past two weeks, hoping their final coronavirus test report would be negative so that the daughter could go home.
However, he did not find any information about the report. He hoped, “It might come out by the evening.”
Standing between fear and excitement, spending one hour felt to him as long as the entire year. He feared that even if the report of one out of 175 evacuees had been positive, all the evacuees would have been forced to stay in quarantine for the next 14 days. But, he was also hopeful that his daughter Salima would come out if all the test reports confirmed the previous ones. In that case, embracing his daughter, he could console her stating, “Everything will be fine now.”
But the wait was so long. Nothing was happening as he had thought. The sky in Bhaktapur, which was dim since the morning, looked pregnant with rain. Like the outside environment, a cloud of fear was stirring inside him.
Bhagawati found himself unable to control diverse feelings.
In the meantime, his daughter called him and said, “’We have not been told to pack our bags yet.” After this call, Bhagawati assumed something might have turned suspicious. He thought, “I could not take my daughter home today.”
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It was already 3 in the afternoon. Uncertain about whether the report would come out, and if yes, when, Bhagawati was preparing to return home frustrated.
Suddenly, he heard from an army man, “The report is being published soon. Please wait for some more time.” This sowed the seeds of hope within him.
Shortly thereafter, he was informed that all the evacuees tested negative for coronavirus. That news was what he had hoped to get for this long.
Bhagawati says, “I have become happy only thrice in my life: the first time when my daughter was born, the second time when she was rescued from China, and finally when I got the news of my daughter and all evacuees testing negative and returning home from the quarantine.”
In excitement, he phoned parents of other evacuees also and said, “Come to the quarantine. Today, our children are allowed to go home.”
Bhagawati was one of the leaders of the guardians who put pressure on the government to evacuate the Nepalis living in Wuhan. That is why he thought it was his responsibility to inform all the parents.
Within a moment, all the parents arrived there. Their eyes were full of tears of happiness and their faces were glowing with joy.
They were embracing and congratulating each other.
Representatives from the Ministry of Health and Population and the Nepal Army had already begun to bid farewell inside. The quarantined students were chanting, “Government of Nepal–Jindabad, Nepal Army–Jindabad.” They also saluted the Nepal Army.
Most of the guardians witnessing all these happenings remained speechless. One of the parents stated, “If the country loves its citizens, the citizens will love it too.”
Shortly after, the process of sending the evacuees home started. Their family members, gathered in front of the entrance of the training centre, were peeking inside, looking for their loved ones. Later, all of them thanked the government.
A few of them asked Bhagawati, “Do you think it would be possible without your leadership?” Bhagawati felt overwhelmed. However, all his attention was on Salima, his daughter in queue inside the facility. In a moment, the daughter also came out and he hugged her.
For a few seconds, the father and his daughter were silent.
After exchanging his happiness with friends and other guardians, Bhagawati prepared to leave for home along with his daughter. It was already 6 PM; the sun was already setting. Because Bhagawati had a car, he offered help to two other evacuees to drop them off at their homes.
For those without their private vehicles, the government had arranged three buses to take them home.
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Bhagawati’s car got stuck in a traffic jam in Koteshwar, and it made Salima restless. She said, “I can’t wait to see my mummy. I will embrace her and say everything is alright now.”
Dropping a man and his family members in Gaushala, Bhagawati turned his car southward, to his residence in Bagdole of Lalitpur. Another evacuee, Shradda Joshi, had already been Salima’s close friend and she was accompanying her till home.
After getting off the car, Salima and Shraddha entered the gate. Salima’s mother, standing at the door, offered her a warm welcome. In response, Salima hugged her mother.
Welcoming her daughter, the mother said, “I could not prepare anything special as I was unknown about the schedule today.”
“We also learned about our departure just a while ago, around five minutes after the report was out,” said Salima. Within a moment, Bhagawati spoke, “My daughter finally escaped from the mouth of death.” To this, his wife Sharmila warned him against reminding of the ill-fated time.
Again, there was a moment of silence.
Breaking the silence, Salima’s mother, Sharmila, smiles, “Happiness has finally returned to our home. I was unable to do anything in the past weeks. I was worried about my daughter.” It seemed she instantly turned emotion.
In response, Salima went closer to her mother, but the mother did not let her. She was suffering from common cold for the past few days, hence she teased the daughter, saying, “Don’t come close to me, you might get infected from this and it will be difficult for you.” Everyone laughed.
In the meantime, Shraddha’s parents, Dinesh and Rajni, arrived there to receive their daughter. They put khadas on the shoulders of both evacuees, in a welcoming gesture.
Meanwhile, Dinesh remembered a moment from the time when his daughter was in China. During a video call one afternoon, the daughter was seen sleeping covering her body with a quilt. Her hair was frizzy. “We were tired of begging help from the government here. Meanwhile, our daughters had lost their hope to live in the absence of aid from the government and their parents,” he said.
Interrupting her father, Shraddha spoke, “Yes, our condition was pathetic. We were worried every moment what we would eat the next day.”
Dinesh also interrupted his daughter and praised the government, “The government should be thanked. Though lately, our government has done such exemplary work, which will be recorded in history. It was easy for us to tell them to rescue our children, but it was difficult for the government to manage and bring in these people. ”
Right at that moment, Bhagawati showed all of them the video of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli before being admitted to hospital for transplanting kidney for the second time in his life. After carefully watching the video, all said that Oli was a ‘real guardian’ of the country; without his decision, the evacuation would not have been this quick and efficient.
Bhagawati also recalled an incident about PM Oli.
“Our voices to rescue our children from China were initially remained unheard by many government agencies like the Ministry of Health and Population. Tired of this, we decided to write a letter to the prime minister. One night, I started writing the letter. While expressing our pains into the letters, both I and my wife cried. We hardly slept that night. The next morning, we submitted the letter to the Prime Minister’s Office. Within an hour, Prime Minister Oli instructed all the concerned bodies to be active in the rescue of the students in China.”
He concluded, “The history will always remember him; we were very happy that day.”
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Salima was no less happy than her father. She said the management in the quarantine was good enough and they were kept stress-free there.
She, however, did not want to talk about her experience back in China. “Let’s not talk about that. That period was the most stressful time in my life. Spending one month there seemed like spending the whole era,” she recalled.
“Our mental stress was at the next level. Our friends from other countries were being evacuated from their government, but we Nepali students were left alone there. We were hurt.”
Meanwhile, Shraddha added, “Ten people in the same situation may have 10 different mental states. But when we are together, there is no such mental state.”
She said the Nepal government later evacuating them was ‘unbelievable’ as they had never expected such a move from the government.
Both couples of the parents were listening to their daughters talking. Though the daughters seemed unclear in their sentences, what was apparent was their arrival had brought a moment of happiness there.
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Meanwhile, Salima’s mother was preparing to give a cultural flavour to the moment. She lit a diyo. Then, she put tika on both Salima and Shraddha. Her hand was shivering while putting tika on them, perhaps due to the newly found joy.
Amidst the celebration, Sharmila said, “Now, we should go for an outing…” But, Bhagawati promptly interrupted, “No, we should not go anywhere for visit. The government had told everyone not to go in a crowd and not to organise any event.”
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As the night wore on, the atmosphere in the house was warming up.
In that room of the house, happiness had returned after so many days. The parents’ eyes, which were always stuck on the television screen, were now looking at the face of their daughter.
