Preaching the good news and healing the sick
in New Zealand, Nepal and the world
Hetauda is village, but not for long
Despite its tree-lined main street, ubiquitous mobile phones and girlies in jeans and tees, Hetauda had not forgotten its village roots. Tucked into the final fold of the foothills before spreading onto the plain of the Terai, it is crowded, noisy and broken. Houses that appear to be the disintegrating remains of an earlier century turn out to be a mere five or ten years old, or still being built.
If Britain was once a nation of small shop-keepers, the Indian sub-continent has surely inherited the title. It can cram more life into a few metres of street than the whole of many UK towns. Shop-keeping here is an obsession. Never mind that your store is two metres by three (the smallest were half that), you are your own master.
There are no windows, the store opening directly onto what passes for a pavement. Behind the inevitable counter or table sits the owner in isolated glory, awaiting custom as a spider the fly. He or she is usually three-parts obscured by cliffs of goods tumbling from shelves, strung from the ceiling or door-posts, or piled precariously in unsorted heaps around a small personal space. In front of the counter are often clusters of friends discussing everything from the price of milk to the elections. Trade was desultory at best.
A brief 100 metre tour of some of the main street reflects every conceivable human need in retail form. Shoe shops jostle with cubby-holes selling gargantuan pots and pans, trinkets or rebars (reinforcing rods), fruit or paint, children’s clothes, blankets, groceries, cigarettes, bags, tyres, sewing repairs, clustered in eclectic abandon. It wasn’t always obvious what was being purveyed. Anonymous cardboard boxes or posters in Nepali left one none the wiser, and a glance at the store title didn’t help much either, the locals preferring the suspense of mystery or perhaps they were simply keeping their options open in a rapidly changing world. Favoured titles such as Laxmi Trading Concern Pty, Red Rose, Bluebell Stores, or even ‘Nice and Easy’, gave little clue to their merchandise.
Like most small towns, the main street is tarmac, but soon dissolves to gravel or mud as one leaves the centre. I failed to find an internet café or supermarket, and the only travel agent was an equally small store down an alleyway, identifiable only by the poster of an aeroplane on one wall. But they were very friendly, using their personal mobiles when the main phone didn’t work, and not even wanting payment.
The internet and mobile phone have bred an international generation. When I first went to India 16 years ago, it was rare to see a pair of jeans even in the city. Children wore traditional dress. Today’s village youth wears jeans, tee shirts and trainers. They know the latest movies and their stars, they are abreast of the international news, and aspire to designerwear, fashion accessories and gadgets. And as they flood into the cities to find work, they fail to learn how to farm their family plot.
I foresee a revolution both here and in that other nation of tiny family fields, China, that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. As the farming parents die and the children have no interest in the land, whole villages will be bought up by international farming conglomerates, bringing efficiency where once only tradition reigned, but transforming the countryside into factory prairies. Villages will become mere weekend refuges for the wealthy, as they have in the West. If you want to see village India, China or Nepal, go now, while the buffalo still plough the paddy-fields, and carts are still the stronghold of the ox.
Hetauda main street, on the edge of the terai, or southern plain.
I spoke in the Assemblies of God Annual Conference in Central Nepal, in Feb 2010