By Aashish Mishra

Kathmandu, Apr. 14: It is the Nepali New Year, but it doesn’t feel like it. The streets, the town squares, clubs and pubs – all the usual centres of celebration are quiet. The streets lie deserted, the parks are empty and the atmosphere is muted.
So, what happened? Have people forgotten it is the New Year or have they given up on the season’s merrymaking?
“Well, it just doesn’t feel like the New Year,” Sandesh Niroula, a resident of Kathmandu’s “party centre” Thamel, described his reasons for not celebrating the beginning of the New Year. “Everything is closed, everybody is forced inside and the rising number of cases has left people worried. It almost feels like a sin to be celebrating at a time of such despair.”
Many people share Niroula’s point of view. The lockdown and the coronavirus pandemic have enveloped the country in an uneasy atmosphere and many are just not “feeling it” when it comes to welcoming the arrival of the new Bikram Sambat year of 2077.
“All the festivals that usually mark the New Year have been cancelled or postponed,” said Sailesh Man Baidya. Baidya, who lives in Bhaktapur, believed that the cancellation of the famous Bisket Jatra sucked the joy out of this occasion.
“The Bisket Jatra used to signal the arrival of a New Year. The music, the pageantry and the chariots used to pump up the adrenaline and get everyone ready for a huge celebration,” he said, adding, “This year, that signal isn’t there and hence, we don’t feel like a new era has begun.”
But not everyone is feeling so down. There are people who are bringing in the New Year from the confinements of their homes, using the free time provided by the lockdown to exchange greetings and happiness with their families.
Unnati Shrestha from Ekantakuna, Lalitpur, is one of those people. “The lockdown means we can’t go out, not that we can’t celebrate,” she said. “The entire family is together and none of us have to go to work or school tomorrow, so we can let ourselves loose.”
Shrestha shared that she made a special New Year’s breakfast consisting of pancakes and toast for her parents and two siblings with more plans for the day and evening. “We will play music and sing karaoke all day and then at night, we will have dinner with a special bottle of wine I brought from Canada a few months ago,” she said.
However, while the lockdown may have brought some families together, it is keeping many others apart. Ajay Karn did not think that the lockdown would prolong this long and hence, did not go home to Sindhuli when he had the chance. And now, he is not with his family on Baishakh 1 for the first time in his life.
“I had always welcomed the new year with my parents and sisters. No matter where I was or what I was doing, I had always gone home for Baishakh. But this year, I couldn’t,” Karn said. “It is not the same without them.”
Karn is so sad that he will not be celebrating the New Year in any way at all. “For me, the New Year will only arrive after I am able to go home and see my family.”
As Nepal welcomes its New Year under a nationwide lockdown and in the backdrop of an increasing number of COVID-19 cases that has now reached double digit, people this year have largely staved off the usual pomp. Those who are celebrating, are doing so inside the four walls of their houses with their families, choosing simplicity over splendour.