Great Migration, Ghost Villages and Hiraeth

I was once shown a short movie by my relative depicting the great migration of people living in the villages of uttrakhand flocking away to big cities and it's capital in search of jobs and opportunities and leaving behind everything from their traditions to homelands.

The festival highlighted was of 'Phooldeyi' in the month of March or the onset of spring. The video showed a person in his mid 20s who wanted to come back to his childhood home for the festival of phool deyi to be with his friends and enjoy the festival in its true essence in his village home like what they used to do in their childhood. But because of the demands of his job he couldn't get a leave from his job, but he was very adamant to go back hoping and assuming that his friends would do the same and be there waiting for him, so he resigned from his job to be in his village for the festival only to maintain the traditions and his commitment to friendship. To his surprise when he reached his village, it was all but empty, there was no one in the village including his friends, which somewhere highlights the problem of migration of people from villages of uttrakhand and other part of the countries to cities in search of opportunities leaving behind traditions, friendships, relationships and empty villages which were once filled with the latters because of development not catching up over the years and lack of ease of living as compared to cities. This also highlights rapid urbanization in the cities and somewhere our villages not able to catch up.

This video came to my mind because this is something that I noticed when I came back on vacation to my childhood home only to find out that our colony which used to house more than 40 families and had waiting lists for over 2 years for Professors applying for houses had nothing but only 4 houses occupied out of the 62 houses available during the Holi Weekend and the 4 there had the same thing in common that the occupants were 55+ with their children living in cities and them waiting for their retirement before moving to cities themselves. A colony which was once full of youth and energy with flocks of Children, Uncles and Aunties lies now in the darkness at a mountain top in the cold and breezy night.

This somewhat reflects the problem of migration in the state of Uttrakhand and other parts of the country where youths are leaving their villages/houses thus abandoning and deserting them and this phenomenon happening in a central  university of Government of India also goes on to show how very less number of people are interested in working and staying up in the remote and rural parts of India when they are being offered great spacious housing at a prime tourist destination atop a hill and a handsome salary with relatively less workload.

On the positive side, most of the Professors who have houses in the capital come back to take their classes, less and less people are interested in living in rural and remote part and thus migrating out to big cities in search of better opportunities, ease of living and living standards. It is quite expected of them to move out, who will want to stay put in such harsh conditions what we all also see in the Ghost Villages of Uttrakhand, making the survival of University and the villages harder and harder.

Through this experience I doubted myself when I saw the colony empty and I thought I was in the wrong place and I had made a mistake coming back where people don't even remember my name, but I realised I'll always have a place in the hearts of people who were once with me and both them and me will cherish the memories se made together, although both of us might have moved on to different places but a part of us will remain within ourselves, which comes back on occasions to cherish the sweet memories and thus our culture lives.

'We can go back, but we can never really go back.'

People change and the surroundings change, people change with times,

'Times change and it is wise to change with it' also keeping a part of the past alive.