-Bhabasagar Ghimire
This quote by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg always motivates me to step out of my comfort zone. One day, my colleague Saroj and I decided to leave Kathmandu for a trip to Chitwan. The main goal of this trip was to break away from our daily routine and follow some stories for our independent project. We took a tourist bus to Sauraha with no specific plans or stories to pursue. A local guide assured us of the best service and took us to a hotel. We checked the room, but the price was relatively high. We apologized to the hotel owner and instead asked for a suggestion on where to go to capture local stories. Our main goal was to live with community people in a homestay and capture their stories. Although we didn’t choose his hotel, he gave us a good suggestion to go to Bachhedi village to film stories of the Tharu community. To collect more opinion we hung around the main bazaar of Sauraha. Sauraha bazaar was too quiet, and I felt sad about the market situation with very few tourists and low or no business.
We talked with locals, hotel owners, shopkeepers, etc., to collect more information about the best option for staying and capturing the daily life of the local community. A restaurant owner talked with us for half an hour and suggested we go to Meghauli, Chitwan on the same day. He also phoned his nephew in Meghauli to help us capture local stories. Another man who runs an alcohol shop suggested we not leave for Meghauli as it was a bit far, and we had limited time. He suggested we go to few Tharu Villages nearby, namely Sultana and Badgaun. We took an auto-rickshaw and a magic van, and then an auto-rickshaw again to reach the village. We later realized that the magic van charged us double fare, which was quite frustrating.
Initially, we thought those villages would be filled with old, typical houses as suggested by the shopkeeper, but it was not like that in reality. We were not encouraged to take our cameras out of the bag for the footage. It was already 4 PM, so we shot a few clips of the daily life of farmers there. We returned to Sauraha that evening.
The next morning, we rented a scooter, and we felt quite positive that “we will capture some stories today for sure.” One of my colleagues, Sandip Chaudhari, suggested some local contacts. We met Birendra Mahato, who has extensive experience working in the climate change sector. He also arranged a quick meeting with Rajendra Dhami, the head of the Nature Guide Association Chitwan. Thanks to both of them, we got a concrete idea to follow stories of some female leaders. With their help, we found powerful stories of the first female nature guide, Doma Paudel, and the former locally elected ward member of Ratnanagar ward 7, Bhagantiya Majhi. Majhi is from the Musahar community.
We met and talked with Bhagantiya first. We took a short interview with her and captured some of her household surroundings. Later, we talked with nature guide Doma and also captured some of her daily business. The next morning, we left Sauraha Chitwan for Kathmandu.
This first journey helped us formalize our first project, “SHEROS.” It means a woman admired or idealized for her courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. In this project, we plan to feature more female heroes from different communities and professions. It was a good start to our journey and this is just a beginning.
29 Feb 2023
Hello guys! Good article Prayog Production
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.
Your article helped me a lot, is there any more related content? Thanks!