FOOD

Dhauli Nepali: Rice, lentils, spinach.
Reporter: How will you get it?
Dhauli Nepali: Exchange it for clothes.

That's Dhauli Nepali talking to my colleague Bijaya Adhikari.

Dhauli, a resident of Doti in far-western Nepal, hadn't had a proper meal in days when this video was taken by another colleague Deep Rayamaji. On this particular day, Dhauli had just been sitting around, not knowing what she could possibly cook to feed her family. There was no food.

The story arrived at my desk for repackaging on the evening of June 14th, 2010. So, my job is to subtitle the sound bite, write a script, do the voice-over and set it as package for the English bulletin. And Sanim Singh rushes to my rescue, if the program 'Purple' for some reason stops responding to me.

Doing the story was like deja vu.

Eight years ago, fresh footage had arrived from war-ravaged Rukum, about the victims of the Maoist insurgency. My job was to pick out as many stories as possible from the raw footage.

I had picked then eight-year-old Devendra Pandey to begin my story. His father had been shot by the police, alleging him of being a Maoist informant. I started the story with the child talking about his father and then choking up. I choked along with him and ended up taking longer to do the story and consequently wrote a piece on The Kathmandu Post, about the "Children of a lesser God".

The tears, the tight chest and a throbbing temple, all came back as soon as Dhauli Nepali started talking. Thankful for the silence and solitude of the "Subtitling room", I let my tears fall, and replayed the story for myself till I felt soaked in it.

Dhauli's is among the families that haven't had a proper meal for days. And she has children. The local produce (rice) only suffices the district for about three months. (Much of the land here is barren.) Rest of the months are a struggle to find food. The UN World Food Program has been distributing four kgs of rice and half a kg of lentil to the families in this region in exchange for a day's labour, to build road, school and irrigation canals. But that does not provide a long-term solution. The government has been criticized far too often for its "ration distribution" program, which has not done anything significant in all these years to help these people.

My tears shed in an airconditioned office in Kathmandu is of no significance to the people in Doti. They continue to suffer.

There's something about the way Dhauli, numbed by hunger, looks at the camera and then looks back at the reporter that continues to haunt me and makes me want to do something to take away her hunger. Yet, what?

I have never felt so helpless.