(Part 1/8) “Bulung is my birthplace. Father moved here and brought me to this place when I was only a year and still in a cradle. There was no cable crossing, no river crossings and no bridges back then. During dry season wooden logs would be used to cross rivers but during monsoon, everyone stayed put. There was no going across, no coming in. My father was one of the earliest humans to enter one of the densest forests of the time. He took help from a Bahun man to make a clearing. He burned the bushes, dug with his hand and feet and created his own cultivable land. This was a place no one knew about, no one talked about and no one came to visit.
I witnessed the birth of my two brothers here in this area, a little down the hill from where we are, in Salle. When I turned 10 and when I was able to know, eat and wander on my own, the Tamangs from Lambagar came to claim the land. They said this land is registered to them and that we were to vacate from here. I also came to learn that Father had cleared the forest only after he had been given permission by the Tamangs of Lambagar who had the land registered to them at the Panchayat then. Father had no paper of lease then, no record in ink to support that he had the right to plow the land. Now that he was asked to leave, Father could not just abandon what was now his soil. A fight ensued. And the dispute reached the court as Father denied to leave. His farm was here, his family was here, his animals were here. It was also a place where he could dream of the future for his sons and daughters.
Father’s argued that he had no place to take his family and that he had worked the land for over 10 years and made it cultivable. And now that the terrain had changed to a fertile land it was inhumane to be asked to pack up and leave. The fights continued for many years. My father got old and his foes got old too and they grew wiser. One day they all said: “Let us not fight over this land. Let it divide it equally between us. The Tamangs can take half of the land and we will keep half.” Everyone agreed. The Tamang families became our neighbors and our friends. We dealt with them and they dealt with us. That is how a single house on the side of the hill, where no one ventured into due to fear of death and isolation became a small clustered village.”