There's a particular kind of homesickness that only shows up at festival time. The rest of the year, Darwin is simply home. But when Dashain comes around, and the whole of Nepal slows down for it, you feel the distance in your chest.
Back home, these weeks are loud in the best way. Kites in the afternoon sky. The smell of everything frying. Elders pressing tika onto your forehead and a blessing into your ear. Houses full of people who have known you your whole life. From here, it's a video call at an awkward hour and a quiet flat that doesn't smell like any of it.
Keeping it alive, our way
So we make our own version. We cook the food even when it's just the two of us. We dress up with nowhere particular to go. We call home and hold the phone up to the laptop so the families on both sides can almost be in the same room.
It isn't the same. We won't pretend it is. But it's ours, and doing it together — two people who grew up with these same festivals, now building a life far from where they started — makes the distance feel a little smaller.
Tradition isn't the place you do it in. It's the people you refuse to let go of, even from the other side of the world.
For everyone doing the same
If you're diaspora too — celebrating your festivals in a country that doesn't pause for them — we see you. The slightly-too-quiet house, the timezone maths, the ache of missing people you love. You're not doing it wrong. You're carrying something forward, and that's the whole point.
Next year, who knows. Maybe we're back home for it. For now, we light the diyo, we call our parents, and we make Darwin smell like Kathmandu for a few days.
