Separate Skies
Suraj was not expecting anything extraordinary.
His university had assigned him a research project on marginalized communities of the Terai. The topic sounded academic and distant.
He imagined statistics, interviews, maybe some photographs.
What he did not imagine was her.
The Musahar settlement stood beside a thin river that changed shape every monsoon. Small huts made from mud and bamboo leaned against each other like tired bodies. Smoke from firewood curled slowly into the evening sky.
Children ran barefoot on dusty ground.
Women carried bundles of grass on their heads.
Men returned from nearby fields where they worked as daily wage labourers.
Suraj wrote everything carefully in his notebook.
But his research truly began when he met Puja.
Puja was different from the others.
Not because she was richer. She was not.
Her house was the same small mud hut with a straw roof.
But she had studied up to grade 8. That alone made her one of the most educated girls in the settlement.
She could read Nepali slowly.
She understood the outside world a little more than others.
When Suraj asked questions about the community, people told him
“Ask Puja. She knows things.”
So he did.
At first she was shy.
She kept a respectful distance while answering his questions.
She explained their culture, their festivals, and their struggles.
She told him about how many families did not own land and lived on riverbanks.
She explained how some children stopped going to school because they needed to work.
She spoke calmly. Not complaining. Just stating facts.
Suraj noticed something strange.
She was explaining poverty like someone describing the weather.
Like it was something permanent.
Suraj kept visiting the settlement every week.
Then twice a week.
Then almost every day.
His research finished in three weeks.
But he kept coming.
Sometimes they walked along the riverbank while talking.
Sometimes they sat outside her house while she cleaned rice for dinner.
Sometimes she laughed when he tried speaking Bhojpuri.
For the first time in his life Suraj realized something.
People in his world complained about slow internet.
People here worried about whether they would eat tomorrow.
Yet Puja smiled more than most people he knew.
That confused him.
And slowly, quietly, he fell in love with her.
Suraj’s home was in the city.
A big house.
Two floors.
Electric lights everywhere.
Refrigerator full of food.
Car parked outside.
Puja had never seen a house like that.
Her world was different.
Her house had one room.
The floor was mud.
Sometimes when rain came, water entered inside.
When Suraj once showed her pictures of malls on his phone, she looked confused.
“Why are there so many shops in one building?” she asked.
When he explained restaurants where people pay thousands just to eat dinner, she laughed.
“Why would anyone pay that much for food?”
To her, those places felt unreal.
Like movies.
One day Suraj asked her something serious.
“Would you like to see my world?”
She hesitated for a long time.
Then she said yes.
When she entered the city, everything overwhelmed her.
Tall buildings.
Cars everywhere.
Bright lights even during evening.
Inside the shopping mall she walked slowly like someone inside a museum.
She whispered
“So many things… and people just buy them?”
When they sat in a restaurant she became uncomfortable.
She kept looking around, afraid she might break something.
When the waiter came she spoke very softly.
Later while returning, she said something quietly.
“I feel like I don’t belong in that place.”
Suraj said
“You belong anywhere you want.”
But she did not reply.
Love made Suraj brave.
He told her how he felt.
He told her he wanted to build a life with her.
He said money, society, caste none of that mattered to him.
Puja listened quietly.
Then she asked him one question.
“Do you think your family will accept me?”
Suraj stayed silent.
She continued speaking slowly.
“I have never been to a mall before today.”
“I don’t know how people in your society talk, behave, or think.”
“I don’t even know which spoon to use in a restaurant.”
Her voice was not sad.
Just honest.
“You may love me,” she said.
“But your world does not.”
A few weeks later Suraj visited the settlement again.
But Puja avoided him.
Finally she spoke to him near the river.
“My marriage is fixed,” she said.
“A man from another Musahar village.”
Suraj felt the ground disappear under his feet.
“You don’t love him,” he said.
She nodded.
“But he belongs to my world.”
She looked at the river.
“You were like the sky,” she said softly.
“Beautiful to look at.”
“But too far away to touch.”
Then she walked back toward the settlement.
Suraj stayed near the river until sunset.
For the first time he understood something.
Love is not always defeated by hate.
Sometimes it is defeated by reality.
Dedicated to my Brother Uzwal..
