KATHMANDU: What goes around comes around!

Having waged a communist war against state for over a decade, the then Maoist rebels would once have thought of never looking back, at least unless their country became a utopian classless abode of the laymen. However, with the beginning of the peace process, the hard-line communist dreams would turn obscure, on the backdrop of harsh political realities.

Way before their dreams would meet an end, the fighters are put into peace cantonments, and the next thing to happen to a portion of the rebels, over few years to follow, would be voluntary retirement with state's financial package what is said for post-war reconstruction and rehabilitation.

Left with little option, especially as their youth had already been offered to the war, these rebels, take what the state has to offer to them.

Regardless of all the political deadlocks, brought about by the meddling of Maoist war with the country's ongoing transition, life begins anew, afresh to the rebels.

No, they are no rebels, not any more. They are entrepreneurs; ambassadors of a life worth living and an example in the society, where they were defined differently following the end of the 'People's War.'

Metamorphosis

Vegetable market on the shores of the Bagmati River in Tinkune had already succumbed to the darkness of night. As the number of vehicles gradually thinned on the road, most of Kathmandu was either dining or was preparing to rest.

I stood at the midst of the apparently dead vegetable market as a sound, an uneasy one, of a metal hitting against a surface on constant tempo, stroke my ear. Business had not yet ended at the vegetable market. (Comrade) Jeevan's meat shop was still open.

I followed the direction of the sound and finally reached the meat-shop. As I entered the shop, Jeevan, clad in a blood-stained apron, holding a meat cleaver on his hand, stared at me, as if asking me my choice over the options available – chicken and mutton.

Upon discovering my real identity as a journalist, and having known my purpose of visiting his meat shop, the disillusioned comrade said,"Political ideologies won't give me food to eat. What I have learnt from all that I went through is that survival is primary, while ideologies are all secondary.”

The common man behind comrade Jeevan is Hom Raj Raut (40), of Ramechhap, and it is the latter who is in apron, holding the meat cleaver in Tinkune's vegetable market. After spending more than a decade in war as a Maoist rebel, Raut is now making at least 10 to15 grand in a month. With the income he generates from the meat shop, he has been making lives of his 3-member family in the expensive city of Kathmandu. He started off with the business three years ago, with an investment of Rs 600,000 he was provided by the government as post-war relief package.

The meat shop is not all that Raut owns. He has already started a new vegetable shop nearby his meat shop. With the savings, he is recently thinking of expanding his business further. He takes pleasure in the scratches of his new life at the vegetable market. The thought of all the struggles he has done in life gives him reasons to smile, while he believes the nuances of family life still has a long way to go.

Raut had joined the Maoist party from India at the peak of insurgency in 2000 AD. He claims to have participated in a number of major wars against state’s security forces. Raut is one of the 6,576 Maoist combatants who opted for the voluntary retirement scheme of the government, with a cash amount provided to the rebels in the range between Rs 500,000 to Rs 800,000, depending on their respective ranks.

An example in society

To expect a militant once connected with countless violence, to stand out in the society as an example within two years of his civil life, is apparently impossible. However, Neelhari Dhakal, also known by his war name "Ajaya" – the unconquerable – has cracked the hard nut very well.

40-year-old Ajaya was at war for four long years. He underwent tiring trainings as a platoon commander of the PLA 2nd Division in Sindhuli district before retiring from war and choosing the relief package to run business on his own. As an exchange of his toils and sweats of years in the party, Ajay received Rs. 500,000 and returned home with obscure dreams to bring life back on track.

The journey he commenced after having returned home was full of obstacles. In society, there were people who hated him and call him wicked names.

“But he hardly paid any heed to all the words of hatred. He (Ajaya) neither listened to his family nor gave a damn about society’s prejudices,” Bhes Raj Dahal, Ajaya's neighbour says. “He had some business in mind.”

He indeed had business in mind. The platoon commander’s new found aim in life  was becoming a farmer. He started his business by purchasing some buffaloes. He kept the cattle, his sole business partners, at a shed nearby his house. There was no looking back for the unconquerable Ajaya, ever since.

“He has worked so hard to achieve all that he has now,” neighbor Dahal says. “He is so dedicated to the business that he hardly goes out. He keeps himself busy with his staff in caring the cattle and manages fodder for them throughout the day.” Ajaya is interestingly the first registered buffalo farmer in the district. His business has made into the registers of District Administration Office.

Two years down the line, Ajaya has retrieved the investment of Rs 500,000 he made while starting his business. According to him, he has already sold out 15 buffaloes in the first lot. “Whatever money I make from this point will be my profit,” former combatant Ajaya spoke out the business of a farmer.

Customers have also started to come to Ajaya’s farm located at Kamalamai Municipality-4 in Sindhuli to see and buy the products. “There are 20 calves in my shed currently,” he said. “I’m planning to buy 30 more and raise 50 buffaloes at a time.” The change is not evident in just the self of a former Maoist fighter Ajaya, or the means of his income generation.

According to neighbor Dahal, Ajaya is no more subjected to any kind of hatred in the society. “People have rather established him as an ideal, whom everyone wants to emulate,” he said. “It seems like he does not have any past. He is now an ambassador of the social changes.”

Ajaya, nevertheless, has his concerns with the lack of state’s cooperation in the kind of business he has been running. “ “I had heard that the local bodies have provisions to assist in such businesses,” he said. “But I have not experienced any sort of help from the government bodies.”

In addition, Ajaya is also not content with what he calls the “waste of Maoist revolution” due to recent political developments in the country. However, he refuses to talk too much about it. He is done with speaking the “absurd jargons”.

Step on large investment firm

Despite the failure of government and the Maoist party to support significantly the ex-fighters in their post-war rehabilitation, a number of voluntarily retired combatants are gaining unprecedented progress in the ventures they started after coming out of their comfort zones in the cantonments. "As we had been at war for a decade, all we knew was how to fight, and the thought of starting a civil life was equivalent to nightmare for us. We had money at our hands, but the dilemma was about how we were supposed to utilize the capital,” said Jiban Devkota (30).

Jiban, however, found a partner – Raj Kumar Shrestha – a fellow comrade of the Maoist party, and tried his luck with running a stone factory. The venture furthered up into multiple businesses within two years of civil life, started with a total capital of Rs 600,000.

"The money government gave was peanuts. We loaned some amount and so far, we have invested Rs 15 million in this stone factory ," Jiban said. “We are planning to construct stalls as well for a vegetable market.”

Jivan, who lost his father and two brothers-in-law in the bloody war that lasted for a decade, is happy about what he has achieved in his civil life. "The losses inflicted upon me by the war are irreparable," he said. "But they will not restrict me from living a happy life for myself. Those gone will not come back. What remains with me is what I think is more valuable."

Deviation from politics

Having taken up the challenge of making it large out of their civil life, many of the former PLA combatants have metamorphosed as entrepreneurs and their major concern in life is no more politics. A number of these combatants of the past, now think that such ideology and the politics cannot do anything for their personal life. For many, the government's financial package was a cheap compromise of all the youth the combatants wasted at war.

“We were thrown out of the cantonment and peace process was said to be accomplished. Neither the party paid attention to us, nor the government bothered to look after our assimilation in the society after our exit from the cantonments,” Lal Bahadur Basnet (29), known as Sidhanta (ideology) in the Maoist party said. The former fighter from Sindhupalchwok, Sidhanta is a wholesale trader of clothes in Kathmandu's business hub Ason.

"When it comes to choosing one party over another, I am still sympathetic with the Maoists," he giggles. "But I have completely deviated myself from politics and I am now focused on establishing myself as a successful trader."

However, he believes that the potentiality of criminal activities from the former combatants who are out of cantonments could be minimized if the government and political parties were serious about re-establishing the every single combatant as a normal citizen.

"I was the first one to throw chairs at leaders at a party’s extended meeting," he recalled. " All of us were intensely depressed with the party for its failure to provide us justifiable ways to move out of cantonments. No probe was ever done into alleged corruption in the cantonments." Another former PLA Laxmi Dhital, known as Alisha in her party, is now a beautician and is running a beauty parlour in Banasthali, after choosing voluntary retirement along with her Maoist husband, whom she had married during insurgency.

"I am in contact with ex-commanders and fellow PLA combatants. We are still friends," she said. "But unlike how things were in the past, Maoism is no more my way of living and the war has turned into merely a memory to me."

“How the former combatants like us have been left at lurch by the leadership of the party is particularly annoying," she said. "All the blood and toil of martyrs seem to have gone in vain. Nevertheless, the new ground we have found for ourselves as citizens out of war, gives us a lot of hope and countless reasons to smile."