Police personnel stationed at the District Police Office in Dhangadhi, Kailali, celebrated this year's Dashain festival at their workplace after failing to get leave to return home for the celebrations. With the festival season keeping them on duty, the officers marked the occasion at the very place where they serve, receiving tika and jamara from Sudurpaschim Province Police Chief DIG Sanuram Bhattarai, who joined the programme and shared Dashain greetings with the personnel.
Dashain celebrated away from family
Dashain is the largest festival in Nepal's Hindu tradition, a time when families reunite, markets fill with shoppers and people travel across the country to their ancestral homes. The heart of the festival lies in the blessing ceremony, in which elders apply tika, a mixture of rice, vermilion and yogurt, along with jamara, the yellow barley shoots grown from the day of Ghatasthapana, on the foreheads of younger family members while wishing them health, happiness and prosperity.
For the police personnel of the District Police Office, Dhangadhi, those familiar rituals unfolded in an unfamiliar setting this year. Unable to secure leave for the festival, they gathered instead at their duty station, where the Dashain programme allowed them to observe the celebration they would otherwise have spent with their families.
The situation is a recurring one for Nepal's security forces. While most of the country comes to a standstill during Dashain, police personnel remain deployed in offices, on the streets and at key locations, keeping security arrangements and essential services running through the holiday period. Celebrations such as the one in Dhangadhi are how many of them experience the festival, surrounded by colleagues rather than relatives.
Tika and jamara at the provincial police office
The observance extended beyond the district office. According to news reports, security personnel across the Far West celebrated Dashain at their workplaces, and a programme was also organized at the provincial police office in Dhangadhi, the capital of Sudurpaschim Province. It was there that DIG Bhattarai applied tika and jamara to the officers, extending the blessings that elders traditionally offer during the festival.
Senior officers bring the festival to the personnel
DIG Sanuram Bhattarai, the police chief of Sudurpaschim Province, stood at the centre of the celebration. As the senior-most police officer in the province, he administered tika and jamara to the personnel and conveyed Dashain greetings and best wishes to those spending the festival on duty.
Joining him was Muna Bhattarai, president of the Nepal Police Wives Association's Sudurpaschim Province chapter, who took part in the programme at the provincial police office. Her presence brought a family dimension to the gathering, offering the personnel a sense of the household celebrations they were missing back home.
The Nepal Police Wives Association works with police families across the country, and its provincial chapters are involved in welfare activities for the force's community. In Dhangadhi, the association's participation in the Dashain programme reflected the effort police institutions make to stand in as family for personnel who remain far from theirs during the festival.
On duty so that others can celebrate
The celebration in Kailali highlights a quiet trade-off that defines festival duty for Nepal's police. As large numbers of people leave the cities for their villages each Dashain, security personnel stay behind, maintaining order and keeping emergency response available at a time when families are gathered and homes are often left empty.
Dhangadhi, the district headquarters of Kailali and the commercial hub of the Far West, sees considerable festival-season movement, and the district's police force is part of the network that keeps that movement safe. For the officers who could not take leave this year, the workplace became the venue for the festival's most important ritual.
Details of the programme were carried by Nepal Press, which reported that security personnel in the Far West celebrated Dashain at their workplace and that the DIG administered tika, and by Gorkhapatra Online.
For the personnel at the District Police Office and the provincial police office in Dhangadhi, this Dashain looked different from the festival most Nepalis know. Yet it preserved what matters most in the celebration: the tika and jamara, the blessings and the shared good wishes, offered this time by the police family standing in for the one waiting at home.
