They destroyed just to destroy it.
It was built a century back in a remote hill area now called Sankhuwasabha district of Nepal. It was built of stone, mud and wood, plastered by liun(paste of fine mud, cow dong, rice husk power, fine dry babiyo in water) and white washed by lime. Its doors and windows were masterly carved and the building was biggest and most beautiful in that area. Apswara house was forty feet long and twenty five feet wide and four storeys tall. Its roofs were slated by kiln roof tiles.
Apswara house had a century old history. When it was built, strong male labourers use to get four paisa per day (today they get Rs.150 or 15000 paisa per day). Stones were carved to size. Fifteen hundred cubic feet of saal(strong and heavy wood) and chanp (strong and light wood) were used.
It was the biggest of all building in that compound.
I never saw my grand father who built this house and can not say how he felt of it but my grandmother loved and cared this house very much and equally loved it my mother too. After the death of my mother, a poor family was living in this house and was tilling its compound land free.
One fine day Nepalese Maoists came to this house, shifted its residents to another house and razed it to the ground, sold its parts, wood, tiles and others what was possible.
What for? Vandalism has no reason and this was nothing else but criminal vandalism. Maoist leaders talk of high discipline in their cadres but in fact most of the local Maoists militants are just bunch of desperados feeding themselves by power of guns and muscles.
How much did the house value? Around twenty thousand piece of kiln tiles, one and half thousand cubic feet of wood, below twenty thousands cubic feet of stones and others could hardly valued much but the history of this house, its structure, its carvings, its elegance had no match in that area.
This was most beautiful house for me. I was born, spent my childhood and adolescence here. I felt pain like in death of a dear one when I heard about this vandalism. My well wishers are pressing me to complain and ask for compensation for this act but what? even if I get some money for my house? I am not going for it. I know, no one will be able to remake it. Let the crime be a crime unpunished.
