Thirty-one-year-old Dilli Bahadur Oli’s family was in a state of shock. The man who had gone to India to work one year ago supposedly died in the flashfloods that struck Kedarnath in the Indian state of Uttarakhand on June 16.

On Wednesday, Oli’s family members in Jhula VDC-1 in the district were mourning his ‘death’ and were marking the fourth day of the 13-day rituals performed for dead souls. However, they got the shock of their lives when Oli casually walked in.

Some of Oli’s relatives who had gone to Kedarnath with him had informed his family that he was killed in the floods. Having given up hopes of finding his body, family members, including his wife and two sons, made an effigy of Oli’s body out of the kush (Halfa grass) and began the rituals.

“I shaved off my head and abstained from consuming salt as per our tradition as he is my close relative. We couldn’t believe our eyes as he showed up while we were mourning his death,” Dhan Bahadur Oli told the Post. He said the mourning soon turned into joy, with the relatives killing a goat for a sumptuous meal that followed for them and the neighbours.

Published on: 5 July 2013 | The Kathmandu Post