Globalization is melting the culture and tradition of our nation, similar to what global warming is doing to our mountains. Our identity will be completely wiped out if we fail to realize and educate ourselves. The nation is going through rapid transformation to catch up to the rest of the world. In doing so, we have forgotten to preserve our past. Like across the nation, the village I grew up have gone through rapid transformation in recent years. My childhood memory, or even the circumstance a decade ago doesn’t match with the current reality.

The villagers that had never even been to the urban city were suddenly exposed to the global labor market. The sudden influx of capital made ones family avoid the hard works that they had to go through to make their ends meet. Once, self reliant for crops, oil, building materials, and cloths now became dependent to the influx of affordable open market imports. We became good at consuming, but lost our producing capability. The rise of capital oriented society gave birth to greed. As a result certain individuals even started smuggling valuable historic and cultural artifacts that the society or individual possessed.

Religious encroachment became evident in our society because we could not keep up our existing practices to the changing circumstances. We are seeing our culture and tradition that identify us put on sale in antique shops that are scattered all around the town where the tourist influx is, and in foreign museums. The more we see these activities, the more it becomes evident that we are losing part of ourselves that identify us.

Characters that I have represented this time in my artworks are of those individuals, or generation that are found in every nooks and corners of our nation, whom the mainstream citizen do not pay much attention to. Yet these are the same individuals who are somehow preserving our characteristics of ethnic diversity for the time being without our acknowledgment. These are the individuals who had seen and are knowledgeable to our past culture and traditions.

Despite all, with our dependency towards the open market and in search of comfort, even these people could not remain untouched to the changing surroundings. We have seen them change, yet trying to retain past norms as possible as they can. This has happened because of their hesitation towards cultural transition and mistrust towards the new reality.

These are some of the last generation, who for now are hanging to the tradition, therefore holding our identity. They are in confusion by neither being able to keep up their tradition, nor being able to fully embrace the recent changes. They grew up carrying milk in wooden pots, but in plastic coke bottles these days. They are lost somewhere in this transitional period. This moment of dilemma was best captured in monochromatic hue rather than being colorful. Each subject also required in-depth details in order to capture their true representation.

Once this generation is gone, the newer generation like us are already befitted with denims and pride ourselves embracing western influence, not realizing the cultural encroachment. The newer generation have already made a transition from “Madal” to box speakers, “Rodhi” to mp3 players, hand sewn bags to polythene bags, handmade garments to imported polyesters, bamboo baskets to “Zebra Bags,” and from “Sanduk” to flat screen TVs. We will soon lose these marginalized generation in few decades without our realization. With them erasing hundreds of years of our identity, tradition, and culture.