Mayanglambam Meerina Leimarenbi

There was a time when a dusty village road was not something we wanted to escape from. It was the road that took us home.We walked on it barefoot. We played on it. We returned from school through it. We knew every turn, every tree and every familiar face along the way. The road was dusty, but our memories were not.

Today, many of us look at those roads and see only poverty, inconvenience and a life we believe we have outgrown.

Perhaps we should stop for a moment and ask ourselves:
Have we really outgrown the village—or have we simply forgotten what the village gave us?

The village gave us our first lessons in sharing. It taught us that a neighbour’s sorrow could become our sorrow, and another family’s happiness could become our celebration. It taught us to greet elders, to help without asking what we would receive in return, and to sit together without needing a reason.

There were no smartphones to tell us what was happening in someone’s life.
We simply knocked on their door.
The house became bigger, but the heart became smaller.

Our lives have changed dramatically.
We have better houses, better roads, better phones, better schools and greater opportunities. Young people are travelling to cities and countries in search of education and employment.

They are achieving things their grandparents could hardly have imagined.

And that is something to celebrate.
But progress becomes painful when, in climbing upward, we begin to look down upon the place from which we came.

A village should not be remembered only as the place where our grandparents lived.

It is often the place where our story began.

The old woman sitting quietly in the courtyard may not have degrees or a bank balance, but she may carry generations of knowledge in her memory.

The farmer bending over a field may not speak the language of corporate success, but the food on our tables has passed through hands like his.
The craftsman working patiently with his hands may never become famous, but his skills may have taken generations to learn.
The village is not empty of knowledge.

Sometimes, we are simply too busy to recognize it.
And whom are we earning for?
There is nothing wrong with wanting a better life.

Young people should dream. They should study, leave home, build careers, earn well and see the world.
But somewhere between ambition and achievement, we must pause and ask:
“For whom am I building this life?”
A mother may spend her youth working so that her child can have a better future.
A father may sacrifice everything to educate his children.

A young person may leave the village with a promise:
“One day, I will come back and make you proud.”
Years pass.
The child succeeds.
The parents grow older.
The house becomes quieter.

And sometimes the greatest tragedy is that the person who was waiting for the success is no longer strong enough to enjoy it.

We spend our youth earning a future, and sometimes discover too late that our parents were waiting for our presence—not our presents.
That is the wound modern life rarely speaks about.

We are connected to everyone—and close to no one
We have hundreds of contacts on our phones.
We know what strangers ate for dinner.
We know where someone went on vacation.
We know what people we have never met are thinking.
Yet sometimes we do not know when our own neighbour is sick.
We can send a message across the world in seconds, but cannot find ten minutes to sit beside an ageing parent.

The phone has made distance disappear, but it has not necessarily brought hearts closer.

This is where Tagore’s words remain painfully relevant.
In “Where the Mind Is Without Fear,”

Rabindranath Tagore dreamed of a world:
“Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;”

Those “walls” can remind us of more than physical boundaries. They can also represent the emotional walls we build around ourselves.

Our houses have gates.
Our rooms have doors.
Our phones have passwords.
Our lives have become increasingly private.
But a society cannot remain healthy if every heart becomes a locked room.

Young people, don’t be ashamed of where you came from
To the young generation, there is something worth saying plainly:
Do not be ashamed of your village.
Do not feel embarrassed because your grandparents still live in a simple house.
Do not hide your mother because she still wears the clothes she has always worn.
Do not dismiss your father’s work because it is done with his hands.
Do not laugh at an old person’s slow speech.
Do not call traditional knowledge “backward” simply because it did not come from a textbook.
And do not measure your roots by the size of your family’s bank account.

You can become a doctor, engineer, journalist, entrepreneur, artist, officer or anything else you dream of becoming.

But wherever life takes you, remember the road that first carried you there.

Go back sometimes.
Sit with the elders.
Listen to their stories.
Walk through the fields.
Eat what is cooked at home.
Learn the names of the trees.
Ask your grandparents about their childhood.

Learn the songs, crafts, stories and traditions that are disappearing quietly.

You may discover that the village you once wanted to escape from is carrying something the city cannot sell you.

A sense of belonging.
The village is not the past
We must also stop treating villages as museums.

Village life must not remain frozen in nostalgia.
Young people should bring education, technology, entrepreneurship, better healthcare, sustainable farming, digital opportunities and new ideas to rural communities.

The goal should not be to make villages look exactly like cities.
The goal should be to make villages places where people can live with dignity and opportunity without having to abandon their roots.

Imagine young people returning not because they failed elsewhere, but because they have something valuable to build at home.
Imagine a village where traditional farming meets modern technology.
Where local crafts find global markets.

Where young entrepreneurs create jobs.
Where children have access to quality education.
Where elderly people are respected.
Where local culture is protected rather than forgotten.

That would be progress with a soul.
Perhaps we should go back—not to live in the past, but to remember ourselves
We cannot bring back every dusty road.
We cannot stop every village from changing.
We cannot ask time to stand still.
But we can choose what we carry forward.

We can carry the habit of sharing.
We can carry respect for elders.
We can carry the dignity of labour.
We can carry the warmth of neighbours.
We can carry the patience to sit and listen.

And most importantly, we can carry our roots with us.
Because a tree that forgets its roots may still stand for a while.
But it cannot remain alive without them.

Perhaps that is what our villages are trying to tell us.
They are not asking us to return permanently.

They are asking us not to forget.
And one day, when our hair turns grey and the world becomes quieter, we may not remember the price of the phone we bought, the size of the house we built or the number of promotions we received.

We may remember something much smaller:
A dusty road.
A mother’s voice calling us home.
A father waiting at the doorway.
A grandmother sitting in the courtyard.
Friends laughing without a screen between them.
And the feeling that, for a brief and beautiful moment,
the whole world was home.

So let us go back sometimes.
Not because we have failed to move forward.
But because remembering where we came from may be the only way to make sure that, while moving forward, we do not leave our humanity behind.