I visit my village every year during Chhath to embrace all the changes I could not witness in the lives of my loved ones, those I live away from, and in the village I left behind but that lives within me.

The changes you see in a year bring a spectrum of feelings. You notice how the field where you once played has now been divided – one half growing potatoes, the other barren. A boy you once saw laughing and playing has now grown a faint beard and is preparing to migrate, deciding whether to study further or start earning to support his family. The road to your village has been built, there is a mobile tower now, and the network is strong. The mango tree you planted years ago bears fruit.

Those who once played with dolls now have children of their own and have grown quieter, maybe for forever. The uncle who once took charge of organising the ghats is no longer there. During community service, another elder steps up, speaks about his predecessor’s contributions and the kind of man he was, accepts his absence and everyone moves on.

Going back every year cannot compensate for what we miss, but it helps us accept what has changed and move forward. That acceptance comes through celebration, grieving, crying, and laughing.

Acceptance is what keeps my sense of belonging intact. A gap of two years feels too long, too overwhelming. Staying away fills you with melancholy because, deep down, you know there will be changes you will neither witness nor be able to accept, ever.

It was during one Chhath visit in my childhood that I learned our village finally had electricity. We no longer had to fear the dark; we could play on the streets even after sunset. For the first time, the streets were lit without the chaos of a marriage celebration or an annual drama event around Diwali. I do not have exact words for that feeling, but I experienced it again years later in Goa, standing before the sea for the first time on a full-moon night.

Witnessing change around the place you love and the people you care for is a basic human necessity that migrant communities are deprived of. Watching your children grow is not a luxury; it is a basic necessity. Yet hundreds of thousands of Biharis cannot afford it. They must choose between feeding their children and seeing them grow. But children do not stop growing because of your absence. Like many others, my father too could not watch his children grow because he had to migrate for work. But he made sure to come back to see how many tables I had learned by rote and with the goal of teaching me how to ride a bicycle that chhath, which he never could. He never had enough holidays, as he was a teacher in a private school in Delhi. I learned it by myself later.

When you are away from home, though, that same voice of Sharda Sinha feels melancholic. The same song can make you cry; it can make you feel as though someone is uprooting you from the soil, leaving you to exist without belonging. I compare Sharda Sinha’s songs to Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting Mona Lisa – they reflect what you feel. Sharda ji was the voice of Chhath. She passed away last year at the age of seventy-two, coincidentally on Nahay Khay, the first day of Chhath.

On Nahay Khay, the first day, and Lohanda, the second day, all the families that are celebrating Chhath invite to participate those who are not celebrating because they lost loved ones this year, have a terminally ill family member, or are not healthy enough to keep up with the four-day ritual. The invitation is a way to express that they are not alone.

At the ghats, you meet people you haven’t seen in years while buying seasonal fruits and vegetables for prasad from Koiri and Kurmi community vendors, kolsup (bamboo basket) from the Dom community, sugarcane from farmers of all castes, and flowers and alta from the Maali community – all for the arghya. While arranging dried mango wood to cook prasad and banana leaves to serve kheer for Lohanda, the second day of Chhath, you catch glimpses of corners of your village you last saw as a child.

You do not need a priest to help you communicate with God on Chhath. It is you in direct conversation with your god, the Sun, whom you can see as well. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Chhath remains equally important for every community. There is no hierarchy. You do not need a “superior” caste middleman between you and God. However, caste divisions still exist at the ghats in my village. One ghat is for the Bhumihars, and another – one and a half kilometres upstream – is for all other castes, including, ironically, the Brahmins.

In the 1990s, when the Bhumihar-led Ranveer Sena clashed with others, Brahmins too were victims, however little, of that violent hegemony. Even today, their houses are among those of other castes in my village, while the Bhumihar colony is separate. The non-Bhumihar ghat is more vibrant, colourful, cleaner and larger, maybe because of an extra binding force, a sense of solidarity.

To witness the full picture of how my village has changed, I visit both ghats. The change I hope to see in my lifetime is for those two ghats to merge somewhere in between – near the spot where, years ago, the bodies of seven Dalits were found after being murdered and thrown into the river in Kansara village.

Note: Additional paragraphs have been added to this article since publication.

Vipul Kumar is an independent journalist and reporter.