Rainfall played a spoilsport for this year’s Dashain. While the festival may be over, it seems as though monsoon is still on, and at the receiving end are the farmers. Every year, farmers harvest paddy before Dashain, but they could not this year. “The gods are angry with us,” an old farmer told me as he was drying his paddy harvest in Bhaktapur on a recent afternoon. The sun was out that day but with the current weather, the sky could grow overcast and the clouds could burst any time. So the old farmer was understandably weary. The rice paddies in Bhaktapur would have been empty by this time in the previous years. I was told not even 10 percent of the harvesting has been completed this year. “Crops have been badly affected by the rain and also by the recent hailstorm,” a woman told me. For farmers of Bhaktapur, harvesting season is a cause for celebration. This is how they have been ringing in the festival season every year. They drink plenty of chhyang (rice beer), beaten rice, and vegetables and gather harvest bounty, the fruits of their labor. The harvest season came late this year. Still, the farmers were making the most of it. I was offered some chhyang and beaten rice on the condition that I take their issue to the government. “Tell the government that we lack fertilizers every year,” a genial farmer told me. I promised to do what I can.