Even today, remembering his childhood makes Durgabahadur BK shudder. His family was so poor that having three meals a day was often a struggle. With no money to continue his education, he left school before completing his SLC and, while still a child, travelled to India in search of work.
Born in Madhuwan Municipality-3 of Bardiya, Durgabahadur had been studying at the village’s Dhanaura National Secondary School when he left for India. He went to Himachal Pradesh, where he worked as a labourer, wielding a shovel and carrying heavy loads in baskets and sacks on his back.
The money he earned was what kept his family going. His father had already died, and as the only son, much of the responsibility for the household fell on his young shoulders.
Born in 1987, Durgabahadur was not yet 14 when he first went to India in 2000. For five years, he worked among the hills of Himachal Pradesh, climbing the steep paths and stairways of Shimla and carrying loads wherever work was available. For a period, he even worked as a domestic servant in his employer’s house in Shimla.
Leaving home at such a young age and doing hard labour was not a choice he made willingly. He simply saw no alternative.
“My family’s financial condition was extremely poor. We did not have enough even for food and clothes, so I left my studies and went to India. I worked continuously for five years,” he recalls.
For another two years after those five years of continuous work in Himachal Pradesh, he travelled between India and Nepal from time to time. During that period, he was also looking for a way out of the life he had known in India.
Some people from his village were leaving for countries such as Qatar and Malaysia. Some encouraged him to leave India and look for work elsewhere.
That was when his plans began to change.He started dreaming of Qatar.
He obtained a passport, borrowed money and, in 2008, travelled to Qatar. He had been just 14 when he first left Nepal for India. By the time he left for Qatar, he was 21. But Qatar did not immediately offer him the breakthrough he had imagined.
He was still a labourer.
“I was initially paid 400 riyals a month. Then it increased to 500 and 600,” he says.
He had travelled to Qatar to work for the Lotus company. He had been told he would work as a carpenter. The reality was different. But after years of hard labour in India, he was not someone who gave up easily.
When the company needed a driver, Durgabahadur saw an opportunity.
He had handled a steering wheel while in India, although he was far from an experienced driver. Still, he took the chance. He practised driving in Qatar, gradually became more confident and eventually obtained his driving licence.
That licence changed his earnings overnight. His salary rose to 1,000 riyals.
For someone who had been earning around 550 riyals, doubling his income was an extraordinary moment.
“The day I received a salary of 1,000 riyals instead of around 550, I was so happy that I could not even sleep,” he recalls.
He remained with Lotus for eight years, until 2016, working as a driver. Then he moved to another company that was looking for a salesperson-driver for its water business.
His career was beginning to move beyond the jobs he had first taken simply to survive.
The company’s management had noticed his honesty and dedication. Although he had been hired as a driver and salesperson, the managing director gradually entrusted him with greater responsibility. He became a senior storekeeper and eventually rose to become a supervisor.
For Durgabahadur, it was proof that the years of hard work had not been wasted.
The boy who had once carried loads through the streets of India and worked in his employer’s household had become a company supervisor.
“I have been shaped by hard work. I have reached where I am through dedication and labour. My difficult past brought me to where I am today. I am proud of my past,” he says.
By then, he had experienced almost every rung of the working life he had once known only as survival — from porter to driver, salesperson to storekeeper and finally supervisor.
And another thought began to take shape.
Working for someone else would only take him so far. If he wanted to build something of his own, he would have to take the risk himself.
There was just one problem. He had no money. Whatever he earned was largely spent on his daily needs and sent home to his family. Still, he refused to let that stop him.
He borrowed 1,000 riyals and started working on his own.
That small loan would become the starting point of a business that would eventually make him a millionaire and create jobs for dozens of people in Qatar.
His first venture involved municipal waste-management supplies. He supplied dustbins, plastic products and other materials needed for waste collection, buying and selling the items according to demand.
“I delivered whatever was needed in different areas. I worked according to the demand,” he says.
The business grew quickly. According to Durgabahadur, it reached monthly sales of around 250,000 riyals.
As competitors entered the market, he began looking for another opportunity.
Because he had already been working closely with municipalities, he saw an opening in waste management itself.
In 2020, he established a waste-management company. This time, he moved beyond supplying materials. He began handling waste collection and management directly.
He bought vehicles for the business, including one that he says cost 370,000 riyals. He says some of the vehicles were purchased from Switzerland.
Today, he says his company operates 17 vehicles.
They collect and manage waste in the Al Rayyan and Al Daayen areas of Qatar. He has also opened his own garage to maintain the vehicles.
Across the business, he says he now employs 37 people.
Every day, his company manages between 50 and 60 tonnes of waste, according to Durgabahadur.
The scale of the business is a striking contrast to where he began.
Yet he says he still works between 18 and 20 hours a day.
He does not see the contrast between his childhood poverty and his present circumstances as something that should make him bitter.
Instead, he sees the hardship as the foundation of everything that came later.
“My past made me strong. The struggles I went through made me more responsible. I am standing where I am today on the foundation of yesterday,” he says.
He says Qatar’s employment market began facing difficulties after 2022. But his company, which works in cleaning and waste management, was less affected.
For now, his business is in Qatar. But his long-term plans are closer to home.
Durgabahadur says he wants to return to his village and eventually build his life there.
His mother, wife and three children currently live in the village. The family occasionally visits him in Qatar before returning home, and he also travels back when he can.
He has never moved his family permanently to Kathmandu or another city. Nor does he plan to settle them in Qatar.
“I want to return to the village and do something there,” he says.
For a man who left that village at 14 carrying little more than the burden of his family’s survival, the idea of returning home is perhaps the next chapter in a journey that began with a shovel in the hills of India and eventually led to a business of his own in Qatar.
