The old man , his dog and Kaluram

You owe me two taka . The old man turned back , emptied his pocket, asserted his hand and said :here you go, satisfied??  The shopkeeper was taken aback. The old man , he was a little agitated. He hollered his dog Mintoo and advanced into the dark streets of Shurma. It was 1 am in the night, well technically speaking that was morning already. He had bought some bread loafs for Mintoo. The old man was littering the street with tiny pieces of bread.

Mintoo , he is 7 yrs old. Mintoo grew older with the old man . The old man grew older with his job . His job was to look after one residential area , he ended up as a guard all his life. Not that working as a security guard is a bad thing to do, i am absolutely not prejudiced about it. Infact , the old man was  a benevolent man. He buys Mintoo a packet of bread, that would cost him around 10 taka each day. The reason he was pissed off at the shopkeeper was that he had no credit left. But, the merchant would insist he had. Talking about the old man and the dog.Mintoo doesn’t devour on the litters, hasn’t bitten anyone from the locality but the burglars. Mintoo has got a scar on his head , he got few stitches when he ran amok on some bandits. They hit him with a sharp stone. The doctor charged the old man 900 taka.

Mintoo

                                                   

That’s what the old man has to say about his Mintoo. We were three, listening to his stories from the beginning of the time. He has been a security guard for really long time. I mean few decades , that's a great deal of time. A friend of mine was so impressed with the old man for he could keep his loyalty with the job. But it’s a shag on a rock the other way, alone and stuck away from others for such long time. There is no fragnance of progress except the yearly slight, top up on the salary. My friend didn’t ideate this way, he went with the loyalty. I guess there is no accounting for the human tastes.

I was drifted back to my memories. I had written a piece about a guy named Kaluram. He would look after the affairs on the field. From axing of timber to shouldering me to school. It wouldn’t just be hauling me to school, he would pack me inside of a sack holding my uniform on his hand and make me dress up inside the class room when the assembly of students are singing some prayers to saraswati  to help them gain knowledge. He later got away to some places i didn’t know. And when i met this same guy after getting admitted to a University in Bangladesh, he was still the same person except he had some grey hairs on the side. I wasn’t expecting him to change his name from kaluram to some Kim , James, rocky, bicky or sth. But I was hoping he did something great with his life. 

It really changed the way i used to think. I mean i got almost everything for granted. My parents are well off, i have a beautiful life to cherish on. Kaluram’s life didn't change a trifle for a decade and more.He was 35 when i last met him. I grew up from being a messed up school kid to an engineer , and to some extent Kaluram did some fantastic job: help me pocket the change. He’s just one representative of this huge mass of Nepalese population. Still we can see on the streets, veterans selling their labors as porters, carrying a basket of fruits, run a small hut-shop on around a corner. If we ask them,if it’s been always like this?They would probably say yes. 

a veteran nepali porter

If you are reading this and you retain some fairy dreams, this might give you some ache. How can a person lead the same life for decades? How can you, not get over it and move on? Its doesn’t seem so easy. Does it? Our country has been witnessing the same stalemate for more than a decade. There has been no physical development, no mental peace and worse of all people lost the faith in democracy.No wonder, the generation who grew up with the insignificant: so called people’s war still lead the same life.Kaluram deserved something better in life. There were only few options given to the working class population, hold guns or we don’t care. Kaluram didn’t choose guns.  

Destructive people's liberation war