About three and a half years ago, there was sixteen hours of load shedding in a day, eight hours straight in every shift. This long hours of load shedding and low battery in my mobile and yet I have to wait until the light comes up to re-charge it. This type of condition, reminds me of one incident. I am pulled back in my memory lane. Luckily my hands were full for twelve hours and did not have to worry about the no light, no TV and no computer was not much of problem then, unlike now a days. However, long hours of load shedding, was more problematic, even to charge mobile and emergency light.
One day, when my phone battery was running low, a lady who is the chairwoman of a children home here, called me. Lets call her Madam S. She was talking in very panicked tone. Her irritated and agitated tone on the other side of the phone was clearly telling me she must have had a panic attach. She was very hyper and her high pitched tone gave me clear hint, how angry she was over the issue, she was relating to me.
This is one of those few moments she was agitated, irritated and crankier and had panic attach and yet it was not me, she was angry with.
When she was telling me over the phone with her reaction of the situation, she had seen on children home. She had such panic attach, that my mind started running fast, and faster as her tone pitched higher. I saw a man in his mid 20s, who is running after the girls there were 12 girls then age ranging from seven to 22, in the hostel [ children home] and the girls were trying to hide themselves in any corner available. He is not just running after the girls, he was also nude and obviously horny too, hungry to grab any girl for his need of the hour. I was stunned and shocked too, how could such thing could have happened ? But, as the stair of the all girls hostel is in such distance that anybody of that age could enter the building so easily.
Madam S. was still going on and on in her trademark hyper-pitched tone on the other side of the phone, my mobile now was plugged in to my charger, so, I could not even move around.
But, just then, I paid more attention, to what she was saying. She was telling me, a friend of Nisha Shrestha & Puja Shrestha had stayed in the hostel for overnight. A girl, may have tipped this to her, so after haring the news, she made a quick visit to the children home. Then like every teenage girl, she too hid herself inside the toilet.
When they could not find, the girl inside the hostel, they waited. They were clueless, but at the end, they found out that the girl had been hiding herself inside the toilet.
“How undisciplined these girls are, how can they do some thing like this ?” she wanted know, and as if my answer will satisfy her. Instead I remained quiet and was angry for making this small issue sound so uselessly big. I do have a 0% respect to all those who says a mouse is as big as an elephant, honestly speaking detest them.
Me having been grown up in Bal Mandir, this is something amusing stuff to me and in fact I liked it also, provided without her irritation and panic attach. Personally, for me this is such a minor issue not even worth mentioning it to anyone, but she was making a mountain over a mole hill.
This is a small mistake any college student around the world makes; and is one of the most harmless mistake, which tells adult, that they are growing up and needs to do some thing the adult does not approve off. Nothing to worry about and nothing to panic or go hyper, the way she was going.
But, Madam S. is Madam S. that was a kind of an act, which was intolerable and unacceptable mistake from the girls staying in the children’s home. I am sure she must have been on medication to control her blood pressure, during that time [late 2008].
“What would the parents of the girl think ?, if they find out she had spent her night in the hostel ?” she wondered and then she added that, “hostel does not have that big budget, to manage those unplanned night stay.”
What ? now a days girls are on diet before they are even a teenagers and 12 girls, little bit from every plate is more than enough to fill one extra plate, I thought. This nagging reaction from Madam S. left a void in my head for so long. Why so small issue like that is so big for her, to had a panic attack like that ?
I am full grown now and I should have understood the caring and concern in their voice, but instead it worked the opposite. I just stared to have less and less respect, more I get a change to read their mind. The phone call and her reaction, made me understand, the difference between uncomfortable with suffocation and uneasy with smothering, which made me feel profoundly thankful to God, for not having mother in my life. Who knows she could have been like her so smothering and so suffocating.
Today, I don’t not remember, she blaming it to Nisha, for calling her friend to stay in the hostel. But, what I do remember is, Ritu [she just died recently] defending Nisha for that blame and saying, “it was Puja, who had invited one of their class mate for the night stay over. When the situation took U turn, the blame was on Nisha.”
Who invited or who stayed and who got the blame is not much of the important issue here. In that void state of mind a question kept ringing, “what would parents think ?” the question echoed in my ear, long after, she hung up the phone. For Gods shake, children’s Home, is just a girls an orphanage, not a brothel, even to cross that question in her parents mind or more importantly to Madam S. I bet the girls parents knows their daughter, a lot better and won’t blame it to her class mates, if something goes wrong in her life.
Why cant the girl’s parents not be happy, that their daughter, was sound and safe in the children’s home with so many other girls, instead of landing in wrong place ?
But this one question, will never ever cross the brain of Madam S.
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