Prem Dai

During initial days of dashain the first thing that used to happen in Bal Mandir was to bring green bamboos and then erect two swinging pings, one is big and one is small for children. This would make the work of adults in indirect ways as it used to keep hundreds of energetic children busy during fifteen days of school holidays.

Normally, adult male staff who used to work as a peons or the dish washers used to lend a hand to make a swinging ping as they were bit handy in this kind of work. But because most of these males used to be from the remote part of the country and had seen hard life, so they used to climb the bamboos as if, they had been doing this for their whole life. I mean to say they used to climb bamboos like a money used to climb tree. To make a swinging ping one need to climb up the tip of the bamboo and then tie it up from fist two and then join the other two at one point so that they can hang down the thick and sturdy rope to make a ping.

Honestly speaking, here I am not talking about the methods of making the ping, I have a whole lot of different memory that is refusing to leave my mind even after all these many years also.

One particular year, when I was perhaps around nine years or so, Prem dai was up in the bamboo and trying to tie the two end of bamboos with rope. On the other side of the bamboo, may be Kanchha Dai was doing the half work and we children were watching it from the down, hoping it to be ready and then play it as soon as it gets ready. It was the work one needed to keep his two thighs in wide gap to do the complex work so, he too was doing it as the work needed it. One naughty eyes of a big boys or maybe of a girl noticed that Prem dai was not wearing anything inside his shorts, and some not so pleasant scene was on sight.

Suddenly, all eyes were up and with that the roar of laughter caught viral and it took time for Prem Dai to get why children were laughing down there. Maybe he was not smart enough to get it all by himself, until, one of them put it in words. Looking at my childhood and its culture, I bet it must have been a crude way of breaking the news to him but then again I just can't remember now, how the news was broken.

He then tried to keep his both thighs in close contact to avoid the unwanted laughter as well as to protect his ugly private parts. But harder he tried, faster he forgot to keep his thigh closer because he was up there to do tough work to tie the top ends of bamboos to convert it into swinging ping.

It really was hard to understand why he did not climbed down and then changed his shorts or put another pant, if in case he was not the one who used to wear undergarments and then climb up again so that it really would have been easier or him to do the remaining part of the work.

Strange as it may sound to my readers, but, the truth is that he never climbed down during the whole process of making a ping; meaning he kept the naughty children amused with his little brains exhibition.

When I was child I used to think that adult are brainier and smarter than the children and they will never ever do the kind of stupid things, which normally are the core part of children’s life. But maybe this is where I made a mistake. Reading some adult whose body grows into the adult yet their brain never grows as with the size of their body. He was a junior staff of the Bal Mandir and was a no brainier, to get the simple fact straight. It was a lot better solution to come down and then change his shorts and then go up again and then make the swinging ping instead of staying there like monkey showing his open gap of thighs and ugly private pasts and giving opportunity to children laughing who were watching him from down, rather than secretly hoping, they would close their eyes and would not see his ‘things’, so that he could focus on his work.

That day he stayed up there, completed his work with his on and off wide gap of airy shorts and then he became the subject of laughing matter for all the children, who were there waiting for the ping to be ready in just a matter of hours.

What ever said and done, the fact remains that, that was one of the most funny day for some big children. And this is the incident refuse to go from my memory after all this years.