Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Euta Mamuli Gaunle ko Anautho Sapana part 2 It was during this time that Mahesh, sighing deeply and smiling, talked slowly about his village. Because of the chiya-pasal, he couldn’t always take his children back to the village as regularly as he wanted to. So Mahesh took this time that he was spending in his children to instill in them where his true values were. He took every chance he got to laughingly and joyously glorify his ancesteral home to his children. The village with it’s buffalo milk and fresh vegetables and hearty laughter and jhyaure music, was the ideal life. There everyone was loving, kind and respectful, not like Kathmandu. In the village, the air was clean, the fields were green, and the people were lean, mean tough on the outside, but jovial and loving in a rustic and beautiful way. Everybody knew their place in relationship to everyone else and how to conduct themselves. There isn’t this chaotic nonsense like here in Kathmandu, Mahesh would tell them. The children would smile charmed by their father’s stories and his fanatical love for his village. After dinner, if someone else was manning the village, Mahesh would would lean forward and croon in his oldest daughter, Devika’s ear while he patted her on the head. “When you are of age, I will find a nice boy from our village to marry, ok? Don’t fall for the false charm of these city boys. They are nothing but trouble. If any of them teases you, you tell your brothers or tell me. We will take care of them. Don’t be afraid to tell us. If I have to call every able bodied man from my village to save your ijjat from anyone who harasses you, I will.” Mahesh’s teeth gritted in determination, showing that he meant every word that he was saying. The children didn’t take their father’s words lightly. He was a tough one and said what he meant and meant what he said. Devika bowed her head shyly and said, “Huncha, Buwa, I will do as you say.” Pramila rolled her eyes looking at Devika. Devika was such a kissup. Pramila saw how Devika slyly was so good at playing the perfect daughter to their parents. It made Pramila sick. Pramila enjoyed life in the city. She had a city boyfriend and enjoyed going and watching the Hindi cinemas and eating momos and having fun in general. She had plans. She wasn’t going to waste her precious life like this goody-2-shoe Devika was. Pramila snickered at Devika and grabbed a roll of rice, dahl and spinach and popped it in her mouth. She was already late for tuition and had no time for the constant drama her father would put together glorifying his old village. Mahesh had been strict bringing them up. He was afraid of losing his children to the wrong ways of the city. He hadn’t sacrificed and done all that he had to now simply lose them to nonsense. Mahesh was quick to hit them or beat them if they did anything wrong. He wanted them to have a strong sense of right and wrong. And if hitting them was the only way they were going to learn this, Mahesh had no problem raising his hands at them. He didn’t care for all the softness and sweet talk from the city. He was a rough man with a harsh voice. His children loved him because underneath that rough and tough village exterior, they knew their father had a heart of gold. The children had grown up with dozens of their villagers coursing through their home. There were villagers always sleeping in their living room or in their inside room. A long mattress rolled out, and whoever was visiting Kathmandu would lay down alongside with them. They needed no introduction. They needed no invitation. That they were from the same village as Mahesh was enough for them to be recognized as a part of the family. In this way, Mahesh had toiled year after year. But he had managed to send all 4 of his kids: two girls and two boys to college with advanced degrees. His son went on to become a first class officer in Nepal Rastra Bank. His oldest son became a civil engineer and worked for Yatayat Sansthan. Devika ended up marrying a gentleman running a Computer store in Baghbazaar. She got a degree in Finance and went on to work for an insurance company in Jainsipati. Mahesh’s youngest daughter, Pramila, the street smart trouble maker, got involved in Kathmandu’s political scene and ended up having close connections with the mayor of Kathmandu. He felt good that he had fulfilled his promise to his favorite and oldest daughter. His sons had married and had families of their own. He felt he had done his duty as a father. Mahesh decided that he had lived in the city long enough. He had fulfilled the purpose for which he had come to the city: educating his children and seeing them settled. His dream had come true. Now he had other dreams that he wanted to fulfill. By the time his children had gotten married and settled, Mahesh’s savings had grown considerably. By now, he was running a franchise of chiya-pasals all over Kathmandu run by people from his village. He took much of the money he had earn’t and went back and bought back the ancestoral land in his village that he had initially sold in order to start his chiya-pasal in Kathmandu. Now he bought that land and more back. As his hair and moustache started to gray, Mahesh had enough money that he didn’t have to worry about working anymore. And if anything went wrong, he knew that he could depend on his children. And just in case he couldn’t depend on his own children, he knew he could count on any and many of the villagers that he had helped through-out the years. Mahesh used his son’s connections in their work place and their school friend’s in Kathmandu to start lotteries. They held cricket matches and football matches and catered food to both the audience and the players. They sold tickets to these games played in Sano Gaucharan and collected money. They did all of this to create a fund for their village. Mahesh could have, like many villagers who had come to Kathmandu, forgotten where he had come from. But he did not. He created this fund and advised many of the villagers who worked with him to tithe a little bit of money every month into this fund. And respecting his words, they did. The fund grew year after year. The fund was being managed by his children who had specialized in Finance and Commerce. Eventually there was considerable money in the fund. Mahesh took the money and worked diligently in the village to create an English boarding school. In the ribbon cutting ceremony of the school, Mahesh, teary-eyed, looking at the crowd of men, women and children from the village, said, “If such a boarding school had been there when my children were growing up, I would never have left our village. I grown up in this village and had so much fun. I have so many good memories here. I was forced to leave this village because I knew that the village didn’t have the resources to give my children the kind of education that I wanted to give them. Now none of you have to leave the village to give your children a decent education.” There were many in the audience wiping tears away from their eyes with red sarees or with the back of their hand, as they listened to Mahesh Daju’s choking voice. <p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal" c
Homeyji · Dec 16, 2011 8:02 PM · 97 views
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