As my searching eyes rest on this lone figure out of my curiosity to know him/her, I’m sitting on a dusty wooden bench in a modest tea-shop across the road to the north by the eerily quiet stream. Spending some part of the mornings in a tea-shop relishing the morning tea and watching people move past has added a keen interest to my pastime lately. Soon, as the sun pours more of its light on earth, I notice about a dozen curious people who have collected on the left edge, slowing or nearly halting the morning traffic that has grown bigger and louder with all sorts of noises of screeching brakes, trumpeting buses, muffled and throttling engine sounds, and a confused humming of people. Surely, I think to myself, there must be a reason for this.
I generally do not rush to see things. But, a couple of young men about me have started darting towards the scene while others still remain making conjectures about what may have happened. I can only hear some indistinct noises except for some occasional references to a young man on the bridge. Now that I have to listen to these shallow speculations, I finally decide to determine myself the truth of the matter and walk down to the west-end of the bridge to be just close enough to ascertain things.
Soon, I catch sight of a short young lady in her late twenties ringed by the crowd of curious people across all ages. And on the pavement beside her is a young man, probably in his mid-twenties, squatting and grinning with his ignorant generosity to entertain the spectators. As my vision becomes clearer, I realize the young man has shed almost all the features of youth. A frightful skinny figure now, his eyes sink deep in the cavities of his skull. His unattended beard and hair have grown irregularly long with some smudges of mud that dull their regular color. His face is tanned to brownish black and body covered in tattered rags of thick grey and black cloth almost giving one the impression of a scarecrow except for the fact that it doesn’t squat.
What has attracted the throng more is his right leg impaired apparently in a fatal assault, which also simultaneously cost him his sanity. Since it is worsening with a likelihood of cancer, his death seems imminent. What is more, as I am intimated later by a by-stander, he is a local—one reason behind the attention of the other locals! I also discover later that he has been used to living his life feeding on leftovers, hence becoming an object of disgust (or entertainment?) for so many except for the lady who stands by with hope.
Dressed austerely in dark yellow like a saint, the lady, supposedly from a Social Organization, has compassionately bought the man some food. Like a nurturing mother selflessly concerned with her child’s well-being, she now watches him lick the food. She watches him with her eyes very alert and wide. Overtaken by heightened fear and despair, soon she waves to some taxis, but in vain. She waves to a Toyota. The nervous Toyota driver turns and walks away with a pretext. However, patience does pay and the lady finally persuades a taxi for her cause. The man is then carried away and that is the end of the story. I return happy.
But, to my awful surprise, the very young man is back again in just a couple of days, his leg having been bandaged and probably treated. There are signs of some recovery, yes, but they do not seem enough to keep him alive. Why is he on the bridge again? Now I see him there every day in the same old setting.
That evening, there is some news of accidents and murder on TV. Repelled by this, I tune in to another channel, which only shows infirm, crippled animals predated upon by a pride of lions. At night, I have a hard time getting sleep. For some reason, the heat proves unbearable; the clothes seem to constrict me. But when I find sleep, there is another nightmare awaiting me. In my dream, I see somebody drowning; and upon my desperate move to help, I realize that my hands are tied and that a female figure instead appears to be extending her hands to the drowning man for help. And that is all I remember of my dream.
As if all these were ominous signs of something, the following day, I discover, to my dismay, that the man is gone again. Is he dead? I have no way of knowing.
The writer is an M Phil fellow at Institute of Advanced Communication, Education and Research (IACER), Kathmandu