This is how a dance floor looked in Kathmandu, where students of an A-Level college were having their farewell party.
Drinkers packed the bar at the party venue. Some were sipping their vodka in peace while others gulped down tequila. Girls were imitating African American dancers of hip-hop videos. While amongst the boys, rowdy pushes and shoves were starting.
A few days later, with the hangover of the party still in my mind, I got an opportunity to speak to a street child who is now under the care of an NGO. With some informal pursuance, it was not difficult to get the reality out at the discussion table.
“How did you end up in this situation?” I asked him.
The typical answer was, “My friend brought me to Kathmandu (from a rural area).”
However, with more talk, he said that he had an evil stepmother. He fled to Kathmandu to escape her tortures.
I asked him how he fulfilled his necessities – food, clothing and shelter. I was amazed to know that money was not a big problem for him.
“Selling a water pump to a secondhand dealer can get us around 5,000 Rupees.” He ate and stayed in a lodge if his group had money. If not, the stereotypical street child that he is, sleeping on dirty street corners and begging for food was his reality.
When I walked back home, I wondered about the differential treatments this 15-years-old and a middle-class boy like me were getting. It felt like we two were living in two worlds in the same Kathmandu Valley. How would it feel to sleep on a bare floor in cold December and January? It was beyond my imagination for a person like me who sleeps on his own bed with a warm blanket and who still feels cold in those freezing months. Issues, which seemed bigger for me before – attracting a girl, whining about the Internet speed of my PC, complaining about not-so-cold water in a refrigerator because of power cuts – all these suddenly looked minute against the struggles for sole physical existence of Ram (name changed). Ram stole for living, had been beaten up by the police, whom he called ‘danthe’ for the truncheons they carry around. When he was younger, fellow street children had bullied him.
I felt lucky and guilty at the same time. My comfortable life with a good educational opportunity with no worries about mere existence is heaven when compared to Ram’s experience of a living hell. After feeling smug about my lifestyle, guilt came in through the small cracks of my enclosed walls of life. People like us do not even have time to think about the social issues surrounding us. The middle-class and upper-echelon teenagers of the Kathmandu Valley are only mostly concerned about their own trivial issues. For boys, it may be raising the shocks of their motorcycles, and for girls, it may be straightening their hair. Besides these matters, nothing substantial exists.
For instance, those street children are seen only as much as their stereotypical image lets us see them. Their image is characterized around this circular argument – “Street children are bad and of no use as they live in streets.” Many of us do not have the insight and guts to see beyond their taken-for-granted image, to see the hidden complexities of their lives, which forced them to live an undesired “street life”.
While picking out the differences in our lives, I pondered about the similarities, too. Ram had mentioned the glue-sniffing habit of street children.
I had asked, “Why do you sniff glue?”
The answer was, “It makes me see whatever I want to.”
It was a simple answer but it matched exactly with a middle-class friend of mine who smokes marijuana.
I was again amazed at the sheer coincidence. How can a street child’s reason to indulge in glue sniffing be the same as a middle-class boy’s reason to “be high”?
Maybe that is a craving for escapism in both of them. Ram wanted to escape from his dangerous reality, while the marijuana smoker, Srijan (name changed), had his own issues. He wanted to escape the quarrels of his parents. He has every material comfort to satisfy his wants. However, his ragged psychology compels him to smoke pot everyday.
I often asked him what he saw in being influenced by the drug. His usual answer was “I see bright sunlight and smiling parents.” Srijan’s delusion gave him an escape.
Material needs are indeed very important for not letting people to lead Ram’s life. However, materials alone do not provide the essence of humanity; emotions are equally important. Had the parents of Srijan’s shown him love, not hate, he could have seen the brighter side of life instead of running away from it.
Craving for affection leads people to become escapists. Escaping from reality is very tempting. It may be pleasurable, too. Nevertheless, it is temporary; it is not the answer to reality, however harsh it may be.
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