Taushila Rana
Kathmandu, December 30: These days, my friend Bimal is mostly found staying at home. As far as he can manage he does not go out at all, but if he does come out he selects the shortest route if possible, but if he fails to do so, prefers an isolated way even if he may have to cover a longer distance.
He has learned to suppress his desires of walking or strolling, or to say it frankly, his present condition and mental state have taught him to kill his desire. That's why he mostly stays at home.
The busy streets of Kathmandu are rarely without people and the possibility of meeting acquaintances is rather great. The small town forces him to imprison himself within his home. In case he came across some relatives or friends, he would be bombarded with questions like "where is your job nowadays, what have you been doing, why is a highly capable man like you keeping yourself aloof...," and on and on and on.
Thus, he has experienced an inferiority complex many times, trying to answer their nosy enquiries. On several occasions he has felt low in front of his former class-friends seeing them walking proudly. It is to save himself from depression and an increasing inferiority complex arising out of such chance encounters that he does not like to go out for a walk.
It's true that he does possess good intelligence. As a student at his school and college, he had proved to be quite brilliant. Due to his poor financial background, he could not carry on his higher studies beyond his bachelor's degree. He had, therefore, no other option but to rush to get a job. He needed a job not only for himself but to maintain his entire family.
He would get a job and begin to work but it was always temporary. He studied hard, took his tests but he was always denied a permanent job because of violence, bad leadership and bad government in the country.
Due to political instability and disruption in the economic activities, the job market continues to shrink, and a large number of youths have difficulty landing jobs. From time to time, his self-confidence and efforts deceived him and gradually he reached a state of his mind when not a single trace of self-confidence remained within him. He lost even his temporary job. As a result, his talent died with his mental spirit and now he has remained hollow like a dry log, living a meaningless life.
In the literary field, however, he was able to establish himself quite strongly. He naturally drew the attention of renowned critics toward his subject matter, style and innate capabilities. But nowadays, he has completely withdrawn himself from that field too.
Today he has doubts that what he wrote was appropriate, his style attractive and his thoughts powerful. That is why his energy to create literary works has almost dried up. Whatever self-satisfaction he derived from his literary creations earlier, has now changed into equal dissatisfaction.
Due to this very dissatisfaction, he has completely severed himself from his literary connections. Nowadays, there is not a single field where he is attached. He is limited to his own loneliness and within his own household environment.
Home! Even at home he doesn't have any desired atmosphere. The income sources of his household were unable to meet its limitless needs and to cope with its uncontrollable expenses. Therefore, he was watching his retired old father who was slowly withering away in worries at his meager amount of pension money. He watched his father's worry helplessly. Although it was his responsibility now to earn and take care of his father, it was his father who was running the household.
Not only him, his wife and son were depending on his father's pension. Two years had already slipped by when he had married his wife with the thought that she was just a single person whom he could easily afford to provide for, with his talent and skill and a year has gone by that his wife had given birth to their son on the same strength. But even in this, he was deceived by his self-confidence. Two years had passed but he was still incapable of affording his wife and son. He feels quite depressed when he watches his wife silently eyeing with admiration the saris of new fashions proudly shown to her by his cousin sister.
The cousin sister was married almost the same time as he was but her husband had bought so many expensive saris for her, whereas, on his part, he hadn't been able to buy a new piece of cloth for his wife after marriage.
It may be because she knew the sad financial status of her husband that she has never told him that she needed anything. If by chance a question was raised about the need of something, she tried to cover up the necessity by saying that several articles of clothes and things bought during marriage were still lying unused.
He knew well what articles he had bought during their marriage and he understood his wife's way of handling the issue. His joblessness and inability to afford even small necessities for the family have made him inwardly timid and chickenhearted. Therefore, he does not generally speak to his wife and his parents. He thus tries to remain aloof from his family too.
He is a regular subscriber of the News dailies. Until a few years ago, he used to make cuttings of important events and keep them in a file. He had filled four small and big diary books with possible questions on general knowledge. He was well aware of any current events of the world, but nowadays he does not read any news with interest. He is more interested in the "wanted columns" than in the news. He makes himself a candidate for any post he thinks suitable for himself, but there is no one to push him up for it.
Therefore, all his efforts go in vain. Nowadays, he has no energy and interest left in applying for any job as he knows very well that a man is not considered suitable for a post at the present time quite because of his qualifications (sic). And thus, just for the sake of ritual he sends applications. He has to attend at least two interviews every month but he is almost certain that these interviews will be a habitual custom that he has been fulfilling.
He did desire many times to start a private business but the lack of his abilities for investing money didn't allow him a situation for starting any enterprise. On one hand, his family background and his prestigious status in the eyes of society didn't permit him to begin a business below his standard, and on the other hand he could not afford to start a business keeping up this so-called prestigious standard.
Either he had to be born in an extremely high noble family or he could do something if born in a lower status. It has indeed proved him a curse to be born in a middle class family. Had he belonged to a high noble family he would have faced no difficulty at all, but if instead he was born in a low family he would not be compelled to live a life with no confidence whatsoever in living. In that case, he could make a living by selling meat by the roadside or selling cheap things spread over a flat bamboo platter or by driving a three-wheeler passenger cycle or a bullock cart. But he belongs to a class which has to protect the dignity of his forefathers and save his family background from social criticisms and ironical remarks.
In such a situation as this, anger often surges within him against his own father. His father never crossed the borderline of honesty as a result of which he remained as poor as ever. He did have opportunities of making money. He knows for sure that the money that had stepped into his family threshold was kicked out by his father.
Now at present, he has handed over to himself and his family a short story of honesty and a long history of scarcity. And the whole family is enjoying what he has been able to afford.
It is indisputable that he has to struggle for existence and he has understood too that in the modern age when one cannot survive only through struggle he is a traveler who has lost his sense of direction.
He is not lost in the path of life from where he can neither come out of himself nor is there anyone who would pull him out or push him forward towards his goal. Therefore, sincere work, talent and education will not be enough in this environment and in it if he has been able to accomplish anything by being born as a human being, he has increased the lineage of his father, otherwise his existence even for him is almost finished and in it he has no doubt whatsoever.
Therefore, in the name of living even if he is equipped with talent, he is carrying on a life with no real existence and enjoying tireless labor and inferiority complex in this ceaseless battlefield.
T"Thanks to the political instability bad and worthless leaders and growing violence in Nepal." He told me
