Mind your business
A former Bhutanese refugee, forced to leave Bhutan along with his family in 1992, I P Adhikari is a journalist living in Adelaide, South Australia. He started The Shangrila Sandesh in 2001 but did not work for the paper for long. In 2004 he, along with Vidhyapati Mishra, started the Association of Press Freedom Activists (APFA) Bhutan. In 2007 they started Bhutan News Service. He worked in The Rising Nepal, The Himalayan Times, Nation Weekly and Nepalnews.com while living in Nepal as a refugee.
Adhikari also taught Journalism and Development Communication for bachelor's and master's degrees in College of Journalism and Mass Communication between 2006 and 2010 in Nepal. He then moved to Australia under the resettlement program of the UNHCR for Bhutanese Refugees. In Adelaide, Australia he founded Yuba Sansar, a weekly Nepali-language radio program aired through Radio Adelaide.
I P Adhikari
Katmandu
Krishna felt tired and cold when he opened his eyes. To his surprise, he found himself somewhere in wonderland that he never imagined. Near a stream, under a bush and between the boulders. For hours he had been unconscious. As he stood up to sit, there were no clothes but rags on his body, scratches and wounds all over. He has no idea and could remember nothing what made him reach here. With difficulty, he stood up and walked to his house. His mind crumpled up with disorderly thoughts of who could be that inhumane to hurl him to hell. He remembered many, many names in suspicion but has nothing substance to prove. He has to pass through a house, of Mangalacharan, a popular figure in the villager for his contribution on social service and human rights.
Mangalacharan is revered and well respected in village as intellectual democrat. Krishna, yet to begin his teen, had long been facing detestation from his family. Tortured, harassed and intimidated since his mother married to new man. The scotch reached the heights when his step father, shameless, pitiless and heartless bang on him to unconscious and then throwing into this ditch. Mother could speak nothing of the inhumanity upon him because he has no control over the domestic affairs as well and leaving Krishna’s father meant her survival at stake. As a mute spectator, what she
could do is roll down tears on the chicks and pray God who has never landed on earth to rescue those in grievances, who people in fact have never seen.
Krishna met another smack on his miserly life when Mangalacharan closed down the way that leads to his home. Mangalacharan has his interest on this blockade for he wish not to abrogate his relation with Krishna’s father for the sake of this discard animal. Above all Mangalacharan has business interest with Krishna’s father which he may lose if he speaks for rights of this child. Krishna’s appeal for a help was responded with fist and brooms.
“You have been so kind to our family but why you now deny me a way to my home”, Krishna asked.
“That’s your business. The way lies in my land and it’s my right whom to allow and not”, Mangalacharan replied rudely.
Societies and relatives will be there until one has the strength, power and luxury; until one has influences and money. Gods that we pray always remain at deck. He is not more than a spectator to your misery.
Krishna, powerless and senseless, returned to this ditch-house. Had he been able to join school and received an award for his excellence, the father might have given him a kiss. But all money that government sanctioned for this poor family sublimed somewhere on its way. Poverty and rights remain at helm of agenda that we talk and write.
Krishna began to sob; soon it turned to a cry and then a scream, out of fear, hunger, cold and hatred. He screamed so much that it made him faint, almost dead. A ragged, ravaged and scratched dead-like body lay on the stream side. News penetrated through the village like wind. In hours, crowd gathered around but no one looked ready to help the starved kid with food, ravaged animal with a cloth and heaved boy with a shelter.
They are scared, relation with Krishna’s father may deteriorate if they lent any support to his boy. It is business that matters today, not humanity. Humanity is the subject of past and has no rooms for
now.
Saturday, March 15, 2009
Agra, SAARC Festival of Literature