The storyteller
of my remote mountain village
used to come
in my childhood school
in his leisure time,
in our vacant class periods
and used to tell so many
never ending stories on
never finishing the bread
and never emptying water
shared by hungry son
and his desperate mother,
keeping all of us
unrest kids
in a pin drop silence
for what comes next
in the storylines!
With time pass,
the storyteller made
his own story-
when he shifted
from his traditional farming life
of Brahmanic class
in a clothing and tailoring business
of those untouchable’s business
operating a sewing machine
by himself
which was at that time
forbidden for his caste.
Again once he turned
his old farmhouse
into a new grocery
with sweets and sours
in his shop racks
in the remote mountain village
to lure school kids
abandoning his age-old farmer life,
Once in the Kathmandu city
there happened rumors that
he is in the police custody
for the blame that he stole
a new cassette player
from the home of
one of my closest relatives,
Time passed, and
another rumor hatched–
he changed his religion,
from his generations long
Hindu tradition
and joined the cow eater’s
religious gang,
But my childhood memory
did not recall well
whether all the businesses
he ran went well to his will
or they all took him to the hell,
Time passed,
many things had changed in our life
but my memory of him
as a storyteller never changed,
Once I met a rumor about him-
in the big city of Hong Kong,
what he is doing nowadays-
are a convert and a converter
from a Hindu follower
into a great Christian Pastor.
But whatever he does,
for me,
my childhood storyteller
still does the same business-
telling the stories of God’s will
to fill those gaps
in between people’s ears!
—————————–
—
Bidur P Chaulagain, Ph.D.
Director & Professor, Directorate of Research and Training (DoRT)
Managing Editor, Nepalese Journal of Agricultural Sciences (NepJAS)
Himalayan College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (HICAST)
POB #25535 | Kathmandu | Nepal
+977-9843885387 Skype: bpatcg
