Nitin Mishra
The interpretation of bliss varies greatly for every individual. For some, blissful life means the accumulation of more and more materialistic things. For some, helping and giving to others and for some a blissful life means to see pain and suffering in others’ lives, to witness inadequacy and despondency. A blissful life cannot be dictated in a uniform way.
Mr. Dahal after his retirement working for the Central bank of Nepal for thirty-two years was looking for a new occupation to keep him occupied now that he was living a pensioned life. For him, being occupied provided the greatest satisfaction in his life. He was only sixty-eight when he retired as a banker. His sons and daughter were married off and lived in a distant town with their respective families. His wife, Sabitri, a dedicated householder for all her life was the only one living with Mr. Dahal that he could talk to. And there was not much to talk with her, so conversation with her was minimal. The old couple lived near to the Maitidevi temple where Mr. Dahal visited twice every day. It seemed the temple was the only place he could go other than visits to his few alive friends. And also no one wants to befriend a pensioner, especially if he is old like Mr. Dahal. The first four months were easy for him after retirement. He did not have to follow the same routine that he had been doing for thirty-two years and that granted him so much relief and elation. But gradually things changed after four months of staying home. He slowly got bored with his new life, where there was nothing to do at all. He was unwilling to let his mind and body vegetate. He could not imagine himself for the rest of his life watching television and just reading the newspaper to kill the time. He needed some solid tasks to perform, and he did not care for the money, as he had enough money accumulated in his retirement fund. All he needed was something to make him busy.
So, one fine evening, he went to the Kathmandu city center for no particular reason; it took about half an hour using local transport. The crowd enchanted him when he saw it. Throughout his life, he had never been accustomed to such a massive crowd. So just to kill his time, he even went to the same location the very next day, and this cycle went on for six days now. He felt quite fascinated seeing people of different ages, height, and color. He made his daily chore to run to the city and settle himself comfortably in the city garden that overlooked a massive mall where people were just in and out all the time. He did not know what and why but just staring at the different people gave him a kind of satisfaction. It gave him added satisfaction to compare the various kinds of clothes these people put on. Once he even compared the slippers they were wearing. Then to regularize his action he made a schedule-
Sunday- Compare height.
Monday- Compare weight.
Tuesday-Compare upper wear.
Wednesday- Compare lower wear.
Thursday- Compare slippers or shoes.
Friday- Compare gender.
Saturday- Analyze hair style.
Following this schedule, his two hours easily passed every day.
Like every other thing, it is the tendency of every human being to get used to routine. He too got tired and bored of performing the same comparison. But for how long could he compare? Just sit still and compare senselessly. Soon, boredom beset him.
On one such occasion, he was sitting in his usual spot, now not interested in the same old comparison game. Then suddenly some unknown instinct urged him to pull out his pen and a sheet of paper from his pocket diary. He was in the habit of carrying a diary and a dotted pen wherever he went. He pulled it out, but he did not know for what reason. He simply did it out of his basic instincts. He then directed his attention to the blank page of the diary and positioned himself as if he was about to write something. His writing instrument was less than half an inch away from the page, but he was not sure what he was doing and why he was doing it. It seemed he would write something, but the very next second, he looked away in the distance, maintaining the same distance between the pen and the paper. He seemed to stare at the unknown. The writing instrument and the paper, as two lovers, were eager to meet, but Mr. Dahal was intervening and postponing their union.
Abruptly, he made a move and drew a straight line in the middle of one of the blank diary pages and scribbled something. On the left side of the straight line, he etched ‘Man’ and on the opposite side ‘Women’. Following that, for every man that passed by him, he maintained a small dot on ‘man’ side of the page and same for the women. He carried on with the same process until it was late evening. He then returned home.
Upon arriving home, his wife asked,
“How was your day?”
He looked back at her without responding to her inquiry. He asked in a tone that was very normal.
“Is the dinner ready?”
The dinner was served soon and after that, he went to his desk, took out his small calculator, and began totaling the ‘men’ side count and the ‘women’ side count. ‘Men’ was two hundred eighty-four and ‘Women’ was four hundred and twenty-six. He might have ignored similar faces.
Next evening he repeated the same process and had significantly different statistics as he summed them up when he reached home. His wife was very perplexed, could not understand and even guess what the old man was up to.
She just thought-If that gives him some happiness, then it is alright… let him do… at least he has a reason to go out and exchange some healthy air.
Soon, on his following visits, he added a new column for children and maintained the same calculations. To simplify the task at hand he did not differentiate between male and female child. He categorized every child under the age of twelve as a ‘Child’.
He was gathering all the fun from the totaling game. At least he had a reason to wait for another day.
Now a peculiar event happened on one of his visits. As usual, he was maintaining the dots in those three columns. He saw three people pass by him, very difficult to differentiate.
They appeared to be adults but categorizing them as ‘men’ or ‘women’ was a challenge. As they were moving past him, he heard their voice, appearance, color and gait, but instantly he was unsuccessful in putting dots on one column. One of them had long hair, a moustache and a meager shade of lipstick. Similarly, the second person was wearing a sari just looked exactly like a man. This one had also a little bulge in his chest suggesting that he be female. But his voice resembled a man’s.
Mr. Dahal couldn’t figure out where to put the dots. This was the first time he had faced difficulty in his newly founded career. He was determined not to fail. How could he let those three people simply pass by without them being categorized in his diary? It was out of the question. They had to be arrested as being one of the dots.
He quickly got off his bench and followed them, trying to study them more closely. He followed them for quite some time, and he could only see their backs that hindered him from his close investigation. He quickened his pace to maintain proximity.
After he had been following them for around ten minutes, perhaps they suspected being followed.
One of them turned around and asked bitterly with a crescendo tone,
“You, old man following us…?”
Soon the remaining two were staring at Mr. Dahal with a pinching look.
Mr. Dahal had no words to say.
He stood on the middle of pavement with his loose limbs in his pockets.
“Sorry, I am trying to go somewhere… I am in quite a hurry…please excuse me….”
Mr. Dahal turned himself to the opposite side and darted across the street. After a few seconds he walked proudly, with his broad chest out and acting like an important man.
Someone heard him talking.
“I know what these people are and why they behave in that way. I was so silly I was not able to realize earlier.”
Soon Mr. Dahal quickly reached his regular sitting spot, took out his old diary and added a new column ‘transgender’ and added three dots.
The very realization, at that moment, seemed to him the acme of blissfulness.
