The Cat, The Drunkard and The Burn Boy

I did not want to write this. I did not want to be awake. I’ve fallen into some young kind of psychosis, some episode of depression. But something unspeakable happened today, something to morph my perspective into nothing more than pessimism towards all humankind. Stories and experiences threw themselves into my path, and I could do nothing but witness and stand still, for that is how I was raised. That is what I was taught: to listen, to nod your head, and to comfort if need be. So I relay to you three stories of the past, ones which would excite my father for the sake of telling them, but upset my mother were she still here. I see more and more of her in me as I survive everything, and I cannot fully comprehend what that makes me. Perhaps as you read, you will figure it out before my own person.

I commenced briefly but teary-eyed with this ill-natured series of events, one which will continue to haunt me over all the others. The young girl Esther (mentioned in my previous post) and I were the only ones remaining on the first floor between the closing hours of the Jhilko project and Bijata's personal ending time. I sat reading, but instead watched this young girl run around, experiencing the personal freedom only children can comprehend. She ran around vandalizing the premises with what I would call inexpensive markers but SDSS calls valuables. During this time, a cat entered the scene. She was thin and hungry, meowing for attention, food, anything that could keep her alive, and to my surprise, one of the lovely cooks placed a bowl of milk where the cat could reach. My eyes fell back upon my pages until I got bored again and looked up. The cat had vanished, but not before I caught a glimpse of Esther dragging it out the back door. I felt guilty staying put, but I feared the cat. I feared the promotion of vicious wild animals. I continued reading with the pained cries of a victimized animal. I decided to take a stand since no one else believed this cat was in enough danger or was worth enough to be saved in the first place. As I turned the corner, Ester saw me and ran. She knew what she was doing was wrong. She knew trouble. I looked down at the cat with sympathy and sorrow in my voice. She was meowing quietly, laying on her side, looking at me as though I were her hero in this desperate situation. She'd been vandalized just the same as the walls, her grey coat covered in pinks and greens galore. I had hoped she'd run off, and I'm sure she tried when I went to sit back down, but I heard Esther's maniacal childlike laughter, and the animal's precious calls once more. So I got up. I stood up once more and did nothing more than supervise at the fence that separated the building from the playground. Esther had begun throwing markers at the cat, who flinched at each attack. That unfortunately sparked a new idea in Esther's mind, and she quickly went exploring under the playground for a pink plastic chair which sits around the children's table in the Jhilko Project's room, and in case your imagination prevents you from estimating the future as mine did, I shall tell you the truth. The chair was her newfound weapon. She threw it at the cat, and she laughed. I thought the cat had died, and I chose to stand there for I sincerely believed Esther was to place the chair next to the cat and sit with her. I yelled at the child once more, and once again, she ran. But I sat there pondering, what brings a child to such vicious contentment? Why does a child choose to play with death? To cosplay evil? The cat was okay in the end, but my morals and belief system had been attacked. I couldn't fathom what had truly happened, and I am unsure I ever will. The cat came back the next day.

What did it mean to be white? To look so different, but have the world believe in the superiority this race slaughtered to get? And what does it mean to be a woman? To what extent do I, as a woman, have freedom from not only society, but more specifically, the men in it? Where is my safety, and why do other countries have it so much worse? But now who has the superiority? The man of the minority race? Or the woman from what society believes to be the superior one?

While shopping later in life, Bijata had taken me to a basement-type store filled with kitchen assets, makeup, and stuffed animals. It was the love for all women in that store, and I was feeling quite comfortable surrounded by the other natives. No one looked twice my way either. While Bijata stood in a cluttered line, I chose to be off to the side, out of the way so as not to feel that similar emotion of juvenility. Unfortunately, that forced me into an unprotected position, and I have the human habit of staring at abnormalities. An older man stood in front of me, trying on wigs on his own, speaking to himself. For whatever reason, intoxication hadn't crossed my mind, which sparked more fear to crawl up my spine as his eyes found my staring ones, and he ambled over to me. I had a feeling that, were I of a different race, he'd stay where he was. I could feel the eyes of every woman in the checkout line to my left on the situation, trying to assess the situation and their perfect moment to step in. I found comfort in the fact that, regardless of where you are, what you look like, your beliefs, anything, women are there for women in a desperate situation. The man chose English as his starting language with me, stereotypical and safe for speaking to a white person in Nepal. He asked my name, shook my hand, struggled to introduce himself, and asked me where I was from. The response of Canada sparked his drowning memory, and he mentioned his friend—whose name he couldn't remember, place he couldn't remember. I'd survived the confrontational part of this man's act, but he'd noticed my water bottle, of which he poorly asked for water in English. Preparing to say no, the lady to my left, unknown to me, stepped in and shooed him off with her own no, an obviously translatable word. She honed power in her voice, stood tall, preparing to step in front of me if necessary. This man took the memo, and as he left, she looked at me, telling me, "I think he's drunk. Disgusting." Regardless of what she said with it, her voice was beautiful. It rang with such a heavy tone of elegance. I never thanked her, but I felt she and I had a connection that needed no words in the moment. Bijata and I never spoke of it after, even though she witnessed the entire thing with the same instincts every mother is inherited with. I did, however, watch behind me as we went on, cautious I wasn't to be followed by a drunkard and his whims.

Sunday, I was introduced to the story of the small boy (whom I'd originally believed to be a girl) I'd seen during the time of crisis, whom I believed had been burned due to it. When I brought that question up, my storyteller was shocked by the association. So here is his story: around a month prior, he and his older friend were running around their village playing with matches. One sparked. They got scared and threw it, allowing the flame to engulf the stack of hay it landed on. And the small boy's friend pushed him in. Into the fire. Into a burden of a future. Into the loss of everything his life could have been, the loss of normalcy. Yet, human instincts are quite a unique thing, aren't they? This small boy, hardly five, stumbled into this fire with his hands automatically going up to cover his face. He sacrificed his precious hands for what he knew was more important. But why push him in the first place? The recounter of this story began it with the notion of wanting to cry because she couldn't understand the impurity it would take to do such a thing. She was one, similar to Bijata, who saw nothing but good in people. It was a haunting story I shall take to my grave, and the image of his poor hands shall be forever burned into my mind, just to mimic him.

Are humans instinctively evil? Is that too hot of a take? I believe us to be selfish, which is a symptom that chooses to extend itself into the broader spectrum of "evil," but to what extent is our selfishness just a means of survival? This attempted murder, however, was not a means of survival, and both stories I've recounted of it share the same offender—a child. A human being with an underdeveloped mindset, who lives mainly on instincts. What does this say about the morality of humanity? And do not choose to use myself as an example against this, for I chose to save the cat, but continuing off of my theory, I would have had to have been morally changed. But by whom? A morally correct individual? Or another changed to good evil spirit? Who is to say, but if there is one, God forbid no more cats are crushed and no more children attempt murder for the sake of their own curiosity.