I left my house very young. I was neither wise nor smart but I had a dream to be one of the greatest at something(although I didn’t know in what). My house was located in a small village and it was so small and remote that even the map of the country failed to acknowledge it.
In my search for the ‘great job’, I did all the odd jobs possible. I became a waiter, a local tourist guide, tried my hands in writing, tried to understand computer’s language, tried to learn music and tried many more such unsuccessful activities, only to lose interest in them in a week. It had been a decade since I had been home and now I was missing it.
My village, as I had told you, is very small and remote. All the houses occupy huge families where the men go and work while the women take care of the children’s food and the old guys’ food and sometimes the food of the neighbor(at the times of emergency, which is frequent). People were united and any dispute was solved immediately. There was no head maybe that’s why most of us did not head any way. We all were content with our lives because there was no hurry to achieve anything. Call us lazy but we were happy living such a life. Until that day when I accidentally ventured into the unknown land.
I was accompanying my father to the city for the first time to get some tools which he needed for farming. He said they will enhance his crop yield or something like that. We walked miles and reached the land where buildings touched the sky, people were rushing into yellow colored cars and there were shops all around. The road was smooth and there were no holes or stones unlike the roads in my village. Suddenly, not that sudden because it took me a month, it struck me that I should do something to bring the same hustle and bustle into the village. I approached all the big guys in almost all the families but they said that they were content with their life and didn’t want to do anything more just for the sake of it. But then I explained how it’d be beneficial for the village and its people. He dismissed me asking me to play with his daughter. I hate that girl who always pulled my cheeks and if I’ll ask why she’ll say it’s chubby.
Anyway, the next night, I packed my bags and left for the city, to see what I had not seen and do something to bring glory to my mother land.
I did all kinds of jobs but never got the same level of satisfaction that I had achieved when I was at home, in the lap of my mother watching over the hills, watching how the bright orange ball goes down as if someone is calling it smoothly with all the love he has. But then I came to the city and learnt that the ball is sun and it was some gravity principle of some apple guy which was pulling it down. And there ended my childhood. I quickly learnt all the tricks to make a living in a big city. I learnt how to get free food(it needed a loud voice and an association with some bad guy), learnt to ride cars and learnt to woo women and get all their love for a limited period of time. But even after all this, I wasn’t big and I was dreaming to be great.
Suddenly(it took me more than 10 years so it can’t be sudden) I realized that I didn’t want this. I was happy back at home, living a lazy life, getting annoyed with the girl who pulled my cheeks, living in a fantasy world where someone was requesting the bright orange ball to come towards him and most importantly I missed home. I was lonely in this huge city and if you shed a tear you’d be seen as an outcast because no one cries, we all are big boys now.
I packed my bags and left the very next day. Although my village was not on Google and I was in the completely opposite part of the country, I decided to take the risk and go back to the place where I lived. After journeying for a week, asking people for directions and almost exhausting all my savings, I finally reached my village. But it wasn’t a village now, it was a growing city.
I learnt that after I left(people referred to me as the boy with foolish dreams) my father became depressed. To fulfil my dream, he requested all the big guys to transform the village, in the hope that I’d return once I found my home to be the dream I dreamt. So they requested other big guys from the city to have a look at the village and do something about it. The other guys obviously saw the fertility of the soil and the rich mineral content it had but valued the land at a cheap rate. They said that they would buy the land and transform it, so the villagers had to leave but can return once the job was done. For their living, the big guys would give them enough money. And they did give them money but the area in which they lived until they were given their own land back, was expensive. With no job at hand and lack of skills, money flew like river into the huge ocean. Other big guys were with my father until the financial crisis happened within my community. All of them were poorer than ever. My father took the lead to go and ask the other big guys about the progress of the project and when could they expect to return and work again. The other guys refused that it was the plan. They said that there was no agreement made and they bought the land after paying the residents some money and that’s business. My father pleaded to do them justice but the other big guys wouldn’t listen to him and kicked him out of ‘their’ property. Not being able to bear the humiliation and injustice done to him, my father committed suicide. The rest of the family begged. The community went to live in slums and most of them died due to hunger or disease and that is how the village turned into a rapidly growing city.
I couldn’t believe what I was listening. Tears didn’t fall, I didn’t have questions to ask, I didn’t want to go and take revenge but I was sad. Just sad.
The narrator signed off saying, “The boy left his home to find something which he had no idea about, all the while teaching himself that it was what he wanted. He must be rotting somewhere after all these years, I know, he must be.”
And I sat there nodding my head. I didn’t have money, I was left lonely, I was homeless and I didn’t have any purpose to live. So I took my bag and again travelled. Not to do something great but to just earn, eat and sleep.
DevudaSatya 