~ He is "Bahadur"...~

He speaks in his own sign language, which is tough to understand, you need to be observant and upright to let know yourself what ‘Bahadur’ wants to tell you. He is partly Nepali and partly Indian as he calls himself in this dialect, but nobody knows his true background. Bahadur is the self-professed caretaker of the temple which shares its boundary with the MCD park. He is paraplegic but has not led his disadvantage hit him hard. He wakes up at 4:00 a.m. in the morning and after doing his morning ablations takes bath and does his prayers and meditation. 

He has a strict schedule during the day and tends to many routine activities for which he has been doing since more than two decades. Activities which include sweeping the floor, tendering to the plants, cleaning the prayer leftovers, and sometimes donning the hat of temple guard, he is an all-in-one employee.

Though Bahadur is a busy man but he is meekly paid by the temple trust as in lieu of his financial aid, he has been given a room to stay within the temple premises. Interacting with the temple trustees to enquire about his background gives a sordid picture of human insensitively. The temple guard had found him one early morning in a small cradle with some spare clothes and a some sachet of milk and a letter of prayer and repentance for this act... he was profusely crying and wanting to be loved but his parents or caretakers played deaf ear and had a heart of stone to cast him away as if the child was lifeless. In fact, after knowing that he was born paraplegic, his parents didn’t want the child to be a burden on them from the day he was born and he was discarded quite thoughtlessly – how could parents be like that? “the guard asked, as he is still an employee of the same temple. There is another twist to this gloomy tale, Bahadur still thinks that the guard ‘Manohar’ is his biological father and that his mother died whilst giving birth to him.

With love Bahadur calls his father as ‘Kaka’ and both of them share a inseparable bond of love and respect. Bahadur is a secondary school pass out by a nearby government school, as with efforts of temple trustees, he was given ample ground to study and a volunteer ‘tutor’ was designated to provide him tuitions in weak subjects. It is due to tutor’s effort that he passed his secondary school examination and is quite conversant with reading and writing – a trait that his father lacks! 

Nowadays, I see him often strolling down the aisles of park and conversing with anonymous fellow-beings and enquiring about their health – someone has given him the update of the new corona variant ‘Omicron’ and that has become his muse-subject of starting a chat with the unknown passersby … Today he was upset as he met me with a complaint, he had just made to God… “Bhaiya, today I wanted to sit in the sun and expected a bright sunny morning, the fog has played spoil-sport…. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day….”, I nodded my head in all acceptance of his judgement and exchange pleasantries and enquired about his ‘Kaka’, he responded with a smile as he told me that he had gone to talk to ‘GOD’….I laughingly ignored his comments as I knew that his father used to clean the idols of Gods , a work type I had seen myself being done by ‘Kaka’, but I was soon corrected by him as he further stated that he has lost his father to corona last year… I kept mum and gestured in reverence of the departed soul, he smiled again. as if he was happy that his father was in the company of GOD and that now his prayers had a definitive foot to present before the almighty… as he walked away talking to himself ..he left me with a two thoughts in my mind first that he is really a "Bahadur" and that such is life and its vignettes always happening good or bad but will continue to roll come what may...!!!