My little guesthouse
Saleh Ahmed, On-e-mail
My father had built a straw shack outside his mud house so that I could live there and study, occasionally if any relatives came to visit they too could sleep overnight. As the time passed by, it became like a village guesthouse.One day without seeking permission from any, I converted this guest house into an open house for the village people. Sometimes at the middle of the night people would come from different parts of the village and they would hold a meeting. The chairperson would be the one who did not commit any crime for that day. It was indeed hard to find someone among them who did not do any wrong. Among the attending members, one would be a thief, one would be a dacoit, captain of the village football team, gangsters of the village and some of the unemployed youths. Sometimes a village mullah would stop by to smoke tobacco from a hukka. Occasionally, a vagabond from another village would come and sit to smoke biddi, or to see if he could steal anything. I would sit with them all night long to listen to them , talk about their miseries in life such as destructive cyclone and about their bad winter harvest. The demand of the village people was very small, smaller than anyone could imagine. They would ask me for a taka, sometimes even less than a taka. Their needs were nominal. They were happy with whatever little possession they had acquired in life. They lived one day at a time. Since I did not have any money to give them, I would give them my table clock, my lungi, my T shirts, so that they could sell them at the local market and in exchange they would get a small amount of money . Sometimes I would sit to watch them suffer because I could not give them anything. It was a shocking experience of my boyhood. Slowly the village people started to steal my books, my hurricane, pillowcase, then the pillow, bed sheets, then the bed; finally they took away my last pair of sandals, which was especially carved for me by my father. By the time the village people finished stealing my belongings, I had nothing inside my guesthouse. Everything was stolen by them. One day my father walked into my guesthouse. He found me sleeping on the exposed mud floor. He wanted to know as to what had happened to my belongings. In reply I told my father that my village friends needed them more than I did. Now as I look back to those days of my life, it seems to be a dream. My little guesthouse probably has been washed off from existence.
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