Night-watchmen in private employment still do not earn more than a pittance.
I had just settled down for a longish session with my three morning newspapers, when the doorbell rang. Wondering who could have called on us so early in the morning, I got up to open the door.
A young Nepali, with a shy smile on his handsome face, folded his hands in namaskar as I stepped out into the veranda. I looked at him; there was something vaguely familiar about his face, but I could not quite remember where and when I had seen him before.
“Yes, what do you want?” I asked him.
Sir, I am the chowkidar of this street,” he replied.
Oh, how stupid of me! Of course,now I remembered, I had often seen him pacing up and down our street in the night, blowing his whistle and stamping the road with his bamboo-staff, as he walked along. But most of us have a set and unchanging image of a night-watchman – a shadowy, nocturnal creature usually seen around street-corners, capped, muffled, and overcoated in winter, who focuses his torch on us, when we return home after a late night movie show or from some bash thrown by a friend.
At that time, he looks to us more like a mysterious character from a whodunit than a plain, real life creature. However, during the day, when the same entity suddenly pops before us, with a shy smile on his face and his hands folded in namaskar, we find it not so easy to recognise him at the first glance.
This story is from the December 2016 edition of ALIVE.
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This story is from the December 2016 edition of ALIVE.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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