Manju Kachuli
The training leader looked very smart, strong, stout, authoritative and above all a dictator. There were twelve adolescents between the age of sixteen and twenty four and two girls almost nineteen. They looked well disciplined, obedient to their master, physically and mentally ready to obey the military order. Some were in their dirty clothes and some were in their clean clothes. Their appearances looked bright and vivacious in their youth and young age. They were standing in two lines. Among those there stood an innocent and obstinate adolescent boy named Krishna who was a trainee in the same military training campaign. He looked mentally retarded and approximately nineteen years old. He looked very simple not only in appearance but also in manner and actions. He looked very happy to be a part of the training group anticipating that he was going to have a gun in his hand which he had only seen somewhere but not held or used. He was malnourished and had somewhat of a speech defect of stuttering. At the height of his beautiful imagination, his mind was playing with a handsome gun in his hand and the military dress over his body, yet at that moment there was no gun in the training camp and no military-dress. His behavior, learning, and style, dealing with and responding to the directions as he participated in the exercises were somewhat different from those of the other trainees in the group. When his friends stamped their right feet on the earth he tried to follow the same very carefully but he landed a little later and with his left foot instead of the right, and in wrong direction. A very strong and long wooden stick like an iron rod made of anarchy, which was in the hand of the trainer, fell intentionally onto the leg of that particular boy Krishna. The unleashed stick in the hand of the trainer was holding sway over the boys and girls on the small and open ground in an open meadow and presenting a unique example of corporal punishment in a so called military-order-form. Some moments he brandished the wooden stick in his hand in a sportsmanlike style and some moments he hit with it over the thighs of the young boys and girls. The wooden stick looked as strong as an iron stick.
Krishna couldn’t tolerate being hit by the stick, though he tried his utmost. It was the strokes of the stick on his thigh and hands and its unbearable pain which separated him from the group of his fellow beings and made him stand alone in desperate melancholy. Actually his mind persuaded him to sit squat and still over there, but out of fear of violating the rules of discipline and fear of being totally chucked out of the group and training, he stood most uncomfortably although he was totally unable to stand. Again another stroke of stick fell upon his left thigh. The young retarded boy thought, “Oh! This is the training in the camp.”
For a long time he sustained the pain of his both thighs following the training of the trainer; he moved forward his left foot and left hand and moved backward his right foot and right hand. He was separated from the group and placed aside. He stretched his body to be smart and fast but he looked clumsy, slow and awkward. Actually he was not to be blamed, but his bodily structure and its movement denied him the fitness for the job of taking part in that kind of training. All his other friends realized it in that way.
There were altogether eighteen trainees in that training camp including the four girls and fourteen boys. Within a week twelve trainees left the camp and other six new boys came to join the training. It seemed the inner levels of the mind of the trainees were much more in turmoil than their outer bodies. Another boy was thinking that if he had some money or his own house or some land for farming to sell he would also go to abroad for foreign employment. He had nothing but two hands to work and two feet to move. He thought, his life was like the life of a refugee, his forefathers’ life also was like that and it had repeatedly reached up to him descending from his ancestors. Again he thought he had to pass his life less significant than the beasts, the dogs and cats, cows and buffaloes, goats and sheep. He was fed up with his ancestors’ life as a peasant. Again another person thought, “I have been suffering in such a way for the whole of my life. If I earn some money to fill my hungry stomach with enough meat-soup and rice, I will be so much happy for that day.” Again another person thought, “Alas! How can I get alacrity in my body whereas I have become a guest in somebody else’s house with only one daily meal of cheap, rough rice and vegetable-soup to last twenty-four hours. Almost twenty-four hours have passed and I have eaten nothing. Fasting has become my habit in this big city of Kathmandu, but today I don’t know why my stomach is aching with sever pains of hunger.”
It became very difficult for him to endure severe hunger; moreover it was very hard to hide the severe pain he was receiving in the rigorous training on the open ground. He queried to himself, “Have all the governmental and nongovernmental military personnel tolerated this kind of suffering and pain with punishment in their military career and passed their future life comfortably without punishment with enough food and clothing?” He realized it was as universal truth that the duty in military life is really rigorous, ruthless and relentless.
Another person’s mind wandered to a restaurant, towards the days of rumor of bird-flu spreading in Kathmandu valley. On that day he had enough to eat roasted chicken breasts and thighs at his friend’s request and at a low price. He ate so much that he couldn’t even imagine doing so. At that moment he had said to himself: “It’s better to die of bird flu than to die from hunger.”
At the same time, all the trainees were ready to move their feet according to the directions of the trainer and so heeded towards their feet. The mind of one of them didn’t turn towards his feet, but rather wandered somewhere else and he began to murmur within his mind: “Perhaps I am the wrong person born during a wrong period of time, and, of course, a person who stands for the wrong implication of my forefathers’ genes, my nation and my own birth!” As he was beaten hard and blue on his thigh ruthlessly, he abruptly came back into the present time, place and situation. He looked at his thigh which was swelling high. In fact his mind reached to the present circumstance because his body was already there. He was after all a genuine refugee youth from the far eastern region of Dharan who went there to attend preliminary training to be admitted in a newly and informally established political party’s regiment, in other words he was a man who looked at the sky scrapers of the Kathmandu city in rapid urbanization and heard the relentless vocabularies of the voluptuous beings of those buildings and passed the night in a single basement room with more fellow beings like him with only vegetable soup and rice as his heavy dinner. That training ground was the beautiful spot of his dreamland where he was undergoing training at that very moment.
Krishna, the teen ager boy was busy with his awkward exercises for the training in a place that was separate and apart at a distance from his fellow recruits. So were his hands and feet in an opposite and clumsy position active in the left right movement of military training. If we compare his mind and body with his friends,’ his mind was swifter and the body slower than the rest of them. He had already heard for a long time the elaborations of a lot of stories about the life-style of the soldiers — their guns as pillows and their rigorous discipline of military service. But the life which he was experiencing at that moment was more difficult for him than for the others. Neither there was anyone to ask him about his condition nor cry in agony in sympathy with him. He said to himself:” Either live happily with hard practice or go to hell.” Some of his close friends had already left training camp. Some of them who could manage to gather some money had already gone to an Arabian country to earn a sufficient compensation. Many of his friends were killed in civil war and conflict and some were abducted to unknown places and nobody knew about them even till now. Some were decapitated with local weapons and thrown to the bushes and riverbanks, and some were lost somewhere unknown, and some left their home to faraway places for the safety of their lives. He was satisfied with what he did to save his life and maintain his existence.
Krishna’s mind was always engaged in an interrogation about security. He thought his life was not in his hands but in the hands of somebody else who were more powerful than ordinary men. He might get a job or not; he was not sure about it. He might disappear from the world; it was not sure for him. He thought he had only one life and not more than that. After all, so far everybody had to die one day or another. So why should he fear death? It was better to die once on earth than to live for long in that horrible insecurity. He could not gather his body and mind together in one place. His thought wandered like a swarm of bees. His feet moved awkward and mind roamed somewhere else. He could not totally bring back his mind to the present moment of exercise. He was physically present there, but mentally absent. He felt he was completely unsuccessful in the training for recruitment, but still he didn’t give up his hope. His awkward movement which was different from the others continued without uniformity with the other trainees on the ground. A heavy stroke of a stick over his thigh brought his consciousness back abruptly to the present situation. He became completely aware of where he was and what he was doing there. The acute pain in his thigh compelled him to sit but due to the strict discipline he couldn’t even sit. Another heavy stroke of stick immediately fell upon the right middle portion of his back bone. A painful cry was ready to come out through his mouth but he didn’t let it escape because of fear of another whip of punishment, and so he swallowed that expression of pain within himself, by compressing his two lips forcefully together.
As all the boys and a few girls in the training group turned left following instructions, Krishna, the teenage boy happened to turn right and hesitated not being sure whether he was right or wrong. When all his friends’ feet fell apart, he happened to join his feet together. There is a meticulous lacuna or a reasonable gap between his mentally retarded behavior and the strict rules and activities of the so called training campaign. There was nothing to fill the gap but the ruthless hitting out with the stick by the trainer. The weakest part of his retarded mind and sluggish body were hurt a lot. Nobody saw that lacerating scene except his friends and fellow beings. Totally unable to stand, he sunk to the ground with excessive pain over his thighs and legs, all due to harsh punishment of the trainer. Suddenly his mind overwhelmed with a new excitement of anger, annoyance and unknowing which he had never experienced and expressed before in any other kind of circumstances in his life.
A large glowing ember of revolt dazzled forth in both of Krishna’s eyes. He became more hurt and humiliated by the harsh and inhuman behavior of the trainer towards to him. His anger reduced him in that situation which he viewed as totally disappointing and hurting. The strength of his inner readiness to aggress the situation became more powerful and significant. Anger was generated in him perhaps by a revenge mechanism under the condition of his sudden frustration and disappointment with the training exercises. In the absence of adequate inner control, his aggression might be triggered, releasing a more violent revenge for the cruel and inhuman acts committed by the trainer towards him. All his friends were on his side. His friends looked at his anger first and then later at his countenance. They all became aware of an intergroup hostility between the trainer and the trainees which was ready to arise.
Krishna decided within his consciousness: “The best way to pacify my mind is to confront and attack the trainer with my hands in a boxing style.” He disregarded and wanted to challenge the silent menace of any kind of unknown laws or the rules of training. In his heightened emotion, his mind was floundering in the furnace of revolt and arrogance. The volume of his agony increased more violently. He could scarcely stand before the trainer and looked as a hurt lion before the hunter but courageous enough and ready to scramble over the trainer in physical fight. He tried to dare to pronounce vile words to the trainer in a spurt of his stutter, randomly, but spoke in civilized words: “How could you hit me, in my thighs like that? What harm have I done to you? Is this what people call training? Tell me! If this is training I hate it through the inner core of my heart. Have I come here to take training or to be punished for nothing? Why didn’t you tell me before that you are going to lash me for my small mistakes in the course of training? If you had told me before I wouldn’t have come to this hell. You are a sinner. Now I can’t tolerate your atrocities. Do you know? You are not a human trainer. A human trainer cannot be like that. You have no pity for a hungry and jobless person like me. Why did you hit and hurt me? Is it because I am not a literate person like you?”
The trainer looked at Krishna very carefully from head to foot as if he had seen him at first time and had never seen before. Again a second time, he looked at him keeping in mind all the mistakes made during the training. He thought this would make him feel tougher and more callous to receive the paramilitary training later on. He did not want to retaliate with words because of the fear of causing disturbances in training. At the same time all the other trainees turned their heads towards Krishna and looked at him continuously and expressed silent support and empathy for him.
Krishna’s fluency in his stuttering style didn’t yet stop. He continued: “You have humiliated me because I am an innocent creature? You have behaved toward me in such a cruel way because there is no one to speak for me? I am a hungry and unemployed citizen of this country. There are many other citizens in Nepal like me. People like you have been encroaching and exploiting people like us for ages. Still you are trying to impose supremacy over us. I hate trainers like you! I hate you! From now on I will never set my feet down in this training camp. I wish that no other persons like me come to this training camp, never, ever. You treat me atrociously because I am weak. Now I am leaving the camp with a promise to never come back. Who will you hit from now on? I will hear about that from outside.”
Krishna, the trainee walked out in long strides. All the other trainees and the trainer looked towards his departure. No one spoke even a single word in response to his attitude. No one even knew why there was no one to speak for him or show any kind of reaction in that circumstance. The environment was a vacuum without words and movement for some while. Then again the practice of training began. At the end, the trainer announced a notice to all the trainees that he expelled Krishna, one of the trainees, from the training camp because of a disciplinary problem.
Next morning at approximately seven, the exact time for group practice on the ground, the trainer stood waiting for boys and girls to come for training instruction. The atmosphere seemed to be very peaceful as if all the boys and girls were also being locked in the cantonment.
No one came for training at all. As if everybody heard the cry of agony expressed by Krishna which was recorded on the wind in the atmosphere, together with the sound of the trainees’ practice and exercises, the movement of their hands and feet. As if the passersby, heard the sound of it and saw the shadows of their bodies in pain and anguish which the atmosphere had readily preserved. Perhaps it was the unwritten minor episode of a so-called political party’s military camp in the long history of a small country.
The sky was not yet clear enough but a very strange light was seen on the horizon. The smell of snow, cloud, dust, mud, smoke, wind and floodwaters mixed with the air and took their respective course. But those boys like Krishna were not seen in that open meadow with a trainer. What was different within that roiling atmosphere was the appearance of a not-seen-before group of trainees and a new trainer stepping forth brandishing a wooden stick in his hand.