Bishal B. Shah, Ohio
Followed by my word, “You are so nice,” a lady encountering me, without hesitation, replied, ‘Thanks.’ Of course, there is nothing to shy about thanking others when we hear something good about ourselves. Especially when you praise someone, the word ‘Thanks’ naturally slips from the mouth. It is a courtesy, too, expressing ‘Thanks’ in return for something good. And, what else could be better than to hear the words of praise?
A lady who was standing next to me had a short curly hair, very dark in color, Philippine type nose, about five feet four inches tall and bigger than her actual size should be. A lady acquired that weight not because she had enough to spare on varieties of cuisines that New York is extraordinarily rich with, but the junk foods helped her for such an appearance. She had cheap junk foods scattered all over the tables.
We were suggested to seek help for the internet connection in the building we have just shifted to stay because of our negligence, and of course, out of the compulsion. One of the two owners of the network connections was Ms. Collins, whose name I found after looking at the net access she provided to us.
It was a Wi-Fi that we could now accede through Ms. Collins’ net connection to the external world. We very severely needed that more than anything at the moment to be in touch with the friends with whom we share similar political philosophies that are British type of democracy in our country, Nepal, that is the ‘King-in-Parliament and functioning power to the elected representatives of the people.’
We also needed a net connection to continue the literary activities, a political type than the literary creations, merely a waste of time for nothing for me, and for my wife, it was a life. Including her many friends, she believes that they were tricked two times during their elections to the organization, which is responsible for the management of the Nepali literature outside of Nepal. Besides anything else, the net connection was needed to hunt for the job.
Almost six months, I remained occupied with different things than giving priority finding a job to sustain in an expensive city like New York. It is the fastest and the busiest megacity in the whole world where the money is the primary mover and shaker.
Without money, if anyone imagines for the survival in New York City even for a second, then that chap must go for the Neurologist’s wise counseling. However, whatever the hardship life people have to embrace in this megacity, if an effort is made honestly, there won’t anyone be left without food or a roof on top of the head. There is work available to everyone in New York or surrounding areas. It is a different story that the task of choice is too difficult to grasp, especially at a time when the nation is yet to find a balanced way-out from the economic mismanagement of the past.
Ms. Collins had three children and some grandchildren with her in a room. I had no courage to ask about her partner, either husband or a boyfriend. That was not my concern either. I just wanted the internet connection at the earliest. Ms. Collins could not trace the link between her net and my laptop. She rushed to another room to ask for a favor from a young lady, Ms. Alicia. Ms. Collins wanted to help us at any cost. Ms. Alicia, who also looked dark in her appearance, came to a room of Ms. Collins and, within a minute, put my laptop functioning through Ms. Collins’ network access. The battery of the laptop was almost out of charge. I wanted to run to our room to read the emails and the current hot news but not before expressing gratitude to Ms. Collins and to a young lady, Ms. Alicia, who helped us accede to the external world through the internet.
We started a conversation by making our case as to how we have been helped by the people who looked dark in color like both the ladies.
My wife, Kamala, was fast enough to express her inner feelings, especially towards black people. She said, “You are very nice. Black people are very nice. Wherever we went, all black people helped us and been nice to us.”
“Not all the blacks are criminals” was the exact response of Ms. Collins. She was correct. The criminals do not have colors, nationalities, or religions. Hitler was not a black, Saddam Hussein was not a black, Bin Laden was not a black, and many more out there who have committed heinous crimes were not blacks either. Most communists who made themselves the great leaders of the proletariats were not blacks. These proletarian leaders made the millions lose their lives for not being their subservient.
We thanked Ms. Collins for her kindness and Ms. Alicia helping to connect the net. We left Ms. Collins’ room, which was on the fourth floor. Once we reached our place, I quickly put my laptop connected with electric cables. I logged into my emails. I saw only a few of them useful among hundreds that went unread for a few days after we were marshaled from an apartment for not being able to pay the rent on time regularly. It was my mistake not to call three-one-one (311) that is to seek help from the concerned authority for being marshaled before the expiry of our lease contract. I thought the management of the building where we had an apartment would provide sometimes, and I would borrow some money to settle the problems with the management office of the house. Even the Judge of a Civil Court said she was helpless for our negligence. She said we have to pay all the bills together with the lawyer’s fees added above our rentals, which were double the price of the actual rent.
I was running entirely out of a single penny. My bank account had already been on a negative side. Thus, we have left no options except asking for help for a shelter. My wife, with a baby, was graciously offered support at this time of emergency. They went to an apartment of a fellow Nepali member who was residing across the street in Elmhurst, Queens, in New York. I did not wish to go anywhere; instead, I have gone to Elmhurst Hospital. I knew there are some chairs to take rest and 24 hours of television for the patients and the visitors. I spent all nights watching the London Olympics not by choice as on previous occasions but by compulsion. Being a former soccer player and a student at the sports school in Moscow during the middle of the 70s, I enjoyed the games but surely not much with so many things running in my mind.
The fifth day was very unlucky for us when we were told that we could not enter the room except for half an hour to pick up necessary items like medicines, diapers, and the clothes.
My wife Kamala and I had to agree on one thing for the first time without a dispute that is for seeking help from the social service. Kamala knew where we could find the social service personnel. We headed towards the Elmhurst Hospital, and the social service worker instructed us to go to the Bronx Office for temporary assistance. We badly needed a shelter. We were taken to the Motel in Queens after going through the official documentation.
The next day we had to go back to the Bronx for more screenings. While waiting for our names to be called, out of curiosity, the young gentleman who was sitting in front of us with his wife, a nursing student, and a baby girl was interrupted by my wife with several questions.
“Do you have any idea where we would be taken? What kind of room would they give us? Why did you come here” and, few more in a split of a second? The gentleman was pleased to answer all the questions. He and his family members were there because they had a dispute with the roommates. He was saying, “It is better to live in hell with peace in mind than to hub-nub in heaven with the tensions.” I was impressed with such an observation. I was attracted to his talk. He kept on speaking on different matters. He was a fairly intelligent person. “You know,” he said, “People here think we blacks are born to become criminals.” His observation shocked me.
After a small pause, the young gentleman continued his observation, and this time, with a little changed tone and version. “It is not the people who think blacks are born to become criminals; we, blacks are the ones who give others a chance to have such feelings. We do not study hard, and our parents do not think about the future of their kids. I would have become a criminal, too.” He kept on saying, “I have a little daughter and a wife. I should not think of doing wrong.” “You are right,” I said, adding, “you are an intelligent person, a college student, your wife has an Associate Degree, a nursing student, and you both have a better future.” Thanking me, he proudly said, “More than anything else, my daughter won’t be left without education and an opportunity. We’ll make sure she won’t come here as we did because of the money. If we had no overload of the loans, we might not have come to ask for assistance.”
Just after the young gentleman finished his words, my wife said, “You both are nice. I have never imagined that the black people could become so nice.”
The response from the gentleman was obvious. “Not all blacks are criminals,” smilingly, he responded to my wife. With this short sentence, he came to our concern.
We were anxious about where we would be taken next or left on our own without any assistance.
“Don’t worry,” the young gentleman tried to give us relief. “You would be taken to the family house because you have a little kid. Whether you would be taken to Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, or anywhere else depends on them,” said he.
In the meanwhile, our number was called. The Officer asked for some documents, e. g. social security card, marriage certificate, birth certificates, records of previous residencies, the management of the building of our apartment’s notice, Marshal’s eviction letter, and so on. We exhibited all of them. He gave us a letter saying we would be heading towards Brooklyn. We were so worried about hearing our next temporary shelter would be in Brooklyn. We both had a wrong impression of Brooklyn and thought the immigrants whose community members are deficient in numbers in Brooklyn would escape residing there unless they have an option. We started starving, waiting for documentations. We had to eat. My wife knew where she could get milk, cereal, and biscuits for our twenty-seven months’ boy and sandwiches for us. Being Hindus, she had to pick up the sandwiches prepared of chicken, turkey, or a fish for her, and for me, everything except beef would have been perfect.
The Hindus are very particular about avoiding beef-eating. They give many reasons for it. Among those, two reasons most Hindus love to forward. The first one is, a cow gives us milk, and it is like our motherly figure. The second example is quite interesting. The Hindus consider a cow as the goddess. It has a replica of the goddess of wealth ‘Laxmi’ according to Sanskrit, a source language of Bengali, spoken by the Bengali people of both India and Bangladesh, the Hindi, and many other languages of India. Our native Nepali language also has a direct link to the Sanskrit, which is said to be the most beautiful language. Even in the computer language world, Sanskrit is the most appropriate language that the computer can adapt to its functioning. Many inventions like the airplane, missile, and so on are the subjects incorporated in the treatises of Sanskrit. They were compiled centuries back. Many of these treaties were traced back to some thousand years. It is like a believe it or not a metaphor.
As far as the Hindus considering a cow, the goddess of wealth has a straightforward reason. On those bygone days, a cow has been the source of generating wealth by selling its milk or trading milk for something needed. The primitive Hindus used Cow-dung for cooking after drying it. The villagers in and around India inherited such a practice with a little modification turning cow-dung as biogas for cooking purposes. Praying cow as ‘goddess of wealth’ and taking it a motherly figure might have been prompted out of fear of its extinction.
The Hindu Gurus are very much fond of citing god’s name to maintain discipline in the society. The scientific reasoning won’t attract the people who have never seen the schools. There are still a few million deprived of a primary education surrounding India except for Sri Lanka, which has almost a hundred percent literacy rates. There were only a few who had education in primitive Hindu society. The knowledge was meant for the ruling class.
The black people have had a similar fate. They were forced to become slaves. They were forced to do whatever their masters told them to do. They were denied voting rights in the United States until the 60s. The statesman like Dr. Martin Luther King worked days in and days out to make the deprived people have their say. People of all colors and origins owe a great deal upon such a statesman. Because of the persistent efforts of a great statesman like Dr. King, the United States shone with its one of the greatest leaders President Barack Obama who could stand up to easily beat his opponent to get the second chance to serve the people of the United States. He was certain to win if one goes by the former President of the United States, Mr. Bill Clinton. During the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Mr. Clinton said President Obama knows how to accommodate the rivals to get the things done.
President Obama indeed accommodated rival Republicans in the administration during his first term. He also appointed former Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Secretary of the State. She has been the rival to President Obama to get the Democratic Party nomination for the US Presidential post. President Obama brought the Republicans in his second round of administration. One more crucial point the former President Mr. Clinton highlighted was that the US economy would have collapsed had not President Obama worked hard to mitigate the downturn.
President Obama must also get a big credit for handling the Osama Bin Laden mission. The wise leadership of President Obama completed the mission smoothly. There was no big issue that the US had to face after punishing the world’s number one terrorist Osama Bin Laden who has been at large since his heinous crime committed against the United States. What a tragic day was that when thousands of innocent people had to lose their lives, leaving thousands more in deep pain. The world was surprised. Many felt happy, too. They enjoyed and celebrated within the tight walls of the golden glimmered rooms of the centuries-old decent traditional structures.
The foreign policy skills of President Obama successfully led the completion of the mission ‘Operation Neptune Spear’ that is to capture or kill Bin Laden. No loss of American lives and properties reported except one black hawk helicopter is wasted.
It turned true as predicted by the former US President Clinton that the Americans would put President Obama to his job for the four more years. Surprisingly, the world wanted him to stay for the job as well.
Obama is the first African American President of the United States, creating history and proving that the United States is a country of all Americans, either whites, blacks, Hispanics, or Asians. Mr. Obama’s second term victor to the US Presidency is a lesson to all Americans. It is an example that hard work plays a vital role in anyone’s advancement.
About the author: Bishal B Shah, originally from Nepal is now living in Ohio after living nearly two decades in New York city. “Just a Reflection” his first publised book of novel. It was published in Amazon in June 2020. This is first chapter of the novel.
