In the silence of night

Night-watchmen in private employment still do not earn more than a pittance. 

- A.C.Tuli

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.