After the completion of our SLC exams, we five friends decided to go on a vacation to Pokhara. We chose Pokhara for its scenic beauty. One of my maternal uncles also lived there. But we decided not to stay at my uncles’, instead opting for a local hotel at the Lakeside. The hotel’s location was perfect and its staff warm and cordial.

But no sooner had we entered our room than we could see a young boy busy scrubbing the floor. “Hey, you rascal, clean the room fast!” the manager snapped. Later that night, as we were busy making our plans, Santosh brought up the topic of the young cleaner. We could not help pitying the boy, who was forced to clean our room at 10 at night. The “rascal” couldn’t have chosen to work in such an environment but for his daily needs, we reasoned.

The same night we prompted the boy to tell us about himself. We learned that he came from a poor family in a remote village in Syangja. While his mother toiled endlessly in the fields and did all household chores, his father whiled away his time playing cards during the day and drinking heavily at night.

His parents quarrelled at night and his father beat his mother up everyday. As if the situation was not bad, his father brought home another wife.

The poor boy had no option but to flee from his home. He told us that before coming to the hotel, he had been studying in the fourth grade, but was unable to continue his studies after joining the hotel. The manger refused to finance his education.

With the boy’s sorry face fresh in our minds, we left the hotel for sightseeing early next morning.

During the course of the day we visited many restaurants. To our horror we found that nearly every restaurant in Pokhara employed young boys and girls to do the dishes and perform other chores!

We had read that each person decides his own fate. But how does this hold true in the case of these hapless children? They were not doomed to a life of misfortune not because of their own faults but because of their parents’ failure to give them a good upbringing and the state’s apathy towards their plight. I wonder if anyone will hear the heart-rending cries of these helpless “rascals”?