Alankar Khanal

I always suss her out through the window seat. I can see her tussling to get down to the ground. She spreads her wares in a bag and waits for the customers. Busy Kathmanduites breeze through her stall but hardly anybody pauses to notice this lady selling peanuts on the pavement. Finally a person steps in and asks for some. She’s delighted to have her first customer of the day. And after few seconds of huckstering the final deal is worth eight rupees. When the passengers egged on to move, my local bus had taken speed. I see quite a similar scene next day. In the night I usually brush up all the happenings throughout the day and the thing I recalled the most was the incapacitated lady throwing a sweet little smile to me. Something I really appreciated was her ability to wear a smile despite so much of pain she was undergoing, something that was panoptical.

The next day I opted to walk and pick up a conversation with the disabled lady. When I reached the spot she usually occupied, she wasn’t there. However, I could see a man on a wheelchair selling peanuts in her place. Some curious faces told me they didn’t know her whereabouts. Then the man in the wheelchair called me up and said he knew everything about the lady. Indeed he knew a whole lot about her. He was her proud hubby. He said his better-half was recuperating. An ill-fated tempo accident, he explained, cost them their legs. Then both of them were fired from their jobs without compensation and since then had taken to propping up their life selling peanuts. It’s not easy, he further explained, to survive on such a meagre income.

After a week or so the lady was at the helm again. Glad to see her, I got down from the bus and walked to her and asked if she was fine. She smiled and said “Yes I am.” And I could feel elated and at perfect ease even though we were talking for the first time. Her husband would have already introduced me to her. I collected some strength and asked her if she ever felt sorry to be that helpless. She replied that she was not enervated and far better than those who fail to do something despite being so able-bodied. I again asked if she blamed her God for what had happened. She gently replied she counted her blessings, not her troubles. There

was no way she could reproach her God. I was greatly touched. I have learned a lot from this lady. She’s taught me that it’s better to die on your feet than to die on your knees. It’s indeed a story of stiff upper lip.