Babea Budtuem Te Khudmeta Kertuem

Father let you get old

to serve me)

Long before my exodus in 1990, one infant in Srinagar refused to be indoor. His father followed him and both were seen loitering about as insane on the city roads. The father used to carry the infant on his shoulders. June 2011, I saw both of them taking rest on the Flood-Channel bund under a tree. The infant by now has become a man of 27 and the father has become still older than what he was prior to 1990. People around take them as insane and pay little attention towards them.

On 11th July 2011, while leaving for Jammu, en route on the bund, I saw the father carrying his son, a man of 27 on his back. After every ten to fifteen meters he would unload, take rest for a little while and carry his son once again on his back. I have seen many fathers and grandfathers invariably coming on to their knees, posing for a horse to let their infant children enjoy a ride. The elders enjoy while the children whip them taking them for the beast of burden. The scene was once played by me too as was played by Balraj Sahney in film ‘Ek phool  dho mali’.

I stopped and shot their photograph.(attached) Their facial expression conveyed to me that people take them for insane, little knowing about their own mental stability. Soon I realized that people who after their retirement spend lavishly all their savings, gratuity and pension at banquet halls on the marriage of their highly qualified youth, is not any way less insanity.

On comparison, I marked no difference between the one who carries his 27 year old son on his back and the one who also literally carries the financial burden of his young son or daughter in prime youth on his back. If the latter is not an insane, I believe the former too is not.

I am of the impression that they are nephew and uncle and not father and son.