Translated Story : A Demise of a Heap of Books

~Hari Govinda Luintel~Hari Govinda Luitel
Trans: Bhakta Bahadur Shakya

Mr. Sadananda, a learned man died today. Local people gathered before his dead body.

“Oh! What a wise man he was.”

“Oh! What a tremendous knowledge he possessed.”

“He had digested hundreds of books and had thorough informations of dates and data about basically important subjects.”

“He was a scholar in history, geography, philosophy, science, etc.”

In this way, the local people exchanged a lot of excelled words of appreciation equivocally about Late Sadananda till the formal funeral procession.

“Oh! It is really an end of a highly dignified figure”, uttered neighbours, gathered around the lobby of Sadananda’s house.

After a while, mourners carried the dead-body and rested it upon the cremating pyre at Aryaghat. The dead-body got inflamed.

During five or six hours of cremation, the magnitude of mourners’ sentiment on Sadananda seemed a bit depleted.

“Though Sadananda was a learned fellow, he was an egoist”, one commented.

“His reluctance to speak with the ordinary local peoples and his arrogant character was not a good one.”
“He has read a lot, but seemed not to be so conscious to translate those precious thoughts into practice to lead his reformative way of life.”

“Regarding that part of his life, he appears to be a hypocrat.”

“He tried neither to write nor to express in common language about the esentialities of knowledge he had. Whatever the knowledge he gained out of the books, he simply confined them within himself.”

“He took great interest in debate with equally competitive contemporaries to promote his personality.”

He used his brain merely to gain the post and to earn money.”

Under the roof of a hut near Aryaghat, such comments on Late Sadananda among the mourners sounded heavily while his dead-body was not burnt to a cinder.

All the mourners were back home from Aryaghat. The final funeral process of Late Sadananda was formally winded up with all traditional rituals.

After a fortnight, a gathering of neighbours in a morning tea-shop commemorated Late Sadananda once again.
“Actually, Sadananda had studied lot of books but what sort of benefit could he be able to deliver to the society after all?” poked Mr. Shiva Upreti.

“I didn’t find any difference between him and his heap of books. It is a plain truth that books contain plenty of knowledge, isn’t it?” – Shankar Vista added one more question in a way to reply to the former questionaire.

“Atleast books naturally will not have any pride or prejudice but Sadananda was even egoist too. This is what I found the difference between himself and his heap of books,” said Mr. Maha Dev Shrestha.

“A book gets open when its pages are turned up by anybody but Late Sadananda’s ‘pages’ are opened merely for the sake of new post and only before the authorities of the NGOs,” added Mr. Bhola Chaudhary.

In this way, people started evaluating him in a true sense within a fortnight of his demise.

Of course, Mr. Sadananda, during his lifetime, totally failed even to surmise that he would be deevaluated by the people in such a way in the long run.

HIs actual thought was – “I am an evergreen learned man, I deserve to make the world bow down before my wisdom forever.”

(Source : October 2004 issue of SATHI)

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