A young boy glanced around standing motionless like a candle in the street.
‘Quite solitary! It’s not night any way, but why’s it such a stillness?” Rose up his eyes with a thoughtful mind, and saw the sunlight splashed everywhere.
His ears caught a strange sound of sharp footsteps at a good distance. Now, his eyes and ears turned alert. After a short impatience his eyes caught sight of a combatant troop marching towards his Shrine, the memento of his ancestors. ‘This dead silence, and the combatants’ march! Oh what a shame!’ he took a long deep breath with a grave thought.
He looked around for some weapon and noticed a rough stone in the street. Holding it, just picked up from the street, in a hand; he jerked his body and moved on with his high raised head. A few onlookers from the roadside were shouting at him:
– Reckless !
– Stupid !
– Idiot !
– Fool !
– Blockhead !
– Stooge !
– Rash !
– Hey, they’ll shoot you in no time, get back!
No one knew whether he listened to anyone, but he continued moving ahead, without bothering to watch or hear anything around. The onlookers were watching his firm motion as if in their free horrible pleasure. A crowd started following him from a distance. They often stopped, turned backward, and again stepped forward with their birds’ eyes. But, he was moving ahead recklessly until he approached a combatant positioned to fire at himself, and halted like a car that stopped with a screeching halt. ‘Hey coward, do you put your gun down or want me to smack you with the stone?’ he said with his head high enough to catch his eyes and a hand ready to crush the stone on his head.
The combatant stared at the boy attentively for a moment. God knows what he thought of the young boy, and lowered his gun down and raised his bare hand up to salute the stone holder.
The onlookers, watching every minor event of the combatant and the young boy, immediately gathered round the boy and started shouting:
Long live our hero!
Long live the real son of his forefathers!

Bharatpur –7, Chitwan