Who He Was

He had lived a life of a villagen; who was neither a villager nor a citizen. He was seen as a citizen by his village friends and a villager by his city friends. To his view he was a citizen as he lived in a town for studying and went to his village if there was a holiday of any sort.

And because of that he knew the customs of the both worlds. The tradition and behaviours of village as well as the city had moulded him and his behaviours, as he wanted to be treated as native by both of his friend groups.

Village:

As a kid he would take goats for grazing, climb trees, run down the hill to the river, played with mud and sticks, football made up of clothes stuffed inside a sock, fly kites, slide in coconut leaves, made wheels by cutting slippers soles and run assuming they were cars or bikes.

In his teens he would still go to the village where his grandparents lived farming, ploughing and growing stuff. But he would not get a chance to experience how all those things were done. He'd sit as an outsider and watch them plough the field, controlling and turning bulls at their command and made them drag the plough on the filed.

They worried about him and his nice, clean clothes and would ask him to stay far from the field and not get dirty. He wore his dad's old clothes and went to the field sometimes, but they still wouldn't give him a chance to work, saying he'd get hurt.

City:

While he was in the city, he'd play snake on his dad's Nokia and watch cartoons like Ben 10, Pokémon, Bakugan, Dragon Ball Z, Tom and Jerry, Moo min, Zig and Sharko, etc on TV.

His dad got a smarter but still keypad phone (Nokia X1) which had internet, and he made his first Facebook account in it. He would download Java games like Assassin's Creed, Spider-Man, Ben 10, Mario, Diamond Rush etc from Waptrick. When bored he would dig through the deepest settings of the phone and change things, which might have planted his love for computers at that time, and he still does it.

He'd often go to his friend's house and watch them play with their PSPs and Computers. He was always fascinated by how those things worked.

Here his friends would not let him play with their PSPs and Computers as he didn't know how to use them, and they were afraid if he would break it. As smartphones were at the market, his uncle gifted his mom with a Samsung Smartphone, and he played offline games like Temple Run, Mario, Plant vs Zombies, etc in it. The mobile data costs were high at that time and that has an effect on him till today; he doesn't play online games.

Influence

He knew things of both village and town and even the teachers who taught them about primitive technologies and other old things would be shocked by seeing him recognize everything they read from the book since he had seen them being used. He taught his friends to communicate secretly by the special language he learnt at the village (basically it was putting a special syllable before every syllable and speaking it that way. The special syllable was "cha" and the word 'development' would be "cha-dev cha-lop cha-ment" but in our native language of course.)

He'd teach his village friends to make a Facebook account, upload posts, download games on their phones and all that "techy stuff" they thought was magic. He shared downloaded movies and music to them. He was a tech guy to everyone there. He still gets calls from his relatives if any kind of mobile related problems occur to them.

It is surely due to limited resources, He would use everything by pushing it to the limits. Still today, he digs through the settings of a newer looking phone, hoping he'd find new interesting stuff.

He was never a native and that made him unique which he still enjoys being.

Today

Today he went to his village for a visit, and was devastated by the collapsing old house as it is abandoned and nobody cares for it. He got one day to recall all memories he spent as a child and also a teen. One day of sitting on the floor eating with hands in a smokey warm kitchen with food grown in the kitchen garden or rather "kitchen field" with no added chemicals. One day of eating fruits by picking it himself from the tree. One day of gazing at the stars shining brightly above the heaven below. One day of wishing to meet his old friends who mostly are now abroad for money. All those memories to come back melting the heart and eyes of who he was, me.