INNOCENT EYES

-Devyani Shiwakoti
Wednesday, Nov 17, 2010
At 11:07pm
When I was child, I, for the first time, heard about Utopian world where there everything is believed to be so good, romantic, greenery and so peacefully in order, there remain no four pillars where people live within boundary with so many rules and regulations i.e. prison.
In its real sense, prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Jails are conventionally institutions which form part of the criminal justice system of a county and house both inmates awaiting trial and convicted misdemeanants.
People take birth with no expectations of their future, they walk hand in hand with their relatives, the environment makes them voracious and for the sake of their own life they do such things which cross the limit of society than they face the dark side of life which is made by rules and regulations, the fearful silence which itself is doomed by many walls and pillars.
Just born, we can not imagine our upcoming days that bring so many things with us. It is sure that death is always prowling behind us like a shadow, mostly invisible. It is no doubt; struggle, hard-work, obstacles, happiness and sadness all are the parts of our life. We are different from each other but most of the people do not know what they are for. We always live in doubt that what we want to be, among these confused people if anyone of them knows what he/she is for; I think that person will be the luckiest one. What I want before the situation of my deathbed is to search myself and my real identity.
I do not know I am lucky or not, but I know what I am here for. I believe I am made for understanding others' problems and try to help them through different mediums. I want to understand different colors of life which are invisible, yet they exist. I once wanted to understand about the dark sides of life, for that I went to a prison in Pokhara where each prisoner had his\her own story. I saw many innocent eyes there in the prison. Perhaps, those eyes were telling me something about themselves. I felt myself invisible of mine identity too. I was so helpless that I wanted to hear their pain but could not tolerate at all.
When we walk there is shadow around of us. We do not know whom to follow either our leg or shadow. Blurred shadow, perhaps, tells us how much time remaining with us in the journey of life.
I saw an angel among all who were there in the prison, a little girl, who was playing here and there on the floor with herself. I moved to touch her, so cute and innocent. Right at the moment I was informed that the little girl had syndromes of HIV aids. My eyes rolled on my cheeks. Still I do not have words that can express what I Felt. I found myself being questioned from within. I thought about the abyss of life of the little angel. It struck me that an angel like little girl will die in the infernal like place. I became so helpless and alone. There was no-one who could help that angel?
"LIFE..." I murmured, "...IS SO UNFAIR"
Later, I got the information about everything from a woman who counted seven years in her fingers of her being in the prison. According to the information, there are two categories of people in the prison. I found one category of people regarding prison as heaven, since, they do not want live in society anymore. It is problematic because no watertight solution appears. It seems it is not so easy to brush those problems off so easily. The problems will not go ashtray building a new prison house in the every corner of the nation. Perhaps, education is the answer, if not education for the prisoners, then education for society as a whole. Most of us, if not all, even do not try to know anyone in the prison. The issue is utter remote to us or we see it as victims looking for punishment.
Hopefully, there is not such things happen where it cross the boundary of being human like beating, rape in the prison etc. According to information, people in prison are living in peace and they share things as consanguinity, different NGOs are helping them like Heartbeat for Fooding and Clothes, Prisoners' Assistance Nepal etc.