A night that no one knows
The story that I am going to tell you today is not a fake story, it is based on a true story that happened in my life. When I was plagued with unemployment and could not find any direction in life, I suddenly found a job from Kolkata. Although the job was not that important it was the job of a security guard. When a young boy is unemployed at home, he realizes the extent of his suffering. It felt like running away from the house because it was not good to listen to the people of the house constantly. Only those who have come through this situation will understand what a hardship it is. After trying all kinds of things in life, when I did not get success, I decided to work as a guard and do it away so that no one would see it. At that time, my only brother’s neighborhood boy was suffering from unemployment like me, so we both decided to go to Kolkata and talk to that company and start working.
We were going through so much trouble that we didn’t even have the money to rent a car, so it was a lot of trouble. I struggled to collect the car rental money and finally went to the office in Kolkata where we were supposed to have the interview. The office was very small but very clean. We were asked where you will work. We saw that if we go to work in a distant place will get high salary. We had been starving for a long time, so when we suddenly found a lot of food, we were filled with joy. Our final destination is Bhagalpur which falls within the state of Bihar. I still remember that day we were fed fish and rice by the office and no money was taken from us. It is true that we were happy to be freed from the agony of unemployment after so long, but the thought of leaving home made us sad.
We knew that if we told at home that we are going to work in Bihar then home would never agree so we lied at home and said that we are going to Durgapur to work so they gave permission easily from home. However, we became very emotional on the day of departure because no matter how many people at home abuse us, they are our own. I realized that the clothes were wet with tears so I cleaned them with a handkerchief. My companion was also in the same situation. We reached Calcutta early in the morning and found out that we had a night train from Howrah station so we would have to spend a lot of time anyway. So we decided that the two of us would sit in the brigade grounds and pass the time by talking amongst ourselves. On reaching the brigade grounds we kept talking to ourselves about how we had wasted our lives and finally we had to go for a guard work that was even so far away. I will never forget the time we spent together on the brigade field till the end of the day, we were very emotional. Late at night our train was from Howrah and food was arranged for us by the company. I saw that the tickets were booked for us at that time so the company had to pay double to take us from Kolkata to Bihar.
The place is about 10 to 15 km from Bhagalpur station in Bihar, for the sake of security I am not mentioning the name of the place. I don’t know why I felt as if we were moving towards some unknown danger. Then an idea came to my mind and in words I said that my mobile phone is GPS tracked, so wherever I go my family can know. Throughout the trip, the person who was taking us to Bihar had a behavior that I didn’t feel very comfortable with, as if he was involved in some nefarious act. Finally we reached the place and we saw that there were many empty spaces along side and the place was surrounded by hills. Although we didn’t say anything about the accommodation we were given, we felt so dissatisfied in our hearts because no one could live in that place. An interesting thing is that I went there and found that the person assigned to cook does not know anything about cooking. From morning till twelve noon he only cooks and finally people can’t eat the food he prepares because he is such an worthless cooker but when anyone comes here he has to eat the food from his hands. There is no other options. Talking to the staff there, we came to know that this company brings people from different places with the lure of money, but the people cannot satisfy the original money they give. Besides, you have to eat those disgusting foods and for those foods, a certain amount of money will be deducted from the salary every month. When we went there from Calcutta we were told that the salary we would get was very high but there we found out that in the end the salary we would get in hand would never be enough for us and we were very upset. While doing the duty we realized that the life race to do the duty there is very much because we have seen in Kolkata how much is the responsibility of the security card but went there and saw that it has to fulfill a lot of responsibility. That is because the number of thieves in Bihar is very high. So the security guard has to be always alert. At last we realized that we were already in a trap and there was nothing we could do because we were brought here at a great cost and if we told them now that we were going back home they might do a lot to us. We started the discussions.
We decided that night that we would return home that night so we planned among ourselves that we would say that one of our two aunts had died during delivery so it was necessary for us to go home. If we show this reason, they will not be able to stop us in any way. Then we called the person who had taken us from Calcutta, I thought he understood the matter so he hung up. After discussing among ourselves we decided that we have to get out of here anyway. I still remember it was 01:00 in the night and we had a lot of luggage with us. This road was completely deserted and the station was about 15 km from here. There were not enough cars to go to the station during the day and when we hit the road it was one o’clock in the night and we decided to continue walking and reach the station by morning. About three to four kilometers ahead, suddenly I saw a car cross us, the light of the car was so intense that we couldn’t see anything, the car crossed us for a short distance, stopped again and then started coming back towards us. When we saw the car behind us, our fear increased and we thought that it might be a police car that would interrogate us because it was only natural that the police would interrogate two people in such a night. But when we saw the car we got more scared because it was not a police car it was the car of the person who had taken us from Kolkata and many other people were present in that car. He told us in a very serious voice that if we don’t want to work we can go during the day what is the need to go at night then we told him all the situation i mean the false planning we had made. We thought that he would react badly and beat us up but he did nothing like that but arranged a car for us to the station so that we could reach the station safely and return to Kolkata by train. This was the first time we had respect for the man because it was a situation where if he thought he could do anything to us we could do nothing to him. Finally we came back to Bhagalpur station and from there we took the Howrah train to West Bengal. I don’t know from where we got so much courage that we went so far fearlessly and one night we took such a decision that maybe many things could have happened to us, our family would not even know because we had lied to our family and they would never tress us. It has been a long time since that incident and now we are both settled in our separate workplaces and have stability in our workplaces. But we will never forget the incident of that night that such a day came in our life.
