‘I want to ask govt, Maoists, when will the fighting end?’

ALL HIS life, Naresh Nareti says, he has known fear. He was afraid when the Naxals arrived in his village, Kodapakha in Kanker district, and demanded that he, then 10, do odd jobs for them. He was afraid when he first heard gunshots and saw bodies, when just a child. He was afraid when he left for another village to study, separated from his parents for the first time.

Now, the 17-year-old says, fear never leaves him.

So if he could, he would ask this question to all those responsible for the play of life and death in the theatre of Bastar: “When will you allow us to stop being afraid?... I want to ask the government and the Maoists, and everyone else who can do something, when will the fighting end?”

Naresh clearly remembers the day Naxals picked him up from his house. He was playing with his younger sister and elder brother. A group of four walked up to his father in the fields and demanded that Naresh be handed over. “He said I was only a child, but they said it was nothing dangerous. They wanted me to help build a hut for them. I did, but one of them carried a gun, and I was terrified. My hands would shake, and I kept dropping everything. Once the work was done in the evening, I ran all the way home and cried all night,” he says.

Then there were the constant gunshots. Naresh recalls the first time he heard them. “We were playing. The Maoists attacked the forces, and they fired back. Forces died, Maoists died, even some villagers died. Everywhere, there were bodies. Even today, after a gunbattle or something, police come and pick up someone and say he is a Maoist. Or the Maoists come and say he is an informer. Sometimes they return with injuries, or not at all. When will this end?”

It was to keep him away from this that his father sent him away to Koylibeda, which has a big school, in Class 6. “I was worried that the dadalog (Naxals) would bother my parents, tell them that if your son becomes a policeman, bad things would happen. My mother cried every time I met her, but they let me continue in the school in Koylibeda. After Class 10, I moved to the government Until Dec 15 this year, Bastar saw 202 encounters, in which 133 Maoists and 41 security personnel were killed. Civilian toll stands at 55 school in Bhanupratappur, and have been living in the PMT hostel (Naveen Post Matrik Balak Chatravas) since,” Naresh says.

His village, where the rest of the family still stays, now has a BSF camp. But while this means that weekly visits from Maoists have stopped, the threat remains.

A few months shy of his Class 12 exams, Naresh plans to stay on in Bhanupratappur. “I like the hostel. Here we can pretend we are like the other boys in the country, studying and playing.”

“I want to do B.SC,” he says. And then? “M.SC.” And then? “Doctor,” he smiles widely.

What of a time when his village doesn’t need a camp? “Why speak of what can’t happen?” Naresh says.

DIPANKAR GHOSE

Neeraj Priyadarshi Security personnel in Dantewada; (below) Naresh stays in a hostel