Humans Of Coffee World

The Newspaper Clipper

She is one of those people. Of indeterminable age. She could be of any age between 35 and 50. My neighbor.

Mom says she's always been like this. Slightly nutty. Mom remembers her as the forever weird kid. Anti-social. Pathologically shy. She left school in her early years...unable to cope with the course-load.

"She was ...a little slow..." Mom says distractedly when I ask about *Nasia Baji (Name changed).

She is one of the constants of my daily life. Nasia Baji. The Newspaper Clipper. She is like the daily milk-delivery dude. Or the Akhbar Wala (newspaper boy)...or the sun.

She is punctual. She is regular. She is methodical and single-mindedly focused about her mission target.

And her target is the daily Quran snippets that are published on the corner of our Jang Urdu newspaper.

Ever since I can remember, Nasia Baji has been responsibly cutting away the Quran snippets from our newspaper, in order to save those holy verses from being accidentally thrown out, and hence disrespected.

She knocks on our door, at 4:30 every afternoon, come hell and high water.
I chirp out a salam, and she hums in response. If I'm lucky, I get a rare smile, and a garbled "How are you?"

Her head is bowed, as she navigates into our living room, bee-lining at the wicker newspaper rack, with Mom's neatly arranged stack of daily newspapers. The "Akhbars" (Newspapers) are arranged in reverse chronological order, which Nasia Baji doesn't give two hoots about, jbtw. She quickly snatches the pair of scissors we keep near the rack (Just for her), and efficiently begins to hunt for Quranic verses in the daily newspaper.

Snip. Snip. Snip.

There goes the top-left corner of page one.

Her movements are jerky. Hasty. She is scared of alerting her family about her daily activity. They often try to discourage her, by scolding and stuff...so she doesn't like staying too long during these covert missions.

When she is sure that she her scissor hasn't missed a verse, she haphazardly stuffs the leftover newspapers back into the rack. (A move that leaves my Mom helplessly gnashing her teeth).

"Is it too much to ask that she puts them back in order?" Mom gripes once Nasia Baji leaves. Then she sighs sympathetically, "Well...she is doing a Naiki (good deed). I suppose I shouldn't complain...this is her form of worship..."

I don't know if it will earn a coveted spot in heaven...but I sure hope it does.

Her sister-in-law once told us that her compulsiveness often gets out of hand if the family doesn't keep her under a strict hand.

"She one spent days snipping away the words "Allah" and "Muhammad S.A.W." From the entire newspaper." She shakes her head exasperatedly. "It looked like a seive when she was done with it."

"What does she do with the clippings?" I asked, fascinated. I mean this is a potential Guinness Book participant in the making...

"She has a drawer." The sister-in-law replies, "When it is too full, one of us disposes off the clippings. Often we dump them at the local mosque. They know how to respectfully deal with them I guess..."

"Doesn't she mind? Losing her collection?"

"Oh yeah. She throws a tantrum. Cries for a full day. Refuses to eat...then next morning she is right as rain."

And the next afternoon, she knocks without fail on our door, and the process repeats itself.

She reminds of this fable, about King Bruce and an Ant. Where the ant keeps falling down an incline, but keeps getting up, to try again. Always knowing that it might fail.

But with a hope.

Maybe this time will be different....

Being an inherently impatient person, I can't fathom her devotion.

Who inspires you like that?