The Last Newspaper Man

Rajuan Ahmed

Winter mornings in Mymensingh wore a ghostly gray; the city lay wrapped in fog like a shroud. Tea stalls huddled at street corners, their chimneys puffing smoky breath into the cold. Sidewalks teemed with day laborers rubbing chapped hands and schoolchildren clutching tiffin boxes—all soldiers in the daily war for survival. Among them stood Hashem Chacha, bent but unbroken at seventy, his life’s wheels still creaking forward.  

Forty years ago, he’d arrived with a bicycle polished to a shine and dreams stuffed into its rattling basket. Now the cycle wheezed with rust, its basket sagging under newspapers. At 5 a.m. sharp, he’d pedal three kilometers from the press, knees groaning, spine protesting. “This,” he’d tell the dawn, grinning through gritted teeth, “is my prayer.”  

Back in the ’80s, his stall was a carnival. Office clerks bought papers to trace village scandals; students begged for cricket scores. Newspapers were society’s pulse then. But now? Thumbs scrolled glass screens, and Hashem’s calls dissolved into traffic noise. “Daily Khabar! Headlines hot off the press!” he’d boom, met only by hurried footsteps.  

“Why not read online, Chacha?” a teen once sneered, waving his phone. Hashem’s chuckle rasped like old newsprint: “Boy, feel this ink. Smell yesterday’s rain on the paper. Your glowing box—can it do this?”  

Home was a tin shack where wind whistled through jute-patched walls. His wife’s absence lingered heavier than the decade since her passing. Their eldest son cycled strangers in his rickshaw; the middle one chased mirages of Malaysian jobs; youngest Mitu stitched clothes at a factory, schoolbooks abandoned. At dinner, silence hung thicker than lentil stew.  

“Baba,” Mitu once pleaded, tears smudging her kohl, “why cling to this misery?” He tore a piece of dry roti, jaw working stubbornly. “Till these bones turn to dust.”  

But the math mocked him. Two hundred taka daily once bought rice and dignity; now fifty felt like a mirage. When customers vanished, he’d skip tea to gift Mitu a geometry set—her fingers tracing shapes he couldn’t read.  

One blood-orange evening, twenty papers lay unsold. A boy materialized—crisp uniform, eyes alight. “One paper, Chacha!” Hashem thrust it forward eagerly.  

“Money tomorrow?” the boy whispered. Hashem’s cracked lips split into a sunrise. “Take it. News isn’t currency—it’s air.”  

Arif returned next dawn with apples. “Abba says you’re the last honest man.” Fridays became a ritual: Arif trading mangoes or dog-eared novels for stories in print. Their barter of kindness lit Hashem’s weeks like festival lamps.  

Then came the March afternoon when his chest exploded with white-hot pain. He crumpled onto the pavement, bicycle clattering. Passersby averted their eyes—just another old man napping.  

Arif found him at dusk, sprinting from school with a model rocket. “Chacha! My project needs—” The sentence died. Hashem sat motionless, yesterday’s paper crumpled in his grip.  

Next morning’s front page declared: “Digital Age Buries Its Final Newsman.” The article went unread, buried under viral cat videos.  

At his funeral, Mitu traced her father’s diary entry:  
“My life? A newspaper blowing down a street. Some step over it. A rare soul picks it up. Still—I keep printing.”  

A kiosk selling SIM cards now occupies his corner. But on foggy mornings, regulars swear they hear a gravelly cry: “Today’s headlines, sahib?”  

By the Numbers
- 42 monsoons : Ink-stained hands  
- 120,000 stories delivered: Births, scandals, wars  
- Last earnings: A boy’s apple, bitten with gratitude  
- Final lesson: Progress has casualties  

This isn’t just Hashem’s tale. It’s an elegy for calloused hands that once connected us, now replaced by cold, perfect pixels.  

When we sprint toward tomorrow, who hears the whispers we leave behind?