The Old Man

The old man sat on the doorstep of the house. It was early in the morning. Like many other people his age, he too didn’t sleep well and always found himself up before the sun. His body was not what it used to be, his hands shaking, as he swatted away a random bug.

There was no one to bring him a hot cup of tea on a chilly morning like this anymore. Without a wife or children, he was all alone in the little house. He used to be married, a long time ago. But then she tired of him and found herself a job someplace far away. They didn’t have kids - they never really got around to it.

One day, when she was long gone, he found himself raising a young boy, a kid of a distant relative, himself unwanted by his family. “Why don’t you come with me, kollo (little boy)?”, he had asked. The kid happily went with him and spent many long years growing up in his care.

The kid didn’t have much of an interest in education and preferred to help his uncle with his work or to do odd jobs around the village.

As he reached adulthood though, perhaps wanting a better direction in life, he joined the army. Not many years later, the boy - now a young man - returned, having run away. Bless the boy, he may have regrated it, for he had enlisted right in the middle of a war.

The old man had been happy. His son had come home. Alas, it was not for too long. The young man fell in love with a lass a few villages over and eloped. The old man was alone once again.

He stood up. “Might as well put the kettle on”, he thought with a sigh. He woke up every day. He cooked himself a simple meal with rice and vegetables. He did not care for meat, having given it up a long time ago to preserve life. For him, it was a little act of kindness, a way to follow the first Buddhist precept, ‘I will not kill!’.

He would spend his day pottering around his vegetable patch and doing his chores. Once a week, he would head out to the market to get the things he needed.

Once the day was done, he would lie down and listen to the news on the radio, for he did not own a television. If a sermon was on, he would listen to that too. And then, he would drift off to sleep, the way old men do, only to wake up in the morning, before the crows.