As the old man sat by the window of his study, his mind cast back to his childhood. His fading eyebrows that were more grey than black knotted up his forehead, exacerbated the deep creases, the result of tortuous nights of money worries and unanswered desperate prayers during the tumultuous years when his retail shops closed one after another, after the franchise owners said lawsuits from landlords and suppliers were untenable to face and legally undefendable. As his dream of a franchise ‘empire’ collapsed, so did his own stores.

His childhood was nightmarish, the spartan meals and frequent rowdy quarrels between his parents haunted him for much of his youth. Their verbal fights were legendary in the neighbourhood that consisted of a row of shophouses along upper Penang Road. His father, debonair and well-dressed, attracted the ladies, according to his mother. She lacked education and therefore lacked the confidence and ability to ask for a divorce. He lacked education yet taught himself how to read and write and keep the books. Was he unfaithful or was she delusional and wrecked by insecurity and jealousy? Her cries of anguish and his cries of the tormented were to recur in all his boyhood nightmares.

They weren’t plebs by any means, but like most people in Penang, life for them was backward and harsh during and immediately after the war. By the time the old man was born, the Japanese had left and so had the British occupiers. He was born free but the frugal life they led did curtail much of his freedom. The beginning was humble but poverty was easily avoided if people were prepared to work hard.

Consumerism did not exist; electricity was affordable, thankfully due to the sparse availability of gadgets that required electrical power. His family got by simply with dim light globes absent of any lamp shades and a redifusion set that blared news and music all day. They kept some chooks but chicken essence for him was a once-in-a-lifetime luxury item to power his tired brain during the major exams in Form 5. The tropics had not warmed up yet, so ceilings were not fitted with fans then. Warm sticky nights weren’t a problem when there was the sea breeze to depend on to cool down their rooms.

His dad did what a dutiful son did, saving enough to send money back home twice a year. Home was always China to him, even after he had left Penang and spent his final nineteen years in Adelaide. In the 50s and 60s, each remittance to China was about $50, enough for his siblings to support their mother and squirrel away some savings. He continued to send money ‘home’ even after their mother passed away. Over the decades, his siblings bought a house and some gold from the funds he had repatriated. The unending stream of money to them ended when he discovered they had flaunted the seed capital he gave for them to open an optical store in Shaoxing. He had wanted them to start a franchise chain but whoever usurped the money had shorter term plans.

“Life is good today,” Heng Poe said to the old man, reminding him to stop complaining about his problems but to be grateful for all the problems he didn’t have. Heng Poe, a friend in Johor Bahru, often shared little gems of wisdom in their chats.

“I know, I know,” the old man replied with a prickly voice.

He disliked his friend for being wiser and smarter. Heng Poe retired some six months earlier, joining many of their friends in early retirement. The old man once boasted to his mother he would retire by 45; early retirement represented financial success and profligacy of resources and time because people could afford that. He just turned 65. With no imminent news of his retirement, by his own measure of success, he was already twenty years late.

He was supposed to leave for Giza this week for a once-in-a-lifetime cruise on the Nile. The troubles in Gaza put a stop to that. The troubles. That sounded so wrong and grossly inadequate. The poor wretched souls are being mercilessly massacred in Gaza in what is a collective retribution to the Palestinians for the Hamas atrocities against Israelis. The cycle of murder and vengeance will not end if one side will not allow the same freedom and legal rights to the other side. The troubles meant thousands of dead Palestinians, many of whom are children and many more wounded or dying without water, food and basic necessities. It isn’t a war between Israel and Hamas. The Hamas militants aren’t dying in big numbers.

“Yes, it’s a war between Israel and children,” the old man said to himself, creasing his forehead with yet deeper lines.

When peace was brokered between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March, the old man sighed loudly and said “Oh oh.” Without reason, he feared that something would trigger the Middle East to become embroiled in another major conflict. The dark states have always divided the Arab world to keep them fighting each other, ever since they found oil.

“I still wanted to go,” the old man said and paused before adding, “but they cancelled before I got a chance to voice my opinion.”

He was out-voted 3 to 1, so they didn’t need his decision when they cancelled their Egypt holiday. Like a kid, he just had to tag along whatever the (other) adults said. He left it unsaid about what a holiday meant. If you want comfort and safety, stay at home. A holiday should take you out of your comfort zone, introduce new experiences, excitement even, and foreign smells, tastes and feelings. A hint of danger thrilled him about Egypt. Giza and the Sinai desert beckoned, a mere three and a half hours away to the massacres in Gaza. It wasn’t to be, instead, his travelling companions had switched their destination to Milan – Lake Como the ultimate attraction – and a chance to savour how the A-list celebrities in haute couture enjoy their days. Milan is home to high street fashion brands like Gucci, Prada, and Dolce & Gabbana.

“Milan is so chic and classy I’m afraid I will be so under-dressed even at my best,” the old man said as he checked the dress code for places like La Scala and Ristorante Giacomo Milano, where Salvatore Ferragamo and Mick Jagger have been known to dine there.

They may have escaped the fire and the rockets in Gaza but news of heavy rains in Northern Italy meant that they may still yet have a memorable but uncomfortable holiday. Central Milan was flooded and Lake Como had broken its banks. It looked pretty obvious to the old man his chance to be a dashing James Bond was dashed at Villa Balbianello. There would be no kissing scene in the garden either, if they cancelled the boat ride to Bellagio.

“I’ve just booked to attend a ballet at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the world’s oldest working opera house,” the old man said to Heng Poe.

“Home of the pizzas,” Heng Poe replied.

“No lah, they don’t make pizzas in theatres, it’s more dance and pizzazz,” the old man said to his wiser and smarter friend.

It dawned on him that he had come a long way from his childhood days of dim lights, the little need for electricity and the frequent hunger pangs, his bedtime companion. He looked up from his book and noticed how much life had transformed. The house was never silent anymore – the usage of electricity was quite ridiculous with noisy gadgets that caused the constant sounds of waterfall from the pond, the humming of the internet modem, the running water of the aquarium, the sudden knocking sounds from their fridge, the guttural voices of Taiwanese talk show hosts from his wife’s iPad, the music from the TV and recently, the bubbling sounds of the double boiler from which four bowls of pure essence would be produced from one whole free range chicken.

The old man sighed. It was well past mid-morning when he made his second cup of long black. His eyes were smarting from the sweat that sluiced them but they didn’t hurt as much as his heart; that was smarting from his Mrs’ comments about his physical weakness a few moments earlier. Stoicism taught him to ignore what and who he can’t control. We can only control our own reasoned mind, or so we should hope. It’s quite often that people can’t control themselves, yet they have the sense of entitlement that they expect to control how others think or what they believe in or how they should behave. But, this was his Mrs’ opinion of him – of course, it mattered to him.

“But, should it?” I asked and challenged him.

He chose to ignore me and carried on enjoying the simplest of pleasures in his life – sipping his coffee. It was still fasting time, so it had to be without milk. He gave up on sugar in his coffee a long time ago, after learning that sugar hides the real taste of coffee or maybe it was after discovering that sugar was cancer’s favourite food. It was still an hour to go before lunch with his lunatic mother but he decided against taking a shower to wash off the smell of his perspiration. Cleaning the pond filters and changing the yellow water may look easy work to his Mrs – everything looks easy for her – but carting buckets and buckets of the dirty water to nourish her veggie patches was becoming hard work for the old man. Instead of appreciating his bursts of energy, she asked him to cart more buckets to the front garden which was about twice the distance away.

“Lunatic mother?” I asked, shocked that he would call his mother insane.

“Life robs us of everything, in the end,” he replied whilst massaging his right elbow.

Tendonitis was affecting the old man’s lifestyle yet he persisted to simply live with the pain. He had done nothing about it apart from offering it as his excuse for his shrinking biceps and straight skinny arms.

“I can’t lift weights anymore,” he said, demonstrating with his crooked elbow.

It was something his son could not understand about him. The younger man would never do nothing and simply accept the status quo about anything that’s detrimental to his life. They do not leave life to fate. They will change their lifestyle, their life and even their fate. That, in essence, is believing in karma, I suppose. It is through our own volition, our actions – past and present – that determine our own happiness or misery, luck or misfortune, peace or hell, our own fate, actually.

“Fix it, Pa, before it’s too late,” the son said, rolling his eyes as he and his girlfriend secretly exchanged messages without words.

“I get all that, but a lunatic mother?” I asked, like a rabid dog not wanting to let go of its grip.

Life robs us of everything. Born innocent, our eyes will have seen evil by the time we grow up or grow old. The old man has seen his youth shrivel up after spending his adult life in the hot and dry mediterranean environment of Adelaide. A callow fellow when he first stepped onto the tarmac at Adelaide Airport in ’77, everything was foreign and interesting to him. The Greek girls in school called him Bruce. Believing every Asian boy was Bruce Lee reincarnated, they hassled him during lunch breaks to show them some “karate” moves. He kept them bright-eyed by saying his Shaolin teacher always preached discipline and never allowed him to ‘willy-nilly’ show off his skills. He never had a teacher, of course, although he convinced himself later in life that he didn’t lie, that he learned “a lot” from Bruce Lee and Fu Sheng movies and from Drunken Master and Once Upon a Time in China trilogies. He parroted Bruce Lee’s words to the Greek girls as if they were his and then basked in the respect and adulation they gave in return.

“I fear not the man who has practised ten thousand kicks once, but it’s the one who has practised one kick ten thousand times that I fear.”

The callow fellow was a popular bloke in the small circle of Asian students in school. Homesick and lost in a big new world of white people, they were a tiny minority and with strong guttural accents and poor diction and vocabulary, they did not assimilate very easily in society. Some of the girls took the callow fellow as their psychological rock. They went to him for advice or simply to ask what the heck was a dog’s breakfast or what “fair suck of the sauce bottle, mate,” meant.

“Just tell them they are dreaming,” he told them, whenever they didn’t understand what was said.

A mere few months after he graduated from uni, he married the pretty girl he met in the Commerce faculty. A mere few years after that, they produced three gorgeous kids. So, the callow fellow went from a single fellow to become a husband, a father and a son-in-law feeding seven mouths in the family and slaving to pay a home mortgage. Life robs us of our freedom and then our youth.

The years passed by. The parents-in-law passed. The business he built grew and grew and he patted himself on the back, telling himself he was useful at home and useful to society. The kids grew up and flew away, leaving an empty nest. That was twenty years ago. It did not feel so long ago that he was singing to them, “The hills are alive with the sound of music.” Suddenly, he is over the hill. Now, he is staring at the birth of his retirement life. Business suppliers hardly call on him now; there are no more free holidays overseas, no interstate trade shows by invitation, and if they did call, expect the occasional cup of coffee instead of the many expensive dinners. Like a pupa, life is transforming, twisting and turning, giving him no solace. Ageing, just as it gave his dad insomnia, is giving him sleepless nights. ‘Happy hour’ is now a good sleep just before dinner whilst listening to conspiracy theories on Youtube.

The callow fellow is long gone, he finally realises. In the mirror, he sees an old man, with his deep etched wrinkles and dry hoary hair and hunched shoulders. It is a mirror that he avoided looking into during his prime; he didn’t need it to tell him the ugly truths about himself. But, he finally gazed into it recently, for an honest opinion. It is a mirror that he ought to have looked intently into all those years ago to tell him where he was headed and what awaited him. The mirror could have told him that life would eventually rob him of his wealth. He built and built but like a sandcastle on a beach, a big wave would come crashing onto it and simply wash it all away. Life robs him of his youth and now it robs him of his usefulness to his family and importance to his business.

Life has robbed him of loved ones and good friends and as sure as night follows day, it will continue to do so. This is the way of life. Eventually, after robbing us of our physical appearance, life will rob us of our physical abilities and then our mental faculties will be threatened too. The old man is losing muscle mass, with stringy thin limbs and a scrawny long neck. Not so long ago, he could easily touch the ground with both palms without bending his knees, now it is a stretch to expect him to do that. Lifting dumb bells each weighing thirty kilograms fifty times in one go was a routine just a couple of years ago, but this kind of endurance is no longer possible with his crooked elbow. Just as life robbed his dad of a limb and then of his movements, it has robbed the old man of any trace of the callow fellow. A cataract operation is inevitable in the next twelve months and his canine-like hearing is much impaired these days, needing his dog to tell him the postie or courier driver is at the front door. I quietly wondered if he will lose his teeth too – his passion for nuts and lobsters makes him a perfect candidate.

“What can I do to slow down the cataracts?” he asked his eye doctor.

“Nothing,” the eye doctor said and laid the cards on the table about ageing.

“At your age, you can’t slow it down.”

The first three words suddenly reminded him of a missed doctor’s appointment. He went for a medical checkup recently after a sudden jolt by Bikash, a former schoolmate who was told he needed an urgent open-heart surgery during a routine annual checkup. The old man’s doctor had expressed satisfaction after a brief interview, “you’re perfectly fine, for your age.” He was asked to make another appointment for his blood test results.

“Strewth, I forgot to go back!” he said agitatedly and blamed Google calendar for failing to remind him. Business appointments are increasing again but now with doctors, dentists, ophthalmologists and periodontists.

Life robs us of our ability to keep up with technology and then we begin to lose our memory too. We become forgetful which isn’t too innocuous unless life gives us Alzheimer’s or dementia. It was dementia that has robbed his mother of her regal demeanour, reducing her to fits of aggressive behaviour and delusional tantrums. Ageing makes us brutally honest; it tells us to believe we are running out of time and teaches us to become selfish and feeling entitled with self-importance when actually, we have lost all relevance and importance, past our use-by date. Life even urges us to call a spade a spade without questioning if our perspectives and beliefs are wrong.

“Are you serious? That doesn’t make her a lunatic!” I screamed at him.

That was unkind of him to say that about his mother, of course. The callow fellow would never have been this callous. Neither would he have been this careless with words.

In the end, life robs us of our ability to reason and our joy in life before it robs us of life itself.

“Ho’oponopono,” Bikash said, wishing me well.

It was a gorgeous day when he rang. Pockets of fluffy white clouds were dancing with the sun, so graceful and light it felt like I was watching Swan Lake in the bright blue sky. The caws of a black crow, a stark reminder of the demands on earth, distracted me and abruptly ended the ballet. The crow was expecting me to share my bread with it, but it was grossly mistaken. The Mrs was still livid about her missing pork rind that she had been drying for days. They were to feature in her Hakka pork soup on the weekend, a delectable ingredient that everyone zeroed in with their forks or chop sticks the last time she served it. She wrongly accused Murray of stealing them from the clothes stand that the wrinkled pig skin were hanging from. Poor dog, he did not even know he was adjudged guilty without any evidence, for the simple fact that he’s a canine, nothing uncanny about her intuition. It’s as wrong as accusing the Chinese people of being communists simply because of their race.

The crow advanced a few more steps. I took no further notice of it since Murray was vying for my attention. Employing uncanny stealth in its movements, the crow was almost within striking distance – of striking me, I mean, that I almost dropped the plate that was on my lap in my recoil. The evil look on its face and the shine on its black coat made me realise why black crows are such useful props in any scary movie. I told the Mrs the thief that stole her pork rind wasn’t Murray, neither were the thievin’ magpies guilty. It was the damned crow. It stood there, near my shabby shoes, and mesmerised me with its cold eyes. Its demands were clear, there was no ambiguity in its command. I meekly threw a few bite-sized pieces of bread on the ground as a peace offering.

“Ho’oponopono, Bikash,” I replied, not knowing what it meant, except that it must be a good wish.

We were never in the same class even though we were in the same year right through high school in Penang. We reconnected a few years ago in RU9, a reunion of schoolmates of the same year. Covid interrupted the annual event for three years. RU10 was held in May 2023 with a smaller attendance, perhaps many were still unsure about leaving their cocoon for a party. During the reunion, we had a late night drinks session after the grand dinner that was attended by over 150 school friends, many of whom had not met one another for over four decades. Over a beer, Bikash initially surprised me with his diction and command of the English language. Such a well-spoken guy. A worldly man. I thought to myself.

Later in the night, he surprised me even more with his intelligence and grasp of eastern philosophy. He was impressive as a global speaker in all matters of recycling, greenhouse gas protocols and solutions for sustainable industries. In a recent radio podcast, he showed his immense knowledge of and challenges in the industry of which he was an expert and a spokesman.

These guys from the “lower classes” shouldn’t be smarter than me! I whispered under my breath that was by then heavily imbued with remnants of fried noodles and little slivers of steamed rock cod trapped in the gaps in my teeth from the evening’s dinner. Washed with a few pints of beer, my breath did not bother me even as I leaned closer to Bikash during our conversation.

It is not a rehash to sing Bikash’s praises. A worldly man indeed, he was on a quest to save the world.

Bikash called to let me know he may have to miss the dinner I had organised in KL this October. My plan was to meet a small group of old friends over a nice dinner and have a good time. After the sudden demise of Soon Keat and Wei Wah this year, both schoolmates of mine, it suddenly felt imperative that I needed to make time to catch up with everyone, some yet to be reacquainted since 48 years ago. It was to be another fleeting visit to Malaysia, this one even shorter than the last. The day after the dinner would see me in Singapore to attend my youngest son’s solo concert, after which, we would fly back to KL to support a relative’s art exhibition at the CIMB Artober Art & Soul fair.

“Awww, shucks, Bikash,” I said with a grimace that he could not see.

“Why not!” I demanded to know, disappointed that the small reunion would become even smaller.

After he told me why, I realised the crow must have thanked me for sharing my breakfast and left without menacing me, and Murray, the ever-loyal pal, was sunning himself by my feet, his pink wet tongue hanging out of his mouth, shaking in tandem with his panting. He did not need words to tell me he was thirsty. The sun was beginning to be unkind to the black spots on my face, so it was time to return to the house. Very much unlike a mountain goat, I skipped and nearly tripped over the garden hose left on the pebbled path and forgetting my advanced age, I scurried down some moss rocks that served as giant steps to the patio.

What an awesome guy.

I thought of Bikash, not myself.

The man was told he needed to undergo an open heart surgery. It was too late for stents. He was lucky – there were no symptoms which meant he was a walking Russian roulette. It was discovered during a routine annual checkup; a slight anomaly in his ECG was enough to ring the alarm bells. He walked a lot, avoided lifts and escalators. He took the bus whenever he could. He did not wheeze, there were no fainting spells and he wasn’t ever aware his heart was working overtime.

What would a normal person do and what would the reaction be when told to check in ‘as soon as you can’ for such a serious operation? Panic? Get emotional, question the probability of meeting Death? Be cool, organise their financial matters, write a will? As for me, I would probably sit down and cry first, then regret over the things I didn’t do or worse, regret over some of the things I did. Yes, I have said ‘I love you’ to all my loved ones – that’s something I won’t have to regret anymore. When Pa died, it was one of my biggest regrets, not having said I loved him. Fellas of his generation didn’t believe in words, only actions counted. So, I convinced myself Pa knew I loved him, through my actions.

“What did Bikash do?” the Mrs asked.

Bikash thought of others, not himself.

He rang to ask me for my opinion! The proposed date for his operation – “do it pronto, as soon as you can,” advised his heart specialist – clashed with a long-planned reunion in Penang with the surviving siblings in his family. Bikash, the youngest of nine, had planned a you-beaut holiday for the remaining four sisters coming from overseas. A brother in Wales had sent his apologies. The eldest sister, a cancer survivor in her eighties, was becoming immobile and this would very likely be her last trip to the Pearl of the Orient. Bikash did not want to disappoint any of them and was justifying with good reasons why he could easily defer the operation till after their planned holiday.

I am fine, I am not suddenly going to drop dead.

My heart has repaired itself sufficiently for me not to feel any symptoms.

I’m only deferring it for two months, max!

We are very close.

It would mean the world to my sisters that we give ourselves this time to be together.

I can’t be selfish and spoil their holiday.

Bikash K Sinha

Just as I was about to give him my opinion, another caller rang – the third one during the short conversation; he asked to call me back the next day and hurriedly hung up.

“Get a second or third opinion!” I shouted, as the phone disconnected.

The next day, Bikash rang as promised – it was almost noon. By then, I had already made an appointment to see my doctor. I had missed at least five, maybe six annual checkups, three due to the pandemic and the rest due to procrastination and laziness. Bikash did me the favour; the story may be about himself but it was a story that screamed at me for my lackadaisical attitude to my own well-being. In troubled times, I never lacked fortitude yet now, as I approach retirement, at a time when illness or disease or even death can strike without warning, I switch off my survival instincts. Bikash rang me for advise, yet his very action actually woke me up from my stupor. I began asking myself why.

Why have I not bothered?

Why have I let myself down?

Why am I so irresponsible that I do not look after myself?

Why isn’t my health my main priority?

Isn’t our health the most important thing we have?

Isn’t health our true wealth?

Do I not love myself?

Why do I not love myself enough?

Bikash told me his siblings were adamant they must cancel their reunion.

“Get the surgery done yesterday!” one of them said.

It was, of course, a no-brainer. We have to save ourselves first and foremost – that was what I learned from an air stewardess the first time I flew in a plane.

Bikash, always the spiritual man steeped in eastern philosophy, said that throughout our lives, we try to do good in order to feel we have done the right thing. Our kindness and generosity bring some reprieve and perhaps even joy to others and our altruism brings happiness to ourselves also. Empathy makes us more caring, more alive, more in touch with others and gives a better understanding of the people around us. Doing good gives us good karma. Providence is our reward. “So, we do not leverage providence,” he simply concluded.

I was in awe of the man. When faced with his own mortality, he was still thinking of others. He was still talking about not disappointing his siblings. He was concerned about missing our dinner party. He did not want to let me down. He was questioning his right to be selfish at a time when self-preservation was the only thing to do, not something to consider.

Providence is the result

Don’t leverage providence

Bikash K Sinha