That lanky fellow lived next to my house and I watched him everyday, washing clothes and dishes, cooking food, cleaning his apartment and doing all the household chores all alone. I do not remember his name but I think he was a Christian by the picture frames hanging inside his house which were visible from my window.
By his appearance I could make out that he was a man who was in his mid-thirties, had all black hair and was a very thin structured person almost like a malnourished man. He had dark circles around his eyes and several wrinkles on his face. His cheeks were inserted making him appear to be famished all the time. At this early age he had a hunched back, it seemed that the struggles in life and the load of responsibilities had made him look like that. His back bone was seen perfectly from underneath his skin while his skin looked just like the peel of the outer covering of an apple just enough to wrap his skeleton in order to keep his bones together. Very little of flesh was in his body and all the veins of his hands were seen through his skin.
Whenever he came to buy stationary items at a local shop near my house he seemed to be in a hurry although he had nowhere to go to but his home. He never joked or gossiped with anyone and always had a serious face. He didn't have friends and was a man of very few words, maybe living alone with his old and sick mother had made him that way. His mother was a very old woman with all grey hair and was of a similar figure as her son. I thought that maybe he was a servant of the old lady but later the woman called him ‘Beta’ a term used in Hindi language to call one's son. Old age or maybe some sort of disease had made her so weak that she could barely walk without any support. Her took care of her in every way possible - from washing her clothes to preparing her meals to making her eat and carrying her to the washroom in his arms.
I think he did some menial job, as most of the time I saw him in his house. He used to prepare the breakfast and lunch, then make her mother eat it and leave for work. During the afternoon he used to come back and serve lunch to his mother and set out for work again. Then in the evening he used to cook dinner and feed his mother while also doing other household chores.
He had no other sort of entertainment except for listening to songs on the radio on Sunday mornings. He used to play the songs on full volume maybe to cheer himself up or maybe to make his neighbours listen to them. In my view he sacrificed his life for his mother. He could have got married to a young woman of her age and settled down but maybe because of her mother he chose to stay alone? He might have thought whether his wife would take care of his mother the way he does?
Sometimes I used to pity him but then I came to the realisation that it is the duty of every son to look after his parents and he was doing nothing extraordinary by looking after his mother. Our parents sacrifice their lives for us to live happily. The hard-earned money that they could spent on themselves is spent for our wellbeing. They sacrifice their lives for ours. What bigger sacrifice is there in the whole wide world?
