The old man walked down the street. The day had been one of his worst. He had lost his home to his son and daughter-in-law, who had thrown him out of the household believing him to be dead weight. The day was one of the coldest the town had faced and unable to cope from the immense cold, his cattle had all frozen to death. Apart from the two rupees he had in his pocket, the old man had nothing to eat, nowhere to live and nowhere to go. His humble attire of a torn jacket and a pair of trousers did very little to protect him from the freezing cold. As he slowly walked beside the array of shops that line the two sides of the hilly road, he couldn't help but shudder at the immense cold of the mountains that was now pricking every cell of his body. The sun had just set behind the mountains and darkness was slowly creeping into the valley. As dusk was arriving, the crowd in the shops had multiplied. People chatted away at the village hall, talking about their daily experiences. Some of them raised their hands, calling the old man over to gossip with them. But the old man was in no mood to gossip. He turned them away with a simple smile and continued walking. He crossed the village hall walking towards the village boundary. By the time he reached the forest on the boundaries of the village, the darkness of the night had already permeated into the village grounds. The night was pressing on his entire body, coating him in a suffocating silence. The old man walked straight up to the forest line. Sighing deeply, he looked up towards the stars and then sat down against an oak tree. He looked up again towards the sky. The stars, the constellations floating about in the endless abyss of the universe. They all seemed so grand, so majestic, so vibrant, unlike him. The deep agony within his soul only matched the endless darkness of the universe. He felt numb, painless. His heart which should have been torn to splits due to the extreme agony, was still intact. It was almost like he had experienced so much pain that he was beyond pain itself. But this was momentary. Soon tears drizzled from his eyes. A frightful shivering overtook him as the pain, agony grasped him firmly. The tears moistened his cheeks, flowing down his face and raining down on the cold earth beneath. With a desperate cry, he flung himself on the cold brown earth, rubbing his face in the soil. His agony continued for half an hour after which, with great vexation he controlled himself. Leaning against the oak tree, the old man looked up once more towards the endless sky. A cloud had drifted into his vision from nowhere, blocking the magnificent stars. The old man sighed again. Just like his house, the stars in the night sky had also been stolen from him. He placed his head on the coarse bark and closed his eyes. The chirping of the night insects floated to his ears. Buzz Buzz Buzzzz. Others would have been irritated by these mindless sounds but the old man had learnt to cherish it all, everything he had, everything he experienced. The cold had grown much tolerable by now. The old man knew that this oak tree was his last shelter. He seemed to recall his younger days, his ancestral home in the meadows. The green lush fields where he played all day, running around and rejoicing in the sea of grass. He wished to return, even if just once, to this paradise.
With a deep longing in his heart, he opened his eyes once again and almost instantly squealed in his shock. He was no longer sitting against the oak tree in the village border. He was now standing, in a lush green sea of grass. The sounds of the night creatures were no longer playing in his ears. Instead the repeated buzzing of the cicadas and the synonymous cackling of the crows reverberated in his ears. These were the meadows he had longed to see, a sight for which he had waited his entire unfortunate life. He waded his way through the knee-high grass. On the yonder border, a house came into view. A wooden two-storied farmhouse with a beautiful porch leading to a gravel landing stood basking in the sunlight. The old man walked towards the house, unable to believe that he was standing in front of a house that resemble his ancestral home. He walked up to the porch and stopped, gazing at the magnificent building whose polished wooden walls gleamed in the sunlight. As he came closer to the house, an old memory re-surfaced in his mind. The memory of his father. The most loving father anyone could ever have. It was a pity he did not have a faithful son. The old man how gruesomely he had beaten his father, when he was a young man, to gain hold over the ancestral home. His father had wanted to preserve the house, believing it to be a mark of their ancestry, but the old man had never paid heed to his thoughts. He wanted to sell the house to a promoter who was willing to pay quite a hefty sum. So the old man beat his father to submission and then threw him out of the house. At that time, the old man could do anything for money. And that was his sin, greed. That greed has led him to becoming just like his father, homeless and abandoned by his own people. As he stood in front of the house recalling these memories, he couldn't help but feel an unbearable cold grip him. Very soon, a freezing cold began prickling his skin. He felt a freezing pain affix him to the ground. He looked hither and tither for the source of this unbearable cold but all he saw was the green grass glistening in the sunlight. He found himself slowly growing more and more immobile. The cold had frozen him to the ground. His feet had gone numb long ago. Now he could no longer feel his hands. The piercing cold had started spreading across his face, making quick work of his eyes. He found his gaze fixed towards the wooden house, unable to move a single atom on his body, unable to free himself from the bonds which had grasped him and unable to embrace the warmth of the sunlight. There was something else. Something hidden deep in his conscience. There was a word for it -- guilt. It was a feeling the old man had hidden in the dark corners of his heart. But now looking at this house, that feeling had re-surfaced along with the countless memories. That guilt for what he had done, for his greed. This eternal guilt began tearing him up from inside. It had all began with just a simple feeling of sadness and now it had amounted to this massive guilt. Repeatedly, again and again, the images of his father begging him to leave the house alone, the bloodied face of his beloved father when he was beaten to death by his only son for inheritance, that impression of betrayal on his face began flashing before his eyes. He screamed in pain but nothing came out of his mouth, his mouth had been sewn shut by the piercing cold, the cold of his own greed. He could only wallow in silence, regret his decisions and stand in that green meadow, affixed, unable to move for an eternity as his guilt shattered his consciousness into countless tiny pieces.
An eternity he will spend
In yonder foreign land
Wallowing for his sins
Repenting for his mistakes
Frozen by his own greed
And
Being torn up by his own guilt.
