So to Speak - The Wages of Gratitude

One does not have to be a great scholar to teach another person a great lesson. I learned mine from a weather-beaten surrounding where sweat and hard work was the order of the day. I learned it from a barefooted man who could not spell his name and who earned his living with his unskilled hands.
It was during school breaks that I had befriended this porter who was as cheerful as the sun itself. He worked hard at the dockyard, in the same terminal I worked as a tally clerk. He was always there at the stroke of the hour when the clock struck six in the morning.
Some 50 years separated us but he always shared some aspect of his life with me. It was one of those days when no ships had called at the small harbour that he sat on an old stool between two warehouses, hoping that someone would come and ask for his service. Since it also meant that I had no job that day, I would go home and he would always say, “bring back better luck tomorrow, son”.
It would be a year later that I would know that he had eleven children to feed from the meagre, unsecure earnings. I would watch him kiss the palm of his right hand whenever he got paid after a hard day’s work and raised his hands to the heavens in deep gratitude. He taught me, in a very humble way, that it was important to be grateful even if nothing was earned during the day.
“Gratitude,” he once said as we were breaking for lunch, “makes you forget the ingratitude of others towards you. Nothing hurts a person more than envying others who have a more secure livelihood.”
Well, I still think he was a great philosopher, for, his words ring true even today. He went on to teach me another lesson — one he had to learn the hard way — but I had to wait for another summer for that lesson to begin. He was sitting on the same old stool but his face wore a droopy look and his usual cheerfulness was masked by sorrow. I feared the worst and when I inquired, he said, “the accountant said goodbye to me yesterday because he is retiring. He’s decided to call it a day and said he was looking forward to a peaceful life and a pension.”
I heaved a sigh of relief that nothing bad had happened to him or his family, but still was puzzled. “It may be a happy occasion for him, but why are you so sad?” I gently asked.
He wiped his face with his head cloth and then looked at his hands, feet and other parts of his body.
“I won’t be getting any pension when I am too old to work because I am a daily wage labourer,” he said. And I have eleven children to feed.”
That summer came and went and a few others too.
On my final year at school, the old man met with a tragic accident. He broke an arm and fractured his thighbone. I went to see him and he told me that part of the tools of his trade — the two broken limbs — would never mend properly.
Was he sad? No, instead, he said, “something would come up sooner or later.” And he was right. Six months passed and I saw him again limping in a marketplace with a group of young muscular men. “One of the dockyard contractors hired me to supervise young porters for a government project,” he said giving me a toothy grin. Something indeed had come up for the man who was always grateful.