The old man and the sea

There are Japanese paintings of a huge menacing wave curling over a tiny lone hut on the edge of the shore that are absolutely terrifying in...

There are Japanese paintings of a huge menacing wave curling over a tiny lone hut on the edge of the shore that are absolutely terrifying in their scale and drama — as they are meant to be. Meanwhile, a haunting Japanese tale that comes to mind is of the old curmudgeon who lived alone atop a hill. He was not at all a sociable person and for the most part he had good reason to despise most of his fellow beings. Their stupid, vain chatter about unimportant things, their petty quarrels and jealousies, their mean thefts and malicious tongues together made up a most unattractive prospect.

The old man preferred his own company by far, catching the occasional fish in the little mountain stream near his hut, harvesting his few peach trees, growing a bit of rice on a little terraced field in his backyard, weaving his own cloth and drying his own buckwheat noodles on a wooden frame, which he ate from a cherrywood bowl with hashi (chopsticks) carved by his own hands. The birds sang for him which he repaid by setting a snare for them every now and then and when the sun shone silver on the sea, he even recalled a haiku or two and felt most content with his life.

One morning, as the old curmudgeon stared routinely out to sea, his eye snagged on a new rock visible far out from the water’s edge. In fact the water seemed to have rolled back all the way to the rock. The old man frowned suddenly, recalling a tale his grandfather had told him of his own youth. Just so had the water receded until a lone rock that normally stayed submerged suddenly revealed itself. And soon after, a monster wave had sprung out of the sea and engulfed the village and all the countryside for quite a distance inland.

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The old man remembered with a sudden shiver that that very day was the annual shoreside mela for which the whole village traditionally gathered. He forgot all about being a curmudgeon. A greater power called human duty had him in its grip. Too far away to warn the villagers in time, the old man set his hut on fire. Seeing the smoke, the merrymakers cried out to each other in alarm and ran to save the old man’s life which they thought was in danger. The whole village pelted uphill, for they too responded instinctively to the call of human duty. Seconds after they reached the safety of the hilltop, the tsunami devoured the beach and everything below. The Japanese tale ends here.

What stories will we tell some day in Thailand, Indonesia, Maldives, Sri Lanka and South India?