Karma

The residents of the remote village of Flatgrass, lived in peace and harmony.  When they met, they would greet each other with a smile.

“Good morning Mr. Baker.”  The greeter would say.

“Good morning, Mrs. Blacksmith.  What a nice day.”  would be the equally friendly reply.

The village carpenter was a kind and peaceful man.  After lunch, he would sit on his front porch, greet those passing by, and exchange with them a few words about current events.  One day, he felt slightly dejected.  Maybe the carved cabinet he was working on, was not coming out as well as he expected, and maybe he had a glass of wine too many.  In any case, he was too absorbed in himself when the grocer passed by.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Carpenter.” the grocer repeated the greeting, in a louder voice and a bigger smile.

“Humph” answered the carpenter, without looking up.

The grocer walked on, but his peace of mind was disturbed.

‘What did I do to deserve that kind of treatment?’ he thought, growing even more indignant as he dwelt on the incident.

‘What makes him think he is superior to me?’ 

He then remembered his childhood.  How even then, the carpenter and his friends would make fun of him for being so clumsy.

It is with this negative frame of mind that the grocer returned home.  Dinner was ready, and his children were waiting for him, but he could only find fault with whatever he saw.  He sat down without a greeting, tasted the food, and scrunched his face.

“Where did you learn to cook?” he asked his wife harshly.

She didn’t answer, yet he continued,

“Look at this house, it’s filthy.  What do you do all day when I am gone?”

That night, his wife would not share his bed, and the grocer’s mood did not improve.  With time, his negativity worsened, and he would often let his anger out on the children.  After weeks and months of this dark, and sometimes violent, behavior, Mrs. Grocer took the children, and left the village.

Life is hard for a single mother in the city.  She tried to get work, but jobs were hard to find.  There were nights when they went to sleep hungry.  It was hard for her to see the children suffering, and to feed them, she would steal food from the market stalls.  Eventually, she was caught, and sent to prison.  The children were put in custody of the state.

The oldest boy was placed in a foster home under the care of a school teacher and his wife.  The couple believed that only strict discipline would allow the boy to overcome his lowly upbringing.  To escape this harsh environment, the boy would spend all his free time reading the books in the teacher library.  The books, despite the school teacher’s intentions, developed in the boy a hate for the regime, and a love of the “people”.  On his own at last, he gathered around him like-minded friends, and planned the revolution.  The revolutionaries grew in strength and numbers, and after bitter fighting, the old regime collapsed.  The grocer’s son became “Our beloved brother”.  He sent secret agents far and wide to search for counter-revolutionaries.  In Flatgrass, the agent insisted on finding lovers of the old regime.  Eventually he was told that the carpenter’s son was a good friend of the former mayor.  The carpenter’s son was taken away, and was never heard-from again.

The old carpenter still sits on his porch in the afternoon, but these days, the villagers no longer greet each other with a smile.