The Fair Weather Son

Karma is from a very humble family where he had finished his schooling with great sufferings. His only mother had worked hard to send him to school. Every single coin mother earned had been spent on Karma’s education thinking that she doesn't want her son to suffer like her. As same fate as she suffered.  Mother worked in the field under any sort of weather. She worked in heavy downpours, under scorching sun and she never gave up working in strong wind because she thought she want to suffer for his only son.

Though she wore cloths, she always sent the best cloths for her son. She thought her son’s happiness was more important than her own and she never failed her responsibility to shower happiness on him, too. She loved her son very much. She liked to go and meet her son at the school but she thought that her son’s friends might look down her son as a son of poor widow and never went to meet.

After many years of suffering, Karma got a decent job. It was a great relief for mother. She dreamed of a comfortable life, she imagined a life away from her field to devote herself to the god because she had committed lots of sin for the well-fare of them.

However, the dream never went as far the dreamed. Karma was completely changed physically and mentally after getting a job. He even got married and he hardly sent money to his mother. He never went village to meet his mother and he didn't bother his mother who had suffered for his education. One day mother called him,

“Karma, I am your mother.”

“Yes, what made you call me?”

“I just wanted to ask……” she hesitated to complete the sentence. After sometime she got strength and resumed.

“I wanted to ask….if you could come to village to meet me and if you don’t mind please…… send me some amount.”

“Why I have to come to meet you? Don’t you know that I am working here? Who will give money if I come to meet you? I've sent the money last time and again you want?”

“I know you work there but I want to meet you since it has been few years we haven’t met. The money you have sent was two years ago and it’s almost finished. Now I cannot work in the field like before, I have to buy everything from shops to feed me.”Mother told him with her shivering soft voice.

“I’m sorry mother, you don’t know how hard the life in Thimphu. I have to buy fancy car like my friends and I have to look after my family. You old granny will never understand.” He barked back to his mother.

The words hit her heart like a razor sharp. She hung up the phone and sobbed like a child out of despair.

One day Karma sat on a couch and was reading a news paper, his phone rang and he got the news of his mother’s demise.