Once upon a time, there lived a poor old man. He was homeless hence lived on streets and under open sky. Be it winter wind or summer sun, he beared it all alone.He did not complain about anything. He lived his life for himself and was content about everything he had.

A busy rich man, would pass this street in his car. One rainy morning, he saw the old man without any jacket and rain coat. He felt pity and thought to donate his old jackets to the old man. “I can help him by giving him food also”, the rich man thought. He stopped his car and approached the old man, ” Are you not feeling cold?”. The old man lift his head up and just looked at the man talking to him. The rich man continued, “Come with me I wil give you my jackets and food”. A smile formed on the old man’s face experiencing such care.

They both went to the rich man’s house. As they reached, the rich man got a call on his phone, “Can you stay here for a moment? I will be back”. The rich man left the old man in the passenger seat of his car. The old man was feeling happy for he will get food to fill his stomach and jackets which he had never got to wear in his life. The poor man waited for the rich man in his car. From afternoon it turned evening, and the sky started to get darker and darker. The smile on the poor man’s face started fading. He started to feel hungry.

He opened the car door and came out to check out for the rich man. Knowing he was an outsider, the security person asked him, “What are you doing here?”, without giving him a chance to speak, “You are not supposed to come in. This is a work place” The poor man waited for hours but the rich man never came back. The rich man forgot to give his jackets and food to the poor man. The poor man started walking out in disappointment. His disappointment was apparent and it had brought tears to his eyes for the first time. The poor man had lost all hope and confidence.

A few days later, the rich man passed by the same street and it was then he remembered that in his busy schedule he forgot to give his jackets to the old man. A few days later, the rich man passed by the same street and it was then he remembered that in his busy schedule he forgot to give his jackets to the old man.

He immediately went to the street where he had seen the old man. The rich man could feel the wind whipping through the buildings, creaking and groaning like an old rocking chair. Folding his hands and hugging his jacket,”It is so cold today too”.

When he reached there, he found few men gathered at that place. Making way through them he went ahead and was stunned seeing what he saw. He saw that the old man was lying frozen, curling up his body.

He was dead!!

The rich man felt guilty. He felt the poor man was alive because he lived independent, with no struggle even in sun or rain. He felt guilty for he had given him hope of jackets to fight the wind and rain, food to fight his hunger but did not heed to his words. The poor lost his self-confidence by getting a ray of false hope.

Moral of the story:

Being dependent and then being ignored, we lose confidence. There is no one among us who has never faced disappointment at some point in his or her life. The cost of mediocrity is disappointment, but the key is what we do with it and how we handle it.

Things are as they are, we suffer because we imagined different. It was not as good as he expected. He felt unhappy because his hopes and expectations got unfulfilled.

Note: Special thanks to Kajal for agreeing to collaborate with me in writing stories. This story was narrated to her, in her childhood, by her father.