. . . . . Ramon’s Harvest of Hope
Ramon was born into a household where his father spent every waking hour bent double over his sewing machine, working himself ragged. He could only ever afford to tailor shirts, never trousers—and so Ramon and his siblings went barefoot, or at best wrapped in half-finished, tattered cloth that barely covered their feet. From earliest childhood, Ramon took these hardships not as a deprivation but simply as “the way of life.”
He watched with longing as the other village children unpacked treats and new toys—gifts bought by relatives with money they’d scraped together. On Eid, when wealthier families received generous cash gifts from well-off kin, Ramon’s share was sometimes a meager half-rupee. Other years, his father managed only to boil a small pot of stew, and the children ate that humble fare on the festival day. But Ramon refused to let poverty steal Eid’s joy. He made himself a vow: no matter how little his family had, he would never miss the spirit of celebration.
As he grew a bit older, Ramon found his first solution: on Eid mornings he would quietly slip away to beg—or, if the other children were watchful, cajole them into giving up their own fireworks and sweets. If he met resistance, he’d blockade every exit until they gave in. In this way, even if chased and scolded, he always managed to join in the festivities more heartily than most.
With time, Ramon’s little Eid enterprises grew into something more generous. He would take the village children on excursions into the nearby town, buy them candies and trinkets with whatever small coins he’d saved—and, like a shrewd contractor, he’d pocket three rupees of “service fee” for himself. Thus, when Eid came, it truly felt like Eid for everyone.
As he matured further, Ramon arrived at a simple life philosophy: “In a world where there is always food, fish, and help to be had, I too have a share in others’ generosity.” So whenever there was a wedding feast, a charity distribution, or any community gathering offering free food, he would appear uninvited—and, no matter how much he was teased or sent packing, he never left without at least a bite in his belly.
Eventually Ramon concluded that the best place to find charity was the mosque rather than the village homes. He became, perhaps uniquely, the only man in town who went to the mosque not to pray but to eat. He would attend Friday prayers not out of piety but for the free lunch that often followed—and, in the month of Ramadan, he spent his days waiting for the call to break the fast, convinced that “I am hungrier than anyone here.”
When the mosque’s imam learned that Ramon had no job, they sometimes kicked him out; Ramon would reply, unashamed, “I’m more fasting than you are.” Seeking better fortune, he would wander from one mosque to another over the Ramadan season, but when the festival at Ramadan’s end approached, he felt more sorrow than the other poor souls, dreaming that “if only every month could be Ramadan.”
Ramon had come to understand both the necessity of food and the value of money. When a few coins did come his way, he hoarded them, never spending so much as a paisa frivolously. When he needed to buy something, he would barter and haggle so long that shopkeepers learned to refuse him at first sight—yet Ramon never resented them, knowing that their reluctance sprang from his own plight as much as theirs.
Life pressed on, and Ramon eventually married and had children of his own. One day, he returned home with nothing but a half-empty tin of condensed milk. His wife called him in and said, “Ramon, have you hidden my daughter’s shoes somewhere?” Ramon smiled to himself, remembering his own childhood and the many shoes he’d secretly collected over the years—and he stepped inside, the old hunger and cleverness ever at his side.