I used to see many of them - now
there do not appear to be many anymore - old women in their faded
black long-sleeved cotton blouses and loose pants, sitting
patiently behind little wooden
trestles
on which they had
set up
their
wares - small bottles of sweets, packets of dried ginger
and
plums, cigarettes in loose sticks of five or six stuck in a
little tin.
And there was the inevitable lit
joss-stick
standing in a tin in front of the
meagre wares, a
reminder to the gods that they were to be kind to these old women
and give them good business. Sitting behind their trestles by the
side of the passageways in front of shops and houses, and largely
ignored by the flow of people shopping and going about their
business in the city, they became a separate, pathetic little
world unto themselves.
Only occasionally was their existence acknowledged - by a hurrying
pedestrian in need of a quick smoke, by a child who wanted a sweet
or some dried plums. But by and large, they were forgotten in the
pitiless
hustle
of city life, for with the modern shops which sold everything, who
would want to buy the pitiably inadequate wares of an old woman?
And so she sat, tired and
forlorn,
waiting all day, and the large pocket inside her blouse was
without the little coins she had dreamed would fill it. In her old
age she
wept
easily, and so she shed tears over the sweets and small biscuits
going soft and sticky for want of anybody to buy them. She put a
larger joss-stick in the tin, her lips moving desolately in
prayer, imploring the great goddess Kuan Yin to have mercy on her,
an old woman of sixty, alone in the world. She had never married
and therefore had no children to take care of her in her old age.
There would be no one to offer prayers for her after her death.
And now death appeared as a desirable way out of her misery and
bitterness. "Kuan Yin, Most Merciful Goddess, come and take me
away to Heaven to live with you forever".
Her prayer was answered! That night she had a dream in which she
saw the Goddess Kuan Yin - how beautiful she was - slowly come
down from heaven to her. And Kuan Yin told her, "My daughter, your
prayer is heard. You are a pure soul. Get ready to come with me on
the seventh day. I shall make you one of my fourteen
handmaidens in
heaven".
When she awoke, the tears of joy were still in her eyes, and
recollecting the dream in all its vividness of detail, she wept
afresh. She began to prepare for Kuan Yin's coming for her in
seven days as the goddess had promised. First she went to the
temple to cleanse herself and offer fruits and scented flowers.
Then she went to the rusty biscuit tin that she kept by her side
all day, counted the
notes and coins inside and found she had enough for a
coffin. She
had the coffin placed upwards, leaning against the wall of the
unused space of the
tenement
house in which she shared a room with
many other old people, so that when placed in the coffin in death
her body would point
heavenwards.
The word spread rapidly - first through the tenement house, then
the neighbourhood, then even the country through the newspapers
eager for news - of an old woman named Chow Ah Sum, aged sixty,
who had had a vision of the Goddess of Mercy, Kuan Yin, and had
been promised that she would die on a specified day, at a
specified time, and
thence be taken to heaven. A coffin was ready, the old
woman sat near it day and night, ready for her appointment with
death.
The crowds came, the young out of curiosity and cynicism, the old
out of a touching reconciliation with the notion of death. The old
woman's unshakeable faith in the truth of her dream had the effect
of reducing the large crowds who came to a state of
awed silence;
even the young
hoodlums,
in their fancy clothes and tattooed arms, merely
gaped. There
were two reporters there, rather pleased with the unusual nature
of the event, taking quick notes and photographs, but the old
woman sat still and impassive through it all, as if there were
nobody around, for she was waiting, waiting for the first signs of
the coming of the goddess Kuan Yin for her.
Only one more day and she would be free and happy at last! The
suspense was great - the more imaginative asked among themselves
whether Chow Ah Sum would be lifted bodily to heaven by the
goddess? On that much-awaited day, the telephone board in the
national newspaper office was actually
jammed with
calls from the public, anxiously asking whether the old woman was
dead?
She wasn't. The evening of the same day, she wept in
disappointment and bitterly complained that the goddess Kuan Yin
could not have kept her promise because the atmosphere was not
pure - how many impure,
unchaste people
were there, surrounding her and her coffin! Chow Ah Sum pleaded
with them to leave her alone, to let her die in peace.
Then the news spread again. On the day that the goddess Kuan Yin
was to appear, something miraculous had happened. A strange,
wonderful plant had suddenly
burst into
bloom
on a small piece of waste land behind the house. Some said the
flower was as big as a man's head, others that it gave a lovely
scent. Nobody of course was interested in the botanical name that
was used for it in the papers (a young, enthusiastic reporter had
done some quick research), or in the information that it was a
rare tropical variety, probably first brought over from South
America, that it seldom flowered and when it did, its petals were
light purple, bulbous, and so on. What was infinitely more
interesting was that the old woman claimed that the flower was a
sign from heaven for her - a sign that the goddess Kuan Yin had
decreed that
she remained on earth longer, to do
good
deeds
among the people. The good deeds were quickly attested to and
described, and the news spread in a fever of excitement and
wonder.
Chow Ah Sum was working miracles, by the power of the goddess Kuan
Yin! She could cure the sick - a woman claimed that she felt much
better after drinking the water into which Chow Ah Sum had dropped
the
ashes
from a piece of prayer-writing. Another woman whom she
muttered
prayers over exclaimed that she was cured of her disease!
And so the crowds came. Chow Ah Sum sat cross-legged on a
mat with the
altar of the goddess Kuan Yin beside her, surrounded by
joss-sticks. In front of her was the rusty biscuit tin into which
grateful devotees could drop their
tokens
of appreciation. And the biscuit tin was filling up nicely.
Chow Ah Sum, her eyes closed and her lips moving in trance-like
prayer, was happy at last.
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