The Cambodian Octogenarian

 

As she approached us from a distance, her walk strangely reminded me of Gandhi’s Dandi march footage – long purposeful strides of  one with a mission. She greeted us with a smile that sprang from her soul. “Take a seat, the principal would be here any moment,” she said and dragged three wooden stools. 

We were checking out an orphanage school in Siem Rep, Cambodia with the able assistance of our tour guide (who also functioned as our interpreter) and were glad to be offered a spot of shade in the warm and humid afternoon.  

Her advanced age struck me. Feeling ashamed a bit I got up with a jerk and offered her my seat. She patted my back indicating it was all right. I sat down again, enormously intrigued at this woman.  

We were to learn that she was the caretaker of the orphanage school. She performed many duties being a sort of principal’s admin. She kept the premises in order, oversaw the kitchen, got teachers their supplies,  laundered children’s  clothes, mended their  uniforms,  fixed leaks on the roof, yelled at  utility  personnel when there was a power outage, rang the school bell at the end of each period  – in short she was the logistic whole and soul of the school.

I asked her age. She spread her right palm wide and opened 3 fingers of her left. “Eighty?” I exclaimed.

 “Well over eighty,” corrected our guide as he translated  her  Khmer. 

During the time we were there, there wasn't a moment she would sit still.  One could tell that her mind was in a trance of to dos, in a state of flow as she sprang from one task to the next, as though nothing mattered to her than giving herself entirely to the job at hand.

I couldn’t let my attention wander off her; watching her from under a tree, her  extraordinary agility as she went about in the hot sun embarrassed me. She would stoop down, straighten upright and sprint forward to the next item that needed her attention with the swiftness of a teenager.  

I noticed that she had no excess fat and  her posture could  have been a poster  for  perfect health, someone you would associate with unclogged arteries and text book perfect  sugar and cholesterol counts. Her radiant eyes revealed a childlike  mind  free from regrets of the past or anxieties about the future. 

I will claim that going about her day at the school,  she must have been feeling as fulfilled as MS Subbalakshmi would have while singing her  krtithis, Sachin Tendulkar while hitting his centuries or  JK Rowling while writing Harry Potter. 

She didn't  need Shakespeare’s sonnets to enrich her life nor need be bothered by Socrates and his fuss about unexamined lives.  And she might very well have guffawed at  Sadguru’s sermons.

If you can imagine Krishna hanging out with Arjuna over a pint of beer in the nearby Pub Street,  he would have drawn the latter’s attention to the octogenarian and said, “Arjuna, in case you didn’t quite follow what I was telling the other day in the middle of the battlefield, here is a perfect example of a true karma yogi.”