AFTER the unbearably hot afternoon, the sky weeps the drenching rain. Then a mist rises, shrouding the old hills in Jenaris.
The air is clean and crisp. And the still-visible brown-green tops of the trees marching down the steep slopes seem like magical creatures swimming in a mysterious sea. Or like the delightful characters in an Ed Sheeran-Elton John music video.
It is a moment that makes merry, a balm to the soul. An unexpected gift to us, perhaps.
In life, we sometimes receive this, do we not? Steadily, sometimes unbidden, the helping hand comes to us; from hopelessness is born a flood of help from a friend or stranger. Bruno Mars puts it this way: "If you ever find yourself stuck in the middle of the sea, I'll sail the world to find you."
This newspaper and her sister publications, Harian Metro and Berita Harian, have played not a small part in this rain of compassion on parched lives.
Many who knew not where help would come from, know now. R. Suganthi, who daily took only one meal of plain porridge, knows this. So does Siti Fatihah Zainol, whose child suffered from a congenital heart defect. They have Harian Metro to thank for this.
These gifts that went unexpectedly to them also arrived in engineer Paul Yap's life 25 years ago when he was but a child.
He was one sibling among six. Their parents washed plates and cutlery at a hawker stall. They were very poor, their home a hovel.
In desperation, he was taken to a children's shelter, Desa Amal Jireh, and it was there that he grew up, going to school and learning about life, its vagaries and victories and viciousness.
Paul's journey is not a fairy tale, but the story of a life trodden in valleys and on peaks. Of the former, the parting from family must have stabbed the deepest.
But that wound has healed, and the bonds of blood were reforged in a cradle of love. The family is one again.
This he says: "I really feel blessed that Desa Amal Jireh took me in. They gave me a second chance in life. A new beginning."
'They' also gave Paul his wife. Both were one in longing at the shelter, and one in matrimony years later. From this love was a child born two months ago.
In truth, the 37-year-old shelter in Jalan Broga did not change Paul's world. But it illuminated his outlook, showing him "{y}our word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path".
The unexpected kindness came into his life, in a manner of speaking, from rivers of living water in Desa Amal Jireh.
The chairman of the home, Reverend Terrence K.K. Sinnadurai, tells me it has received much life-sustaining funds and food from folks of all faiths.
People's generosity is amazing indeed. In times when despondency about the ways of the world is rising, faith in human kindness grows.
But even more amazing, I think, are the gifts that come unexpectedly in times of great difficulty. Like the one that went to Paul. Like the ones that are going to thousands of despairing flood victims across Malaysia.
The givers do not ask for applause, for recognition, for cameras, for ceremony. They are like the swallow in Oscar Wilde's beautiful and sorrowful Happy Prince: "Leaf after leaf of the fine gold he brought to the poor, and the children's faces grew rosier, and they laughed and played games in the street. 'We have bread now!' they cried."
Desa Amal Jireh has seen a good number of these 'swallow' donors. In the time of the pandemic, when a dry, icy wind of austerity is blowing across the land, still are gifts arriving on the doorstep.
So let's continue to give, even if it's only like the impoverished widow's "two small copper coins". Unexpected kindness is the best. It loosens the chain of self, and nourishes the spirit of the giver and receiver. Just like the magical mist on the hills of Jenaris, just like Sheeran's and John's delightful new Christmas song. Merry Xmas, folks.
The writer is NST production editor
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times
