This story was recounted to me by a friend about his uncle. In our village, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, economic conditions were quite challenging. Most people were farmers, cultivating rice fields and interspersing them with colorful flower crops. After working in the fields during planting seasons, farmers had considerable free time, and his uncle, belonging to a relatively affluent family, had a leisurely hobby—bird hunting.
While the village children and most residents improvised their hunting rifles with tree branches, rubber bands, and small stones, his uncle was different. He owned a powerful 12kg air rifle for shooting lead bullets. Every day, he would take his rifle into the surrounding forests, marshes, and sandy banks—all ideal spots for hunting.
Day after day, he hunted a variety of game such as pheasants, rabbits, field mice, and especially birds. For the poor village children, each rabbit or bird caught meant a modest addition to their meager meals. But for his uncle, hunting was not just about sustenance; it was an endless passion and joy. He carried his rifle everywhere, pausing at every rustle in the bushes or movement in the trees—a hunter always on the prowl.
Over the years, he accumulated a staggering number of kills, earning a reputation for marksmanship and an excessive zeal for bird hunting. Despite numerous pleas and warnings from elders about the consequences of over-hunting, citing the local adage “If the land is good, birds will nest,” he ignored them all.
Then one fateful day, after a hearty lunch, he was struck by severe abdominal pain and had to be rushed to the district hospital for emergency treatment. The doctor diagnosed him with severe internal hemorrhoids (piles). He underwent prolonged hospitalization, and later his family requested he be allowed to recover at home due to the high cost of extended hospital stays.
Since then, confined to his bed at home, he could hardly move and relied heavily on his family for support. You may have some understanding of hemorrhoids; blood continued to flow incessantly from his rectum, causing him immense discomfort. He lay there, unable to wear pants due to the constant flow of blood, in an era where items like toilet paper or diapers were scarce. He lay on his stomach, propped up with a pillow under his abdomen, finding some relief from the pain and reduced bleeding.
During one visit, my friend heard him crying and he said:
“You see my lying position, what is it like?”
“What do you mean, Uncle?”
His uncle replied, choked with emotion:
“Over these days, I’ve come to realize that lying like this is no different from those birds I’ve shot all these years. Every dead bird lies buttocks raised up to the sky, just like me leaking blood. Suddenly, I feel afraid.”
“So what should we do now?” my friend asked.
After a moment of silence, his uncle replied:
“I don’t know anymore. Perhaps this is the law of Karma, my dear. I’ve shot countless birds in my life, and perhaps now is the time I pay for my sins. I bear the consequences of my actions. But you, my dear, should look at my example and avoid hunting, avoid killing birds and animals needlessly. We gain a meal, but it’s their lives we take. And now here I am, living worse than dead.”
He wept, and my friend wept with him…
Perhaps as he said, this might be the karmic consequence of hunting birds. If only in the past he had heeded the advice of the villagers, curbing his obsession and not getting lost in the thrill of hunting, perhaps today things would be different.
Though he has long since passed away, the story of his uncle continues to be told in our village to the younger generations. Whenever we see flocks of birds flying overhead or hear their melodious calls, we inevitably recall his uncle’s story and the homemade rubber guns that we long ago discarded and forgotten.
2 comments
Good!
Thank you, friend!