{"id":744,"date":"2022-01-03T11:30:10","date_gmt":"2022-01-03T06:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/?p=744"},"modified":"2022-01-03T11:52:15","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T06:22:15","slug":"old-man-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/index.php\/2022\/01\/03\/old-man-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Man & Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was very cold one Wednesday morning in December. An old man in rags was sitting idle outside a town school.<\/p>\n

The sky was overcast, as if just minutes from snowing.<\/p>\n

The old man was frail, his hands trembling, his wrinkled cheeks red.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Illustration by: Danish Mir<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Young students, in neat and warm school uniforms, were coming in, all cheerful.\u00a0 A lot of them didn\u2019t notice the old man.<\/p>\n

But many found his looks funny and laughed at him.<\/p>\n

The old man stood there quietly, watching intently the kids who laughed at him.<\/p>\n

A little boy came to stand beside him. Not in a uniform, the boy was holding a piece of bread in his hand, and he offered half of it to the old man.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou seem hungry,\u201d he said, as he handed the bread to the old man.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\u00a0Illustration by: Danish Mir<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThank you. I am,\u201d replied the old man.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you not going inside? Do you not study here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. I wish I could study here or in any school. My parents cannot afford to send me to school, but they teach me good manners and ways of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The old man ate the piece of bread and left.<\/p>\n

The next morning, an expensive car came to wait outside the school. A rich inside was looking at the pavement where the boy and the old man had stood earlier.<\/p>\n

There was no sign of the old man, but after a while, the boy came to stand right where he had been the morning before.<\/p>\n

The rich man came out of the car and went to the boy.<\/p>\n

\u201cHello,\u201d he greeted the boy.\u00a0 \u201cDid you not recognise me?\u201d<\/p>\n

The boy had no idea who the man was.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the old man you were kind to yesterday,\u201d said the rich man.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was here in rags yesterday because I wanted to see if anyone would be kind to an old, funny-looking man. And of the many people who saw me here, you were with the right manners. Now, I want to help you by helping you study in this school.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boy was happy to see his dream come true. He took the rich man to his parents, who had taught him all the good manners.<\/p>\n

Thus began his journey at school.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was very cold one Wednesday morning in December. An old man in rags was sitting idle outside a town school. The sky was overcast, as if just minutes from snowing. The old man was frail, his hands trembling, his wrinkled cheeks red. Young students, in neat and warm school uniforms, were coming in, all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[254,12,11,8,36,252,67,253],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-boy","tag-inspiring-tales","tag-kashmir","tag-kids-stories","tag-kindness","tag-manners","tag-old-man","tag-school","enable-dropcap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetoad.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}