Gambling away a life.

Once upon a time, there were two brothers from a poor family. At the tender age of fourteen, the elder brother had to drop out of school so as to enable the other brother to continue his studies because the family just did not have sufficient money to afford two school-going children. You see, in those days, parents had to buy text-books, pay school fees each month and fork out a sum of money for transport. The poor family found the expenses too much for their meagre incomes.

Life for the younger son was not easy although he had the opportunity to go on studying. He had to cook for the family, clean the only rented room they had and wash up the plates and utensils besides completing his homework. The only thing in the house he needed not to do was to wash the clothes. His mother did that before preparing some food to hawk in the streets from afternoon to late evening in order to supplement the husband’s income. To help her hawk her food was the younger son.
Life was tough but the family was tough enough to carry on with their life.

Unfortunately, life is never as easy going as this endlessly. There came a time when evil lurked at the elder son’s place of work, eveready to pull him away from his profitable boiled cuttlefish with sauce which he was good at and selling the food at the Penang Esplanade at night. The younger son helped him by waiting at the tables.
Somebody started a gambling table where the stall-owners and outsiders gather to stake their money for easy gains. Then, there was one evening when business was not as good as usual. The elder brother moved towards the group of gamblers, pulled by the lure of winning money. Initially, he did win and that was the problem. He learned from the experience that easy money could come from gambling. It was to be his downfall.

He lost interest in his own stall and business. He left his younger brother to manage the business while he gambled. Of course, he did win now and then but most of the time he ended the loser.

Realising what is happening, the younger brother decided that action had to be taken to stop the evil. One evening, he had to leave the stall unattended to slip away and report the gamblers to the nearest police-station which was about four kilometers away. The police came and broke up the gambling group but the urge to gamble had lodge itself too deeply in the gamblers. They posted look-outs and continued with their games, stopping only when they received word that the police was on the way.
Eventually, the stall of boiled cuttlefish with sauce had to be closed as it could not be managed by the younger brother alone.

That was the first tragedy to befall the gambling brother. Since then, wherever he worked, he was constantly frequenting places where gamblers gather. His earning is usually lost and sometimes he was even in debt.

One vice led to another and soon he even took up drinking. As a result he got diabetes and then, high blood pressure. Throughout his life, he was always unable to cope with his money, gambling his pay away and drinking to enjoy whatever life there was in drink; or was it to forget the misery of life. Some gal did love him enough to try to get him away from his vices but failed and gave up. Finally his life ended after much booze at a New Year Eve’s party.

See how dangerous the pull of gambling is to people. We certainly do not wish anyone we love to be dragged into its ‘quicksand’ unable to crawl out to save himself or herself. Gambling is a vice we must always be on guard against.