EVEN as a child growing up in the late 1950s and through my teenage years in the early 1970s, I noticed a barrier that shaped the lives of everyone in my village. It wasn’t a wall you could see or touch, but it was there, dividing us. On one side were the have-nots, and on the other were the few who seemed to have more than they needed.
I never asked my parents about it. To me, it felt as natural as the grass underfoot or the trees in the jungle. It was life, and questioning it seemed pointless.
But in high school, I stumbled upon another barrier – one far more insidious. Perhaps it was all the books I’d been reading in the tiny library, or maybe it was just growing older and seeing the world with sharper eyes. I realised that beyond the visible divide of wealth, there was an invisible cage: a legacy of shame and stigma passed down through generations.
For my fellow villager, Pita, that third barrier wasn’t just an idea. It was his reality – a spectre that haunted his every step.
I found out Pita was twelve years older than me when I was ten. He was born into a family weighed down by a reputation as heavy as lead. His father, Langli, was known in the village as a man of failures. He had tried his hand at everything – farming, trading, even carpentry – but each venture ended in ruin. His temper did not help matters; he was quick to anger and slow to apologise. The villagers whispered about him with a mix of disdain and pity, their words dripping with judgment.
Langli had been married twice before, both unions ending in divorce. When he married Alin, Pita’s mother, the village shook its head, convinced it would end no differently. Alin tried her best to hold their fragile family together, but even she could not escape the shadow of Langli’s reputation.
By the time Pita was old enough to understand the world around him, he was already marked. “Son of a loser”, the children called him, their laughter sharp and cruel. At school, his teachers regarded him with thinly veiled scepticism, as though failure ran in his blood. Every mistake he made, no matter how small, was met with a knowing look – as if it had been inevitable.
The other children kept their distance, and not just because of the taunts. Their parents warned them against getting too close, fearing that Pita’s “bad luck” might rub off. He grew up not just isolated but invisible, his existence reduced to the mistakes of a man he did not choose to be born to.
Pita tried, though. He worked harder than anyone else his age, hoping to prove that he was more than his father’s legacy. When the villagers organised grass-cutting at the cemetery, he volunteered eagerly, his hands blistering from hours of work. But instead of gratitude, he was met with suspicion. “He’s only doing it to make himself look good,” they muttered.
It was during one of these cemetery gatherings that Pita found himself sitting next to Pison, an elderly retired civil servant. Pison had once been a friend of Langli’s, though the friendship had faded over the years. Unlike the rest of the village, Pison did not hold grudges or whisper behind backs. He saw something in Pita that others refused to see – potential.
“You’re not your father, lad,” Pison told him one evening as they rested under the shade of a banyan tree. “And you’re not what this village says you are, either.”
Pison’s words were a balm to Pita’s wounded spirit. The old man shared stories of his time working in the city, tales of triumphs and struggles that felt like windows into a world far removed from the suffocating confines of the village. For the first time, Pita dared to dream of a life beyond the whispers and stares.
But dreams, as he quickly learned, weren’t enough. The weight of prejudice was relentless. Every step forward felt like wading through mud, and every small success was dismissed or twisted into something sinister. His mother, Alin, tried to comfort him, but her own weariness made her words hollow. Langli, for all his faults, loved his son, but his love came wrapped in bitterness – a reminder of his own regrets.
One drizzly afternoon, an incident pushed Pita closer to the edge. While helping a neighbour repair a broken fence, a small misunderstanding escalated. By the evening, the story had warped into a tale of theft, with Pita cast as the villain. The villagers did not need proof; the accusation was enough. The whispers grew louder, and for the first time, Pita felt the full force of their hatred.
That night, sitting alone in his dimly lit room, Pita considered leaving the village, changing his name, and starting fresh somewhere no one knew his family’s history. But the thought felt hollow.
Years passed. Pita stayed, rooted by resilience and a quiet defiance against the narrative forced upon him. One drizzly evening, he stopped by Pison’s grave. The old man had passed away a few years earlier, leaving behind a void no one else could fill.
Standing there, Pita thought of the stories Pison had told him – stories of struggle, yes, but also of triumph. He realised then that breaking free from the village’s stigma was about refusing to let their judgment define him. He did not need their approval; he needed his own.
Slowly, Pita began to rebuild his life, not for them but for himself. He took up carpentry, learning the craft from an old manual Pison had once given him. His work, meticulous and honest, began to speak for itself. Some villagers came to him for small repairs, then larger projects. They did not praise him openly – that would have been too much – but their actions spoke volumes.
The whispers did not stop entirely, but they softened. And though Pita could not erase the past, he began to see a future that was not defined by it. He became a quiet presence in the village, someone who listened more than he spoke, whose kindness was steady and unassuming.
Pita’s story did not end with a dramatic triumph or the village’s sudden acceptance. Life rarely offers such neat resolutions. Some of the villagers still whispered, though less often. But Pita no longer cared. He had learned that the labels others placed on you only have power if you let them.
In the end, he was not just the “son of a loser”. He was Pita – a man who refused to let his past define his future, a man who chose to stay and live not for the village’s approval but for his own quiet revolution.
Food for Thought
The story of Pison has lived in my mind for more than fifty years, ever since I was in secondary school in the late 1960s. It has always felt like both a burden and a warning. I tried to write it a few times when I felt motivated, but each attempt failed because it drained me just thinking about it.
For one thing, I found it strange how a label can cling tighter than your skin. Three words – son of a loser – can define your entire existence before you have even had the chance to live it. You come into the world already wearing someone else’s history like a name tag you cannot peel off. It is not your sin, not your failure, but somehow, it is yours to carry.
Maybe it began with a misstep generations ago – someone’s mistake, someone’s rebellion, someone’s refusal to fit neatly into the community’s idea of “belonging”. And because the world can be cruel in its simplicity, that one defiance becomes a family legacy.
Others whisper and nod, passing down their judgment as though it were truth carved in stone. You are born into a script written long before you arrived, and every glance, every smirk, every “you’re just like your father” reminds you that free will is a fragile thing.
The hardest part is not the mockery – it is the invisibility beneath it. People do not see you; they see a continuation of a story they already decided the ending to. Even your attempts to be good become evidence of something false.
The same act that redeems others only deepens your suspicion. It is a quiet kind of cruelty that eager people have to keep another person small.
So, what do you do? Escape? Maybe. Leave, change your name, chase some version of yourself untouched by history. But even then, the echo follows. Because the real prison is not the gossip; it is the way the gossip seeps into how you see yourself.
You start to wonder if they were right all along. That is the poison of shame – it does not need others to survive; it grows inside you.
The only way out, perhaps, is not to fight for their approval but to stop needing it; accept that your worth does not hinge on their version of your story. You were not born to redeem your parents, and you do not owe anyone an apology for the blood that runs through your veins.
Maybe that is the quiet revolution: learning to live without their permission. It is not easy, and it will not make the whispers stop – but it turns their curse into something powerless. Because in the end, being the “son of a loser” loses its weight when you stop letting others decide what losing means.
DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Sarawak Tribune. The writer can be reached at www.hayhenlin@gmail.com
Quote:
“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.” – Brené Brown, an American researcher, professor, author and speaker known for her work on vulnerability, courage, empathy and leadership.
