Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is the mark of a civilized society.”
— Dr Albert SchweitzerAlbert Schweitzer (1875–1965) was a remarkable polymath known for his work as a theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician.
MY people, the Bidayuh, once lived by paddy and rice in a way that is hard to explain to someone who has only ever met rice as something in a packet on a shop shelf. We were spread across Kuching, Samarahan, Lundu, Bau, Siburan, and Serian, and in the olden days, paddy was not just work. It was time, weather, worry, pride, and food on the table or on a mat on the floor.
I say “in the olden days” because I’m not sure the old belief still sits in people’s bones the way it used to. Paddy farming is no longer the main livelihood for many families. Maybe the belief has faded. Maybe it’s still there, tucked away, waiting. Either
way, I won’t argue with it too much. I’m only telling you what I remember.
Throughout my childhood from the late 1950s through the 1960s, in my village in Serian District, adults reminded one another — often and firmly — to respect rice. Not in a grand speech-making way. Just in the small, daily way that matters more.
Don’t leave even a grain of rice on the table. Don’t let it drop and lie on the floor. And especially, don’t leave it on the ground outside — in a farm hut, in the jungle.
When we finished eating, we would check around for stray grains. We would pick them up with a careful fingertip and dispose of them properly, or better still, give them to the chickens or birds. It sounds fussy, doesn’t it? But it was as normal as washing your hands.
The warning was simple: “The rice will cry if you leave it.”
It’s a way of teaching children not to waste food. But it was also more than that. If the reminder had been only “Don’t waste rice,” I suspect many of us would have nodded and forgotten. Children are experts at that. But the word “cry” sank its hooks into my mind.
As a boy, I didn’t hear “cry” as a metaphor. I heard it as something close to real. I imagined abandoned rice as a person — usually a small child — left somewhere unwanted, disregarded, as if its usefulness had ended and nobody cared. Even now, I can see the picture my mind made: a lonely bit of food, pushed aside, silently miserable. Strange, yes. But that is what stories do. They crawl into you and settle there.
That one word followed me for years. “Followed” is polite. “Haunted” is probably more honest.
And then, in December 1965, something happened that sealed it.
I was twelve. My little brother — Little B — was ten. It was the fruit season. Early in the day, with some cousins, we went up
to search for fallen ripe durians. We knew the trees, the smell, the thrill of seeing a green spiky shell half-hidden under leaves, like treasure.
By midday, the sun was high, and our stomachs reminded us we were still only boys. We stopped by a rocky stream to get water to drink and later to rinse our hands and mouths. We unwrapped our lunch there, perched on stones in the stream and on the banks, laughing and talking with full mouths, thinking only of the next durian we might find.
When we finished, we wrapped up and moved on.
And this was where the trouble began. A few bits of rice fell from our food wraps. We forgot them. We didn’t even notice.
It was only after dinner that night, back home, that the thought suddenly landed in my head. I was sitting there, full and safe, and then a memory nudged me like a finger tapping my shoulder.
I turned to Little B and asked, as casually as I could, “Do you remember if we picked up the rice we dropped at the stream?”
His face changed at once. He went still. His eyes opened wide, like someone who has just realised they left a door unlocked.
“No,” he said. His voice was small. “I don’t think we did. We were in a hurry.”
Our parents looked at us. They didn’t scold. They didn’t rush in with a lecture. They just looked. And in that look was a question: what will you do now?
In my mind, I could see the stream again, the stones, the leaves, and those tiny grains left behind like little lost things. I swallowed.
“We should return to the spot,” I said quietly, hoping Little B would say, “No, it’s too late.” After all, it was night, and we were children, and the mountain at night is not the same mountain you climb in sunlight.
Little B didn’t say no. He looked at me and said, as if repeating a rule carved into him, “The rice will cry.”
Before we could even argue with ourselves, our father stood up. He put on his work trousers, the ones he wore when the day might cut him with branches or thorns. He asked where his parang was.
Little B and I stared at each other. We hadn’t asked him to come. We hadn’t even thought that he would.
Then Father said, simply, “Come, boys. Let’s go. You lead the way.”
Just like that. No drama. No teasing. No, “You should have remembered”. Only action.
We bounced up from the floor, suddenly full of nervous energy, and within minutes we were outside, stepping into the dark. A lamp threw a weak circle of light ahead of us.
On the way, we met several durian collectors coming down towards the village, their backs bent under heavy loads. Their faces were shiny with sweat. They looked at us with surprise — two small boys and a father heading up when everyone else was heading down.
“Where are you going?” someone asked.
Father answered lightly, “Just checking something.”
They nodded and went on. In the village, people knew better than to ask too many questions at night.
The climb felt longer than it had in the day. The trees leaned in. The path narrowed. The forest seemed to listen.
At last, we reached the stream.
We held the lamp low and searched the place where we had eaten. I expected to see the rice there, pale against the dark earth, waiting like a mistake that hadn’t moved.
But we couldn’t find a single grain.
Father crouched and lifted the lamp closer. “The ants have been here before us,” he said. “Look. Some are still at it.”
And there they were — thin moving lines, busy and exact, carrying away what we had carelessly left behind.
I felt a strange mix of relief and shame. Relief that the rice was not lying there abandoned. Shame that we had needed ants to clean up our carelessness.
“So, what now?” I asked because I honestly didn’t know what the rules were for this situation. If the rice was already gone, did it still “cry”? Did the warning still count?
Father stood up and dusted his hands. “It’s okay,” he said. “We returned for the rice. They know they were not abandoned.
It’s our action — and the spirit of it — that matters.”
So, the lesson wasn’t only about perfection. It was about respect. About not walking away as if something small doesn’t matter.
Little B, without anyone pushing him, stepped forward and apologised to the rice in the plain, sincere way only children can manage. He didn’t make a speech. He said sorry like he meant it, like the rice could hear him through the night air and the running water.
Then Father looked around the dark slope and said, almost as an afterthought, “Since we’re already here, we might as well check our durian trees. Only one stop. The lamp hasn’t got enough fuel to last beyond midnight.”
So, we walked a little further. We didn’t find many ripe durians — only a few, and not the biggest ones. But none of us minded much. The real weight we carried that night wasn’t fruit. It was relief. We had gone back. We had done what we could. We had not left the matter hanging.
For a long time after that, the word “cry” stayed with me. Whenever I ate, my eyes would scan the table. In other places, I would feel a little jolt if I saw rice scattered and ignored. It was as if some small part of my childhood self was still trying to be “a good boy”, still trying to prevent a quiet sadness no one else could see.
Only much later, after decades of water flowing under the bridge, did I begin to understand the deeper shape of it.
Crying, after all, is one of the oldest signals we humans have. It pulls attention. It asks for care. It pushes us towards empathy and repair. Even if you don’t know why someone is crying, you feel you should do something. That’s the power of it.
So, when elders said, “The rice will cry,” they were not only talking about food. They were using the strongest language they had for tenderness and warning. They were teaching a child’s heart to respond.
And yes, the belief that rice can “cry”, or that it carries spirit, is not only ours. In many Asian cultures, rice is more than a crop. It is life made visible. Treat it badly, and you are not just being messy — you are being careless with survival itself.
Some people even believed that disrespecting rice could bring consequences, such as a poor harvest at the end of the paddy season.
For me, the clearest meaning is still that night on the mountain: a father getting up without complaint, two boys walking back into the dark, and a line of ants carrying away our mistake. Not punishment — just a quiet chance to put things right.
And perhaps that is why the story still feels alive. The rice did not cry in the way a child cries. Yet somehow, we heard it anyway.
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
