The Borrowed Trust
When You Lose Something, You Lose More than Something
One rainy morning, a small family stood by the roadside in an unfamiliar town. They had come from a nearby city to sell a small piece of ancestral land—property that had been in the family for generations. Times were hard, and they needed the money. This trip mattered
As they waited in the steady downpour, an old man approached them, hurried and soaked to the bone. Despite the rain, his voice was calm and polite as he asked, “Could I please borrow your umbrella?” He went on, “I’m from a nearby village. In the rush to get off the bus, I left mine behind. I have some documents I need to photocopy before the office shuts down. It’s Friday — and with two holidays ahead, I can’t afford to miss today.”
The family exchanged uneasy glances. They were cold, wet, and anxious about their affairs. But there was something in the man’s eyes — urgency, yes, but also sincerity. Trust. After a pause, they handed him the umbrella. He joined his hands and whispered a heartfelt “Thank you,” and promised to return in 15–20 minutes.
But minutes stretched into nearly two hours. The rain showed no mercy, drenching everything in its path. The child was lucky, wrapped in a small raincoat. The parents huddled under the narrow shelter of a shop awning, growing increasingly worried. Their car was parked far off, and they were running out of time. A quiet frustration began to bubble.
“People always say we should help others,” one of them muttered, “but how do we know who’s worth trusting?”
Eventually, disheartened, they wrapped the child tighter in the coat and made a run for it through the rain, silent, disappointed, and carrying a quiet sense of betrayal.
Elsewhere, the old man was praying softly as he walked, his heart pounding with hope: Let them still be there. Please let them still be there.
But when he reached the spot, they were gone.
He stood there for a long moment, blinking back tears as rain slid down his face. He looked around, searching, hoping, aching.
He wished he could tell them what had happened.
When he had reached the photocopy shop earlier, he had found it closed. The electricity was out, and the machine lay silent. The shopkeeper had said, “No point in running around. Wait here. As soon as the power comes back, I will help you. Anyway, roads and traffic get worse in this rain. Nobody would risk getting into the traffic jam.”
And so the old man had waited, clutching the borrowed umbrella like something sacred. He watched the clouds roll by, time slipping through his fingers. The moment the power returned — an hour and a half later — he rushed to get the copies made and ran all the way back.
But it was too late.
He stood alone in the rain, under the very sky they had once shared. The borrowed umbrella in his hand suddenly felt heavier, as if carrying more than just water.
“Because of me,” he whispered, “they may never trust again.”
And that, he thought, was the true loss — not the umbrella, not the time — but the quiet breaking of a kindness they had offered so freely.
This short story is inspired by my personal experience during the rains in Mumbai. We once offered our umbrella to an old man with a story much like the one in this tale. He never came back with the umbrella, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe he simply took advantage of us. I preferred to believe that he truly valued the trust we lent him—and perhaps, in his own way, tried to honor it.
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