The old man by the side of the road

Every morning on my way to work I see the old man by the side of the road. He sits on the footpath, or what’s left of it, at a junction where traffic from the western suburbs pours onto a one-way street leading to the central business district. It’s a vantage point of some sort, with a sizable pedestrian traffic moving to and fro in several directions. That’s why, I suppose, the old man chooses to use this particular spot.

Unperturbed by the traffic, the noise and the heat of the morning sun, when temperatures can rise up to 30-degrees Celsius, the old man sits there on the bare broken concrete with his tools, three makeshift knives of varying sizes, and several dried fronds of coconut trees lying at his feet. A somewhat spare workplace, I reflect, compared to my carpeted air-conditioned fluorescent silent office with its computers and wi-fi connection.

From what I reckon, the old man is a local; his dark leathery skin, for years, wrinkled from staying out in the sun too long, and a two-week grey stubble, leading from his chin to a closely-cropped grey mop on his head, are set off against his dark face. From a distance it looks as if, head to jaw, he is wrapped in a bandage. A mere loincloth of what-once-must-have-white cotton suffices as his entire attire.

Patiently, and with remarkable precision, the old man strips off the coconut fronds with his knife: shaving the leaves into narrow ribbons which curl into confetti the moment they hit the ground, and the solid stems into long thin wire-like straws, sharp enough to cut my skin. When he has a substantial heap of shavings at his feet, the result of an invisible calculation and human toil, the old man puts aside his knife.

He then gathers up the shavings with both hands, bunching them together into a cylindrical column, shaking and tapping one end of the column on the ground in a vertical rhythm until the column is configured to a uniform shape. Holding the column at one end, as the other flares out like a brush, he swiftly binds the end with the remaining ribbons to form a grip, securing it tightly into a short sturdy handle.

And, right before my eyes, I see the old man holding a common warehouse broom used to clean porches, courtyards, streets and construction sites. Picking up his knife once more, the old man trims the edges of the broom, meticulously crafting a rough-hewn broom into a work of art. Only then does he display it by his side on the footpath and offer it for sale to the passers-by.