The Listener by the River

Once, in a village nested under the watchful arms of ancient mountains, lived an old man named Naresh. He was known as the Listener. No one could quite remember when Naresh had come to the village; some whispered that he had always been there, a steady presence like the sun rising each day. Naresh, with his gentle smile and quiet eyes, would sit by the river every dawn, listening to the rustle of the reeds and the murmuring flow.

In the same village, there was a boy named Arun who, unlike Naresh, seemed to carry storms in his heart. Arun felt misunderstood by his family, his friends, even the animals he encountered. The whole world, it seemed, had turned into walls around him, and he was the only one without a door. One day, in a fit of anger, he wandered out of the village and found himself by the river where Naresh sat.

Seeing the old man, Arun blurted out, "Why do you sit here every day, just listening? The world is too loud to hear anything true!"

Naresh looked at him kindly and replied, "Perhaps it is not that the world is too loud, but that our hearts must quiet down to hear it." He invited Arun to sit beside him, and, in silence, they watched the river flow. Over time, Naresh shared stories of sorrow, courage, and joy that he had heard from the villagers. As Arun listened, he began to see the invisible thread that tied each story to the other, weaving a web of shared joys and silent heartaches.

As days passed, Arun found his anger dissolving, replaced by a warmth that felt foreign yet familiar. He understood, perhaps for the first time, that everyone around him carried storms of their own. And the village was no longer a prison of walls but a garden of stories, waiting to be tended with empathy.

Years later, the villagers noticed a young man, sitting by the river, listening as the world spoke its secrets. Arun had become the Listener, carrying forward Naresh's quiet legacy, one story at a time.

And in that village, empathy was no longer a mystery—it was the breath of every heart, the pulse of every life.