In obscurity

I recently learnt that one of my neighbours had committed suicide.  According to the report that I received, he drove to a nearby shopping area, stuck a tube to the car exhaust and fed the other end of the tube to the car cabin.  He then sat in the car and waited for the inevitable.  I think someone must have found him and took him to the hospital but they could not save him.

He left behind a wife and a daughter who is the same age as my elder daughter.  Last night, I spoke to my other neighbours and piecing together what i learnt from their experience with the deceased I now have a clearer picture of what led to the suicide. 

Apparently, this neighbour of ours was an ardent gambler.  He once had a shop in an up market area of Kuala Lumpur but lost it.  I am not sure if losing the shop was caused by his gambling habit or if the gambling habit was sparked off by the lost of the shop.   His gambling habit led him to having to borrow a lot of money from the people he knew and, I was told, from loan sharks (Ah Loongs).   Apparently, the MCA debt counselling service had mediated between him and the loan sharks not too long ago and got him out of trouble but he went back to gambling. 

Recently, he, they said, had gambled a little heavier because the football fever is on the rise.  I am not sure if he what he gambled on usually but he was an ardent fan of a certain British football club.  Someone said he only gambled on football and this team was his favourite.  This is the thing that I find most upsetting.  Gambling is one thing but gambling everything you own and then borrowing more money from highly questionable people then losing that also all on a football team from a foreign land, competing in a foreign league in front of local crowds just doesn’t make sense to me.  None of those involved probably do not even know that the place you live in exist, let alone you.

Some of my neighbours are also gambler but to a lesser extent: they buy the 4digit numbers.  Thankfully, they told me that they know that they will not get rich from gambling and that they do it for fun but there are those who do believe that it is possible to get rich from gambling. 

Can one get rich from gambling?  I do not deny that there are people who have gotten rich from gambling but on closer scrutiny, you will find that they did not actually get rich from gambling; they got rich from using the money they won gambling to start businesses and they stopped gambling.  It is impossible for a gambler who wins it big to remain rich for long because their gambling habit will cause them to lose the money they won. 

I guess what happened was a worst case scenario, or at least close to it. 

I hope there are no more such cases in the neighbourhood.