Surging Bliss

She drew out the penknife that she carried in her bag in a most calm manner, but the fiery furnace of her warm brown eyes gave away the love she felt right at that moment for her year old son who was bundled warmly and sat plopped like a boulder in some Japanese garden, acting like the ying to her yang.

She cut the apple into small slices and handed it to him one by one.

Gul was so oblivious of her surroundings that she might as well have been sitting on the side of a busy road than the bustling airport terminal.

Looking at him, her heart surged with exploding bliss while she smiled down at him.

Climb On

Her eyes were welled up with tears. She couldn’t see clearly as to where she was going. The wind slapped her tear stained cheeks as she tried to wipe her nose on the grubby sleeve of her sweater than had changed from a bright red to a dull crimson, as that of clotted blood sprinkled by dust. Her loose bun loosened more as she climbed her. Strands of chocolate brown hair swashed against her face every now and the. Her straight, pointy nose was red at the tip from the chill in the air and the storm that howled inside of her. Her foot slipped as the gradient of the hill got steeper. She slid down a foot or two as she tried grabbing on to the earth, pulling out tufts of grass while making an attempt and managing to get quite an amount of the sweet deep brown earth stuck in between her fingernails as well as into the herringbone knit of her sweater’s sleeve.

She saw a bit of a rugged rock jutting out, covered with moss. She pulled herself on top of it, her feet dangling down into the air. She stared straight into the sky thickened with layers upon layers of clouds. The tears had dried up by now, her heart had calmed down a bit too. She picked up a daisy from a bunch that grew on her right, next to the rock. Closed her eyes lightly and brought the flower right under her nose. One could see her taking the scent in. and she thought to herself. “All in all, today went by well!”

Asha smiled to herself as the wind sang her a silent sweet melody. A smile that said: come what may, I’ll make it through one way or the other.

Puddles and Stories

She wasn’t born on a bleak January night and it wasn’t pouring either, but that’s how she liked to imagine it was when she was born.

The sun had just set. A faint hint of an orange tinge in the horizon showed that the sun was here a while back. The air was heavy with moisture and everything seemed pregnant, the air pregnant with moisture, the horizon pregnant with the on setting night and Zinnia pregnant with her baby. Pregnant to the point that it all seemed ready to brim over any minute. Partially it was Zinnia’s imagination and partially it all was true, because that’s how monsoons in Lahore make one feel anyway, especially one who is not accustomed to the uninvited guest that the weather like playing the role of.

She poked her finger into the ground, turning it by bending the lower bit into an L. she seemed to be looking for something in there. She took out the finger that had turned all muddy with the monsoon rain lazily pattered away as if it had all the time in the world and whispered to her between the plip and the plop, “This isn’t your land, this isn’t your story.”