The Last Note A Distant Hum Of Tinkling Bells...

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She blows delicately through perfectedly pouted lips; a gentle blow that causes the shiny liquid layer to swell into a ball and blow off with the light breeze, only to pop seconds later. The air is thick and dry, the atmosphere near barren and devoid of much color. In the midst of it float the few bubbles that waft their way here and there before they snap into tiny unseen droplets of soap. she watches them hover in the air; illuminating tiny rainbows within the delicate little see through spheres, and sighs.

She stands with her back pressed against the back of a red car, a cup of soap mix in her hand, the other clutching a ball point pen lacking its ink fill. Next to her, sitting on the boot of the car is a little kid, like her, clutching half a bottle of slick soapy water and bubble making stick.

They keep there postures intact, not moving besides their heaving shoulders and their cheeks inflating and deflating like balloons as they blow. The midday sun grows fainter over their heads, dropping lower with time while they blow their respective bubbles, watching them flutter in the light breeze. Delightfully, they watch them dance in the wind, enjoying their lives before they are popped away.

At times the little kid shrieks with delight as he streches out to burst a big bubble even before it escapes the edge of her pen, his laugh echoing in the still air, the last note a distant hum of tinkling bells. Sometimes the bubbles shatter as they were blown in. It would burst in their face, smarting their eyes slightly; like a joke with a bad pun.

Just as the sun is on the verge of dipping down and kissing the horizon she turns, tilting the remaining liquid in her glass into the kid's bottle. As she leaves he looks startled, sad and slightly happy at the prospect of more soapy water. Sitting in her car she looks at the anonymous kid sitting in his car porch on his car in the empty neighbourhood who lended her his bubble mix. He continues to blow gently, making bubbles that light up the empty surroundings in the still July air.

She smiles at his innocent form and drives away with slippery soapy hands for a another date with the future.

-Momina.

Of Selfishness and Change

I am here; curled up on a sofa in my corner with a cup of steaming coffee and the laptop. There is something increasingly calm about occupying a place where you can sit quietly and observe everything but people ignore you, because you are almost invisible in that spot. It lovely having a piece of mind without anyone around to pry or engage you, and at times these are the very moments that one craves. The ‘me-times’. Are we really selfish beings that don’t care about what goes around? Or do we just care too much?

I think it’s the latter. We care a little too much about others, about what goes around that we forget to pay the required attention to ourselves. To look at ourselves and think of where we might need grooming. No, we are too worried about how the others should behave, dress and speak etc. that we don’t even mind our own. We pay no mind to our own activities as we set on the journey to create a better world.

Change starts from within, from us. We can never bring a change that we want unless we alter ourselves to it first, there cannot be change if we ourselves refuse to change. With every little modification we make in ourselves we grow up a little, we become wiser, we progress and this development only can let us change the world for better.

We need the ‘me-times’; we need them to become a little selfish, to give ourselves a thought and a cleansing. Without being selfish we can never accept being ourselves and without having the confidence of being ourselves we cannot accept nor bring a change. Change from within, change for the betterment not for acceptance.

-Momina. 

Image courtesy: Google.