A Day Without Chaos

There are voices of cuckoo singing behind me. It seems as if they are chattering, maybe complaining about how a student did not give him food even after demanding or how the bell for the next lecture that rings every hour disturbs their sleep. There chattering feels so good while I am sitting alone in the garden after a boring lecture, reading the stories of Manto and observing LIFE around me.

These short stories by Manto make me go deeper into details. Reading one of his short stories, ‘Blouse’ which makes me reminisce about the times when I was 13 and I just started understanding this world! This story just beautifully narrates how a boy feels when he enters puberty and things change inside him. I felt for that child and smiled at the fact that we have grown so much, that we have stopped noticing the LITTLE THINGS around us.

I can see a girl walking and blushing while talking on her smartphone, I assumed that her boyfriend might be on the other side of the phone teasing her about how she has gained weight and yet telling her how he loved her. I was feeling butterflies in my stomach, maybe love is contagious.

I can see people lost in the screens of their laptops, maybe working or reading something because their expressions look serious. I see a group of friends sitting together and laughing over some really silly jokes and hitting one of themselves who must have cracked that stupid joke! I see sunlight falling on a girl, who sits alone, but I assume that the loneliness is surely not bothering her, I can sense that from her smile and her relaxed posture. She seems content with herself.

The cuckoo has changed the range and pitch of the chatter making me cautious and telling me that there is going to be a great hustle bustle around in the college, I patiently wait for something to happen.

A squirrel comes and starts running over my feet and I am distracted from my thoughts, I see ants on the ground that I am sitting on but I do not let it bother me.I also realize how the grass is wet and about the possibility of a stain on my yellow dress. But I do not care for it, because I care about that 13-year-old boy in the story, I care about the blushing of that girl who is in the corner to talk to her loved one, I care about that group of friends who are now walking towards the canteen and that girl under the sunlight who just caught me staring her and smiled seeing me sitting lonely too.

We just focus on the noise and chaos around us rather than moments of love and joy. I enjoyed not focusing on the chaos today, for a change.

There is so much life around us, how can you just complain and not feel the beauty that exists around you?

Keep thinking.

-Manasvi Shah