The Dust of Happiness Settling On Everyday Life

She sat there on the balcony, looking down on the garden which boasted of a dozen roses, dahlias, sunflowers.. a light green hedge which was starting to overgrow. Her eyes wandered to the lone white plastic chair and table lying there. She smiled. On the ledge below here, a cat lay looking over the garden as she did, probably looking out for innocent prey. She had three kittens to feed. The girls whistled and then meowed at the cute creature. She looked up. Yellow eyes with dark green, even emarald pupils, a pink nose with a snow white mouth while her whiskers twitched violently for a few seconds. Delicate ears through which the sun shone through.

The girl rested her chin on her folded arms and smiled at the beautiful creature. And then looked up at the sky, signs of rain. Signs of happiness. Signs of peace. She thought, if she wasn't an atheist, she'd have prayed for some rain too. The birds chirped heartily in the trees surrounding the house and two squirrels played on the metal gate's narrow width. The trees swayed in unison and it felt as if they were cheering for the same team somewhere. The squirrels? They're cheering for one of the squirrels, she thought silently. She looked at them again, they were racing down from a tree, like young children free of all wickedness, happy to the core.

She turned to go back inside, but she couldn't decide. Then she smelt smoke in the air. Hints of smoke, someone burning leaves. She'd seen the sight innumberable times, neighbours burning leaves in heaps behind their backyard or a little outside the main gate. She didn't like it. She turned back anyway, and sat down on a chair. Her eyes rested on the calender hung on the wall. A painting, it showed a village scene. Some with axes, some dancing, some together just happy, a group of people talking, a lone tree with a peacock on it. Her eyes wandered aimlessly and much to her dismay, there was the television. She mocked at the ugly block of sheer stupidity. How it blared in this room, as night fell, as the others sought happiness in useless junk which wasn't alive and which rotted their brains with unimaginative garbage.

She glanced up at the picture of a beautiful place, a temple, with a purple sky. It mixed up beautifully with purplish-white.. golden yellow and then deep red as she looked down towards the temple, which was lighted with hundreds of earthen lamps. As she sat mesmerised by the sight, she heard a soft clinking behind her. Turning around, she saw the cat which has come up by the balcony and had now made her way to the dogs' food which lay near the bed. There she was, looking straight at the girl's face with the same yellow eyes, a paw's distance away from the food and a paw raised to complete that distance in a second. The girl sat there silently, not moving an inch, acting like a statue. She didn't mind if the cat ate some of the food, unlike her mother who resented such actions. The girl hardly breathed while the cat slowly stretched out her leg and finally had a taste of the food.

How graceful the creature looked while doing anything, be it even blinking. The girl wonderingly thought what made her blink so slowly. The phone rang and she started, hastily reaching out for the phone and tripping it over while trying to grab it, unsuccessfully. The cat stood there alarmed. It was her mum on the phone, and she put it down, she saw the cat move away slowly, as she had come. Probably, she thought, the room wasn't as safe and quiet as she had thought. Another wickedness of technical advancements. She sighed and went out to look for the cat, which was nowhere to be seen.

She decided to quit and return to the room and stood infront of the mirror, which had become quite a habit of late. She stared at the dark mane of hair and fingered them listlessly and then thought of how he had brushed them the day before. How lovingly, and as she recalled it, she thought it must be a dream. And that a flicker of wild imagination had caused her to think of this story. But it was true. No wild imagination, just pure reality. Pure blissful reality. She closed her eyes and thought how she had felt. Feeling weak in the knees, she leant on the bedpost and smiled to herself. Clenching her hands together hard, she sighed happily. Life wasn't so bad as she'd thought, after all. She closed her eyes and her mind wandered far away to where it usually resided when she was away from anything or anyone else.

The phone snapped her out of her bliss and as she picked it up, brought her back to a more blissful reality than a merely blissful dream. Long live Love.