Dust if you Must

Wouldn't it be better to paint a picture or write a letter? Bake a cake or plant a seed. Ponder the need! 

A need? Happiness! 

Though it seems like a concept confined to fairy tales. Dust a little if you must! The cake of mud, sadness baked on your soul. I grabbed a plate, ate the cake and saw; happiness!

Happiness as she smiled... I tucked a letter in the cleavage of a book I gave her a long time ago. She didn't know it was from me. Yet she smiled. Dusty letters in her palm that still reek of my perfume; the day I knew I was in love, the day I prayed for the first time in years. The day I prayed that she would smile.

Happiness in his eyes. A pedestrian acknowledged the policeman for his hard work. If his belly hadn't swelled from bribery, it did with happiness in that moment. His eyes were flooding with neither greed, nor dishonesty, as people usually see. They say, "let bygones be bygones" but what about the ones who take our hearts away as they go?

I saw happiness as this old man sneaked into the kitchen to eat some halwa. His daughter smiled and offered him the bowl. His diabetes might break the scale, but they still wouldn't mind these sweet gestures and tooth aching father daughter moments.

Don't starve your happiness because of some beauty standards. The 14 inch waist has been in fashion since the 19th century. People walked around with undergarments so tight, much like their epidermis, suffocating the flesh and robbing their breath so that they could be breathtaking. They were okay with it, just like it was okay for Chinese women to sew their feet so they'd look like lotuses or for girls in Venice to dilate their pupils with belladonna eye drops, even if it blinded them. 

Humans got freedom, slavery got abolised, but we didn't learn to live freely. We enslaved humans in ill suited boxes of beauty standards. Brainwash a generation into thinking the ultimate life goal was to have a slim midriff. They form your pretty little sketches, your smile that would never shorten to a frown, emerald eyes and hair brown. But don't turn into the green eyed monster. They say, "jealousy kills you slowly", but what about this imposter?

Fall in love with yourself, take pride in flaws. Don't keep purring, give some scratches with these claws.

I swear, sew that binding cloth around their throat because nobody gets to make you look like a lotus. Grow in muddy water and bloom past the dirt, not so sorry, about not starving. 

Magazines told my friends to hate their bodies, and sold us fairness creams. Well, my nose is crooked, my hair is messy and I've broken fifty brushes taming it. My skin is all shades of tea, but white and pink. I apply mask over mask, because any colour is better than brown. My teeth inclined out. My cheeks blushing red with pimples, my face glowing with sweat and oil.

Our eyebrows might not be thin, and it might be saddening because Hadid's are the latest trend, but Frida Kahlo was a unibrow and Mona Lisa - no eyebrows, they were work of art and so are you!  You might be 5 foot, but you are a ten on ten. 

I know we are not on the same page, but when the reader shuts the book, we would have grabbed each other through the pages and would have made a difference. You would be smiling because being happy and bringing smiles is the simplest feeling ever; like a child smiling and waving at the passengers in a train. Their smiles nurture the secret wisdom of being happy while saying “hello” and “goodbye” at the same time.

You don't have to be happy on days you write poetry. Dragging home a gas cylinder each day and holding the door for someone should make you happy too. I know you can't win marathons, but tell me about the race of life you are still running and not quitting. Free up some space in your hands to carry your remains. Call up an old flame, though you burned the bridge, smile at them from the opposite shore. 

Spend hours musing about your beauty or the fact that she is breathing the same air as you. She is the one who has the ability to sense your mood, just by the tone of your voice. Be in the company of these people, if it is something you enjoy.

Smile, even though it aches, with wind in your hair, smile like a shower of rain. This day won't come around again. Old age will come, it's not kind. And when you go, you will make more dust. Find happiness before you settle into dust.