The Little Girl Who Wrote About the Cow

            Today this little girl ran to me, her unruly hair still rebelling the worn blue ribbons. Her little fist was tightly closed behind her back. I caught a jagged piece of paper peeping out of it. I smiled and feigned surprise as she held out her sacred present to me. It was indeed a paper, ruled and smoky with graphite, torn hurriedly from her little notebook. She bobbed on her toes as I read those words. The words of a child, clinging hard to the printed blue lines, a few slipping here and there, then arduously heading back to near-perfection. It was a poem- About a cow and a dog. How an arrogant dog disturbs a depressed cow and ends up having the lesson of his life delivered via a nice, well-aimed kick. Not too impressive? For me though, it’s something I would recall as a ripe old granny, knitting uselessly by the fire-place, and smile.

            She was a girl who had poverty riding on her shoulders, without actually knowing it. If she sagged under its weight at times, she was likely to go out and play tirelessly, until the other aches blotted it out. She was good in studies, at least that’s what her teachers told. But was she really? She would think at times as she pondered over those people she had seen the other day in the city, through the polished glasses of this high-ended eatery. She had watched them flip through a fancy brown book that had a golden thread poking through it. They were speaking, rapidly, in English. The words gushed out at such a pace that it left her speechless. She studied English, yes, but she never did learn to speak it. She liked it- it’s allure, it’s grandiose and it’s lilt. But she had long given up trying to speak it. The ridicule of the fellow girls made sure she stayed mute. It was better this way, wasn’t?

              It was around this time, our paths crossed. I, as a fresh volunteer of ‘Teach A School’, a non-profit organisation aimed at extending the reach of education and she, the same girl the last paragraph visited, demotivated and for some reason, defeated. I extended my hand out, an over-enthusiastic smile plastered on my face. I could feel her doubtful apprehension seeping into my palms as she shook it- Was I this stranger her mother droned stories about? The well-dressed ones that kidnap little girls by offering a bunch of toffees? Or was I the really the sweet woman that my smile promised?

            Our lessons started- from scratch. We learnt together a bit of everything. Bits as tiny as the fact that ‘ambition’ and ‘hobby’ were two completely different terms with diversified meanings; that a single line could as well be a paragraph. Sometimes we trod into deeper waters- naming and threading rhyming words; weaving sentences together into a little story; singing pop songs with the words all wrong. Within weeks we were the best of friends, the thickest of thieves and closest of kin. I scoured the racks of libraries to find books - leather-bound hard copies with stunning illustrations and colorful comics where fairies and demons spoke in bubbles. She liked books like these- the elaborate ones, she would run her hand through and read out the name of the book and author, stammering here and hesitating there, while the comics she leafed through with delight. It was a sight to behold.

            So here she was, weeks later, barely able to contain her smile, as I hugged her. Something changed that instant- for her and indeed, for me. For, it was at that instant she realized she had done it. She now owned a few words which were earlier but a tantalizing mirage. She could now speak and write English- this very fact gave her monstrous confidence. She would no longer gape at people from behind fancy glasses. She was actually better than them, wasn’t she? Could she not conjure creations out of thin air? For once, she was proud-of herself.

For me, it was the day I understood that happiness isn't singular or tied to ambition or material. You brew it softly. Over weeks and months. Over carefully selected library books and broken poems. It is what you sit down, put effort and weave patiently. And not necessarily for just yourself.