By: Mishal Rehan
Euphoric laughter flitted from a fancy lit café, so at odds with the rundown street it inhabited, a street that had witnessed years of injustice, sorrow, and rejection. Chambeli gazed at the café with an envious longing, wondering if the customers of that little restaurant were nearly as happy as the sounds that escaped and echoed around the dirty, broken road she called home. Trembling with a deep misery in her heart, she also wondered if laughter, too, would come to her naturally, if only fate had decided for her to be one of the occupants of the café instead. A shouted curse broke Chambeli out of her reverie, as she spotted the owner, the sight of the tall man enough to get her to move, scuttling away like a rat in the gutter.
The curse was not the first Chambeli had ever heard, nor would it be the last. As she walked down the fractured alley, she imagined how her father had cursed at her the day she was born; the distinct howling of her mother’s pain, as she realized that the baby she had pushed out of her bloated body was neither one nor the other, rather an abomination. She did not know their names, nor who they were, only that they had abandoned her next to a beautiful jasmine plant, the charming smell of the pearl-white herb being her first memory. She knew not who she was, or what the world held, only that she was the child of the open streets, the street that had named her Chambeli.
She may not know about the origins of her identity, plagued with various questions about her existence, but what she was sure of was the dreams that danced behind her eyes day and night, sparkling like shimmering glass. A violation of the society, Chambeli had grown used to being rejected, treated as if she was not human, as if a heart did not beat beneath her skin. The rejection of her oneness was a thing she learnt to bear. What she could not withstand, however, was the dismissal of the precious aspirations contained in her soul, swirling like the colors of a rainbow.
That rainbow had been a speck of a flame, slowly growing into a raging fire with time. Her mind burned with ambition, reflected like dazzling stars in her eyes as she dreamed about a world so great, a world so normal. Tolerance was what Chambeli craved for, acceptance in mundane hearts for what was eccentric to them. Opportunities were what she wanted to create, possibilities given to the ones fate had not been kind to; possibilities that had not been provided to her. Chambeli was not educated, nor was she aware of the basic conducts of civilization, yet she was more human than the owner of that elegant café, of the customers laughing within. And so she hid her dreams, as the world had taught her to hide, from the hungry hearts of those around her, the fire in her soul raging on.
(Photo by imgur.com)
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