That one Donkey and her muse.

23rd June, 2014.

Dear Diary,

Even though I have just invented you for this post, today you're going to be my close companion and listen to one of the most beautiful instances I've ever witnessed. 

But before I start narrating, I need a name for my story. You'd be surprise that even though a name to a story is nothing, for the story is the meat; it often takes a lot more time to come up with one. Often more time than itself a story ever takes. At least to me, that has happened quite often. Nevertheless, after thinking well and hard, I finally decided on one.

I’ll call my story:

                                                                            

That One Donkey & Her Muse

It all happened one dreaded Monday afternoon. To be fair, all Monday afternoons are dreadful. So uhm… let me rephrase that.

It was a casual *wink wink* Monday morning - dreadful and tiring. I had just given my last paper and was on my way back home. To make things worse, Mr.Omnath (our van driver), decided that’d he’d give Monday a run for its money, and took on the enormous (read: idiotic) task of dropping girls who live poles apart in the city, in one go. Imagine the pain I felt when I realized I’d be more than an hour late to my home than usual, all because my uncle could save some petrol.  Oh and by the way, I live approximately to a 15 – 20 minute drive from my university. THE AGONY!

Not to forget that it was painstakingly humid, and the girls, all cramped up like 20-odd pearls in one clasped oyster, didn’t do any good either. The only thought making the heat of Karachi and my miser van uncle’s miserable maneuver any bearable was the fact that I had a month long semester break waiting for me.

…

Some 40 minutes later, after some girls had been dropped off and after I had dozed on and off during that period, I opened my eyes to the locked away alleys of Karachi and what I was missing on. The beautifully old crumbling structures, all those small windowed homes, the lazy laughs of men in the market, the swell sight of happy kids bidding school goodbye, the leemopaani  wala (lemonade) serving the old and young… oh, how I could write an endless story on Karachi. But let that story be reserved for another day. For now, let’s be back to the story I am currently telling.

Dear diary,

This part is where it gets beautiful. But before that, it gets ugly.

 Life’s like that. Is it not?

Anyways, returning to the ugly. Our van broke down.

Yes, yes, it did. The Monday Curse is no myth, I truly believe now.

Whatever little ray of hope was left in me, died and I wanted nothing more than this day to end.

But then the beautiful happened:

There, a few feet away from where I stood, was a parked ruined cab.  It was damaged, dusty, and the yellow and black on it was now peeled off, exposing its corroded and dented body. And right there, was where I saw her. That beautiful little donkey, tied to her cart from behind, with her chin resting motionless on the trunk of that dented taxi. Her kind eyes were shaded with big, soft lashes, and they looked very tired.

Its' odd how we so often forget how beautiful these creatures are, just because they do the work for us that which we ourselves don't/can’t do; or maybe it’s' because we’re so fond of seeing them, that they just become ordinary to us. In any case, for me, there is merely ordinary by perception.

The scene of her chin resting so subtly cooled my heart. And even from a distance apart, I could sense she had rested it just hard enough to not let the taxi feel her weight. To her, maybe it was living. To us, maybe she wasn’t.

‘IT’S FIXED. ALL OF YOU GET BACK IN!!’ our uncle yelled.

With that, we walked back; I, a little hesitantly. She then looked longingly at me for whole two seconds before I broke eye contact and found myself behind the doors of the van.

 I wanted to sigh, but before that could happen, I noticed a school going girl trotting by. In her red and white checkered frock, she was bouncing merrily with her water bottle swinging off her right shoulder.

Our van was struggling to start at this point.

She stopped some two steps away from the donkey. Tilted her head to the right, and with furrowed brows, looked thoughtfully at her (that donkey).

“Come on…work” said Mr.Omnath in a pressed agitated voice.

By now, the little girl seemed to be moving close to the taxi ; still looking thoughtfully at her new friend. But the friend was  unmoved. She was still immobile and looked weary. But the little girl knew what to do. She kept her water bottle down. Took her bag off, stood on her toes and placed it on the dented roof. Reached back to the water bottle, opened the cap and let water fill it.

“FINALLYYY’ roared our uncle simultaneously with the engines.

We started to move, but I could see the donkey move her head closer to the girl’s hand.  She drank from it slowly, as the girl managed and failed to stand on her toes, and stroked the top of the donkeys’ nose as much as she could.

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P.S. This one's dedicated to Zeba, from Zeba Talk. For being the little inspiration <3; Thank You.