Choti Khushiyan - a thread that hopes to cheer you up. I'll try and update it regularly.

1) Saddar Bazaar, Lahore.
A couple stands before me. The husband, tired looking, with, I kid you not, purple pouches underneath his eyes. So unhealthy. And he needs a shave. But nvm +

His wife, clad in a dupatta over her head, is wearing a white chaddar that wraps a decidedly pregnant belly. She's standing with her feet apart and swaying to and fro, trying to keep her balance.
I try to manoeuvre a pathan carrying a carpet so I can keep them in sight.

She's bargaining fiercely with a second hand shop that sells wares off the black. "Come farst srvad" reads its sign and I grin beneath my mask.
As they finally agree on a price for half a dozen ceramic bowls, she turns around to look for her husband. He's disappeared.

She groans and calls out for him. He comes running from a distance and pays the due money. As she turns around to reprimand him, he shyly takes out a brown paper package.
Her frown eases and eyes look at it inquiringly.
I witness a grown man blushing as he procures a set of +

bracelets.
After looking around surreptitiously, she extends her wrist and he puts them on. I can't see if she's smiling for she's wearing a mask, but her eyes are crinkling at the corners and that's the truest smile that exists, right?

Ah, halal love in the 21st century.

//After School//

We really don't know our neighbours anymore, do we? Someone new has moved in next door, I'm assuming they have kids judging by the amount of screaming that ensues.
I'm turning the car in my porch as I hear a kid squealing.
Fully prepared to have to witness an+

accident, I look sideways and laugh out loud.
Their dad (again an assumption) is revving the car up his slope gently while his son (presumably) is pushing up against it.
He's squealing in delight since obviously, his tiny pogo stick arms are nothing against the car

and he's being pushed up the slope despite his best physical efforts.
I take in the broken tooth, the jetsport stain on his LACAS shirt, the undone laces and suddenly, I feel so tired. But curiously happy.

Second hand joy, is that a word?

3) //I'm prettier than you are//

She was. No doubt. Her hair hadn't been washed for a month and she stank like tennis socks but she possessed that innate beauty all females have, a glow within.
Standing next to her was the aforementioned contrast, her brother.

As a man passing on a bike handed them some change, she grabbed at the fifty rupee note and stuck her tongue out at her brother, who had recieved a measly twenty.

"Tujhe zyada kyu miley?" He asks sullenly.

"Kyunkeh me zyada pyari hun."

//Trust//

It isn't my baby. It's a stranger's. Wrapped snuggly in a heavy blanket with two tiny feet poking out, he's crying out loud. His mother, a harried looking woman, is waiting for her turn at the gynae OPD. She's probably expecting another child.
Meanwhile this one won't

+quieten. She's tried everything: milk, diaper change, hushing but the baby wails as if his life depends on it.
I'm waiting to meet a friend. Something tells me to, so I cross over and ask for her child. She hands him over gladly, her tired eyes grateful for relief.

I loosen his sheets, press him to myself as I've done with countless babies before and sing the lullaby my Ammi sang to me. His wails die down to a quiet, rhythmic breathing as he looks at me, a complete stranger, holding him in a tight embrace.
He grasps the front of my shirt+

+ and taking one last look at my face, falls asleep. The mother looks on in quiet wonder as her child trusts a strange embrace enough to fall asleep in it.
And I marvel at the intimacy of feeling the flutter of his delicate chest next to my heart. Synchronisation.