Of Flowers and Angels

Hi everybody!! I'm so glad to be getting more followers... Welcome all and thanks to everybody old and new who are faithfully reading my posts(which seem to be coming in slower than usual because my final exams started a few days ago).

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I thought I'd tell you about that one day when I was alone at the bus-stop. I don't even remember why, or when, because the events that happened after it eclipsed it.I was just sitting there, and next to me was this old woman, with a little girl I assume was her granddaughter. The little girl would have been maybe 6, 7 years old. And well, you know me. I stare unabashedly at anything cute, even if it is capable of staring back. She was no exception. She was exceptionally charming, because she had a bunch of yellow and red flowers in her hand.


She smiled at me, and went back to smelling the flowers. I was enchanted by the way she kept talking sweetly to her grand-mom. She handed one of the flowers to her grandmother. The lady smiled, and accepted it. She took one from the girl's hand and pinned it to her hair. I didn't care that the yellow clashed with her red-white-checked uniform. At that moment, the lady caught me looking at the girl, and she said to the girl, "Why don't you give akka one of the flowers?" (akka is a respectful term in my mother-tongue to 'older sisters')


She had hardly finished saying that when the girl bounded up to me, and handed me one yellow flower. I was all smiles, and 'awwww'. She soon left in her school bus, the lady walked away, and I was holding the flower in my hand. (Haha, doesn't that sound a teeny bit creepy, me all excited about getting a flower from a stranger?) But, seriously, this was the first time I'd gotten a flower from anybody, let alone a stranger. I put it between the pages of one of my books, and later in the afternoon when I came across it in school, I was all smiles again. And I showed the withering brown flower to all my friends, telling them about the 'cute little girl' from the morning, who'd made my day with her innocence.

I realised, after weeks and weeks, about how in today's world, it is so rare to come across a smile, a wave, a 'Have nice day' from people you know, leave alone people you don't. When was the last time you smiled at that man with the dog you pass everyday in the morning? Do you remember ever thanking the man who holds the doors open, or hands you your groceries, or the girl you buy flowers from, or the guy who operates the lift?
This world is a cruel one, where people say "Don't talk to strangers" and forget the wise words, "Every stranger is a friend, waiting to be made" What is even more cruel, is that the former, is right, for all the wrong reasons. Don't trust strangers, because that the state of society today. Kidnappings, murder, muggings....


Which brings me back to the morning angel with the yellow flowers. You know how I always say it's the little kids who always retain their innocence, and how we have so much to learn from them? I learnt that fact all over again. However, by the time she's 10, her mother will probably feed her her less-favourite dinner threatening to give her away to creepy man at the end of the street. Slowly, she will forget what it is to smile at lonely girls at the bus stop, at old homeless men immersed in cigarette smokeor at thin kids roaming the streets, looknig for food. She will soon look at them with hardened or suspicious eyes. 
So people, whereever you are, if you have kids.... well, just enjoy them.Teach them to be caring, and loving, and sweet. And remind them that 'bad' strangers are the exception, not the rule. Because most probably, the starnger's grumpiness can be attributed to plain loneliness, or yet another wall built up to protect themselves from a world that has shut them out.
Stranger with the yellow flower,
☼ Sunny ☼