I once knew a girl whose favorite color was the shimmery shade of silver linings. You know the kind of person who would always somehow see the good in bad. It pissed everyone off, but we all knew we were envious of her guts, not mad.
She studied hard but couldn’t get her dream branch. She lost the love of her life to five years of fighting and trying. Her heels broke down while anchoring the college event, and even her cat ran off with some random pretty cat.
So when one fine day, on a trip to nowhere—I say nowhere because we had missed our train—and while the entire group was cursing in unison, loathing their fate, she stood four feet away at the station bookstore, cruising through Faiz with samosa crumbles on her mouth.
I couldn’t resist, it was killing me, so I finally asked her secret: how she is never sad, how the worst things in life didn’t affect her cleft-chinned smile. She looked at me in surprise, like I’d asked her to give her Littmann stethoscope in exchange for a candy.
She wiped her mouth with her pretty beige sleeve and began to say, “I’ve had my share of sadness. Things failed, opportunities went, people left. Fuck it, even my cat ran away. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t try. I gave my 100%, and I know things didn’t curve exactly how I wanted, but I’m content in my career. I have a boy who loves me for who I am. Crocs are better than heels, you know, and by the way, my cat is a mother of four now.”
She stopped and waved the book in her hand. “See, I swear by Faiz and he once said,
‘Dil na umeed to nahi nakaam hi toh hai,
Lambi hai gham ki shaam magar shaam hi toh hai.’
(I processed that line in my mind, in awe.)
“Also, I talked to that guy. The next train is in four hours, and I think I have an idea. Chal, let’s have another samosa.”
I looked up at the pretty sunset and mumbled under my breath,
“Lambi hai gham ki shaam, magar shaam hi toh hai.”
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