Asha and Her Sand Castle

Her mother, lying on her back, was soaking in what was left of the setting sun. Lights were turning on. Without caring about the time of the day, there she sat, the six year old Asha in the sand. She was trying so hard to gather the wet sand and pile it up. She wanted to make her own castle, a castle she always dreamt of. Her twin brother stopped by her side every now and then. Most of the times, he messed up her small built tower. She was annoyed, but a lousy brother can not let a princess give up on her castle, can he?

She wanted perfection. Castle after castle, she sat back to have a good look at her creation every time. She made a pyramid, but it didn’t have grace. She made a tomb, but it was too depressing. Nothing discouraged her. She had a dream, and she was confident to make it real. She looked at her sleeping mother. No ideas were going to come from her. She saw her brother play in the water. Her father was nowhere to be seen. She was alone, she was covered in sand, and she wasn’t tired. She had spent the entire afternoon building her dream home. True to her name, she never lost hope.

As the sun set, her brother told her that she was wasting her time. She was missing the fun of being in water. She smiled, and ignored. She went back to her castle by the water. It was amazing how she could do anything with it. It gave freedom to her imagination to go wild. I think, she finally stopped when the head of her castle was as pointy as a Samosa. Oh, how much she loved having Samosa! She did not get the luxury of eating it often, but when she did get it, she would hold on to the memory of it till the next time. Satisfied with her food castle, she finally went to join her brother to play in the water.

I saw her on my way to get the week’s grocery. I watched her struggle to make the perfect castle. I watched the siblings tease and play. And, I also saw a carefree mother asleep on the sand. It was a basic scenery of a family on the beach. As I stood on my way, worrying about being broke for the month, I realized happiness can come in such small packets. To many, Goa is a dream destination. To some, the sand piled up for a construction site can be the perfect place to build castles, especially when the cloud burst from the previous evening created a big puddle beside it. Every time a vehicle passed by, it created ripples that were no less than the waves in a sea. Asha had probably never even been to Hussain Sagar Lake, in the city where her mom slept on the footpath. She probably never had a fresh crispy Samosa. Jumping in the puddle is as close as could get to the idea of a beach. But nothing stopped a homeless girl's determination to turn wet sand into a perfect castle where her princess self would live happily ever after.  

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