This article has been submitted by Kriti Bhatnagar for the CLATGyan Blog Post Writing Competition. If you think this article is a good read, ‘Like’ this article on Facebook (the button is at the bottom of this piece) or post a comment using the ‘comments’ section below.
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She was a pretty young girl, too ambitious for her age and too beautiful to be intellectual, yet she was both.
Her attire was commendable, for she was graceful in every possible way. Whoever met her, loved her and whoever didn’t desired to meet her. She was beautiful.
But nobody knew of the other world she lived in, how she longed to not exist. It wasn’t her fault. Wherever she went, bad luck would accompany her. Her mother died while giving birth to her and her father was a drunkard who never cared to love her. She sat in a cab, and the next day, the cab master’s wife passed away. She went to a store, and that shop was burgled that night. “Oh, What a pity!” said the woman who lived next to her home. Everybody started calling her The Cursed One. She became so afraid that she stopped visiting anybody anymore. She’d get beaten up every day by her father for not bringing money home.
But she didn’t want to hurt anyone. She prayed to god to give people happiness and prosperity.
Well, that is why god bestowed a little mercy on her.
The next morning a man visited her. She had never seen the man before, neither she knew why would anybody, at all, visit her. “Go Away. You’d lose everything you love if you stay here.” , she shouted from her window.
But the man was reluctant, he stood there until noon. Feeling bad for the man , she went to talk to him.
“You’re beautiful” , he said. “What use of is the beauty which nurtures you humility and worthlessness?”, said she, almost crying.
“Oh, no my dear daughter. These people do not understand how have you saved them”, said the man with a mesmerizing smile on his face. She was perplexed and asked the man to explain to her what he meant.
“Look, you’re truly a over-blessed child. you needn’t pity yourself. The truth is people see you as how you see yourself. If you find yourself worthless, people find you worthless, if you find yourself laudable, people find you too! You know, you ain’t unlucky, instead you bring in luck for everybody else. You remember the store that was burgled on the same evening when you visited it ?” She nodded. “That night he was supposed to be shot by the robbers but he was saved because you visited him.”
She was overwhelmed. So dumbfounded that she ran to the mirror, washed her face, and smiled. She was blithe. She started loving herself. When she came back, she couldn’t find the man anymore, and believing him to the messenger of god, she went back to her room.
Outside the gate stood the man, smiling at the sky and whispering, god forgive me, for I lied to that child. But I missed seeing her walking the aisle, for she reminded me of my daughter who passed away two years back, and I longed to see her.
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Kriti Bhatnagar is an eighteen-year-old law school aspirant. She loves to read and write. She is an extrovert who loves to talk to people, and believes that the world is never devoid of hope and happiness.
