Sometimes People Are Beautiful

Sometimes people get sick.

They get better.Sometimes they don't.

They are hospitalized.

Then they get better.

Or they have to undergo life threatening surgeries but you sit outside that glass door labeled Emergency in bold red letters. You remember their crooked tooth, or their ripped pants or the way they liquefied their ice cream before eating it and you hope for them to get better.

Unfortunately, sometimes doctors say no before you get to that stage.

I was a kid when we moved to Saudi Arabia and my parents knew not a soul there. They had perform Hajj after a week. And there was no place they could leave us kids. My mom went to meet this lady whose husband my dad knew. After that meeting, she made us stay at her place. And that was the beginning of our life long friendship.

There are very few people who have had the privilege of my mom giving us permission to stay over at their place.

That includes this incredible family as well.

We played and cheated in board games all night, woke up for prayers and then went back to sleep, stood in their balcony reading the prayer for rain and then running in the rain with all the kids of the building.

Some love knows no boundaries. And her's never does. Just the way she hugs me, speaking in broken phrases of Punjabi despite being a Memon herself, makes me want to distribute free ice cream. If I have to attribute the phrase 'simple and beautiful', it would be her.

She is sick beyond repair now.

And I sit here. Helpless. Thinking about all the wonderful things our families did together.

Sometimes the lightest of rain can turn into a thunderstorm and when that happens, you are left with towels and buckets on the beach instead of raincoats and umbrellas going towards your house.

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