We often complain about the repetitiveness of our days. Day in, day out, the same. Morning alarm, breakfast, study, work, dinner, baths, bed, wake up, repeat. But do we ever stop to think how much peace is in consistency? How lucky we are if everyday is the same? No big life disasters or nasty surprises? How there is so much value & purpose in everything we do to get better everyday? To get up and do the same tasks day & night is actually a blessing. Laying your head on a pillow at night and thinking of what to eat, study & wear the next day is a level of restfulness some people are never able to experience in their whole lifetime. This world can be cruel and unnecessary; so if you have the peace of a 'boring' life, you really have won the lottery of life. Breathe and keep going! 💕

Victory and defeat hold different meanings for different people and being happy with this victory or defeat is also strange. From Latehar, we left for Ranchi (both in Jharkhand, India), on a light vehicle and from there we had to leave for Siwan (Bihar, also in India) on a night bus. Everything was well planned and we were supposed to reach our destination by the next morning. We started our journey on a very positive note. After covering almost 100 km, I felt uneasy because the bus was making loud creaky sounds and the ride became more bumpy than usual. About a few minutes later, around midnight… We were out of the city and in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Then all of a sudden… Our bus collided with a truck coming from the opposite direction. The driver slammed on the breaks and sharply turned the wheel to the other direction. The bus tumbled off and started rolling down the road. The entire episode happened in the blink of an eye. We met with an unexpected accident. Everyone on the bus was screaming and shouting. There was a great rush near the door. It was a surreal and haunting experience and we were lucky enough that none of us got hurt. I kept getting flashbacks in slow motion of the time when the bus driver slammed on the breaks until it laid tilted and damaged on the road. All the people lost their tempers. We immediately got off the bus. We waited patiently outside while the others got off. Then I saw my father entering the bus again. We thought that he was going inside to bring out the luggage. But then we saw that he along with the bus conductor was busy rescuing the bus driver who was stuck in his seat. I saw several people injured with blood stains due to the glass pieces from the windows but the driver was the worst affected. He was unable to stand. Perhaps he had multiple fractures. My father along with the conductor managed to send the driver to the hospital by another vehicle. Everyone was surrounding the bus watching anxiously as the entire scene unfolded. The bus looked like something out of a horror movie as it was laid on its one side, totally destroyed and disfigured and the dark night sky intensified the entire happening. And since the bus was badly damaged, it could not proceed further. Then just like everyone else, my father went to the conductor to take back our bus fare since we had a long journey pending and we had not even covered half of the route. But till then the conductor had ran away and left the spot. However, there were a few passengers who had already grabbed their money from the conductor. I am still not sure if the driver made it out alive since he was badly injured. But I have a feeling that he did make it because he was immediately sent to a nearby hospital. I still wonder the causes of that accident. Maybe the driver fell asleep at the wheel? Maybe he just lost control of the steering wheel? Maybe he got distracted from the road? Or maybe he was simply drunk? I am still clueless. I often think that if the bus driver did not slam on the breaks at the last second, or if we were heading a bit faster, then I am sure everyone on the bus would have died and nobody from the outside world would have known about it. We fled the scene because we got picked up by another bus that was heading to Patna luckily. In that bus we had one more passenger from the previous bus who was along with his mother. He was boasting about how he took advantage of the situation and snatched away the money from the conductor. He thought it to be a great achievement. That boy was very happy. Because he was in no loss from that journey, in fact he was in profit because he actually took a greater amount of money than his original fare. So it was obvious for him to be in joy. On the other hand, our entire money was lost since the conductor ran away with it. But my father was still happy. On being asked the reason, he replied that the driver too would be having a family and the happiness they would feel, when they come to know that he has nearly survived a fatal accident, is a lot more valuable than this boy's happiness. These words of my father made me think a lot. Have you ever noticed that some people appear to be happy, while others seem to exist under a black cloud always? This is because happiness is not something that happens to us, or something we are born with. Happiness is a choice we all can make. This can be applied to all the circumstances in life where we can filter out happiness from it. At the end, everyone was happy- My father being happy for saving a life and the boy being happy for making a great amount of money. The driver's family too would have been definitely happy to see him alive. Now that is the ‘Real Happiness'.

The sky speaks in a thousand colours.

My dear universe, Thank you so much for giving us a part of you to live in, for letting us enjoy the fruits of your core. We as humans can't even imagine how grateful we should be towards you. And no doubt that YOU make life happening for us to live. Thank you for keeping an account and always balancing out the goods and the bads, the highs and the lows for every individual. You made everything align the way that I learnt something from you each and every day, I became grateful for being blessed with a beautiful life and I came across so many sides of me I had never seen. And most importantly, thank you for teaching me that nothing is permanent, neither the good days nor the bad ones. It's an unstoppable cycle. Thank you for letting me know that to commit mistakes is okay but learning from them is all we are here for! Thank you for making me realise that no one's perfect and the goal is not to be perfect, but to get better and learn each day. This is the reason I adore you so much. Thank you for lending me a part of you and thank you for teaching me life lessons no class can ever teach. Alhamdulillah for everything! ❤ Farheen

Everybody is different. Some of us hear more than the others. This world is an awfully noisy place. Even the silence is deafening. As if such a thing existed for Ella. But if it did, she knows it would be striking. The world is large, but the people in it will find a way to make it smaller if you don't fit in. If you don't find a box to go in, they will find one for you. They will stuff you inside and chain it shut. Ella's world has gotten a lot smaller than it once was, but that hasn't stopped the din. It has only made it worse. These cold, desolate halls echo with screams and the locked doors bounce all of it back at her in waves. They can't escape, so they take up residency inside her mind. Scraping away her sanity. Is it possible that a place meant to house mental illness is actually producing it? She fears in her case, it is. She is not crazy, not the way they say she is. But every day she spends in this place, the more danger there is of losing herself. The constant screaming, the lunatic laughter, and the whispers.... They are driving her mad. Like a dripping tap you can't shut off, no matter how much you try. No matter how tightly she presses her hands against her ears, she hears them. If only the screams would block them out. The hissing chants come through her vents unobstructed. She has to put her desk chair on the bed and stop writing immediately. If she does not stop it right now, the nurse comes around for room checks, and she ends up with an extra dose of whatever poison they are forcing down her throat to keep her docile. Or the nurse takes down to the doctor's office where Ella would spend an hour being told that she has a condition that causes paracusia, and if she continues to act like this, she would die soon. A lecture is better than death. Yes a set of lies is still better than death. The doctor knows she is perfectly sane. He knows there is nothing wrong with her. She just can't handle a lot of noise. Her hearing is better than most people's, a lot better. It means she hears what others can't. But the good doctor won't admit that, just the way he won't admit she is not crazy. She has not even had a hearing test. That would be indulging her fantasies, and it doesn't fit into any of his notions. If she is a normal person with exceptional hearing that suffers from misophonia, it might destroy his perfectly divided and fabricated world. The door swings open quickly. It's the nurse who was expecting to find Ella up on the chair. The latter can see the disappointment in the former's eyes. That one lives for drama, whether it's gossip among the staff or in the lives of her patients. She loves it all. It makes her ten-hour shift nearly bearable and gives her something to whisper about at the nurses corner. “Journaling?” The nurse asks in a fake voice. As if anyone would believe she was that sugary sweet. “The doctor will be glad.” Ella smiles at her like a zombified dope and nod in agreement. If they only knew. If they could only read her words. Her thoughts were so powerful and strong, enough to shatter all the silence around. They would know she was onto them and their vicious plans. Onto their fake medicine and their lies. Onto the evil that happens in the dark. The stuff they don't want anyone to know. But she knows. She hears everything.