Sunshine, Smiles and Flowers

A small rectangular album fell in my lap as I pulled out the dusty box resting in the innermost corner of my cupboard. This brown box labeled “Viking Dinner Set” contained possessions from my college days. Old participation and merit certificates, joke covered gift wraps, birthday cards, diaries, bits and pieces that had meant so much at the time but had lost their value with time and now had been lying in this dark corner now for God knows how long. Today on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I had finally decided to clean this part of my cupboard that had not been touched for ages. The attractive album with an orange cover that had fallen into my lap was….. my college album! Excitedly I opened it, eager to relive all the memories that had been captured years ago. One glance at the first photo and I was immediately carried to the past when everything was sunshine, smiles and flowers.

The first photo was of my final farewell party in which I stood grinning with my class fellows looking heavenly in a green Shalwar Kameez. How come I don’t look like that anymore? Then a smile crept on my face as I remembered what had happened while preparing for this grand day. The last college function, after which, we all were bound to go our separate ways. Every girl’s dream was to look her very best in this last gathering and I was no exception. At fifteen, things like that can become a matter of life and death.

I had spent months agonizing over what I would be wearing and had taken my mother from one mall to another checking, rejecting, checking again until just two days before the function my mother, exasperated had brought this green dress herself along with jewelery and all other accessories. On discovering what had happened I had thrown the shopping bags without giving a single glance to the stuff inside and had stormed upstairs to my bedroom, furious and fuming. In my opinion the dress was old fashioned, dull, totally devoid of style and nothing in the world could make me wear it to the party and had told my sister the same, through the locked bedroom door, when she came to discover the reason behind my tantrum.

My amazing mother knew how much this party meant to me so instead of being angry she had come to my room at night and had assured me that she would take me to the market again tomorrow but only on the condition if I promised not to reject every thing I laid my eyes on. Touched by this generous gesture (since that dress had been really expensive) I had totally surprised her the next morning when I told her that dress was not so bad after all and I had decided to wear it.

But even after the selection of the dress, my anxieties were far from over. I wanted to wax my hands so badly. I thought they resembled the hands of the hairy chimpanzee in the movie my brother always watched. But my mother absolutely prohibited to do anything to my perfect (in her opinion) hands. I had begged her in all kinds of possible ways to allow me but in the end just to put an end to my constant grumbling she had taken out the green dress from my closet and shown me that it was long sleeved (a fact that I had overlooked) so my hands would not be showing and it would be idiotic to put my hands through such torture when in the end nobody would see them. Long sleeved! This was the limit and I had screamed, shouted and cursed myself again for letting my mother put me through this.

Then there were the pimples. I had been trying to remove them for months using creams, masks, home beauty tips but nothing seemed to have any effect on my annoying hideous pimples. In fact every morning there would be a new one in a new place as if God was playing tricks on me. Now looking at the picture I realized I could not see any ugly red pimples on my smiling face. I had fussed about my hair too which, in my opinion, was too weak, filled with dandruff and lifeless and there was nothing I could do with it. Now in the photo I only saw shiny black hair spread stylishly over my shoulders. It is strange how people look so different in photos from reality.

I had also fought with my mother over makeup as she wouldn’t let me apply anything except a lipstick and eyeliner. I had cried over this since this meant I would look so dull in front of all my friends who were allowed to do anything but now looking at the picture I saw nobody looked any more duller than the other. That sparkle in the eyes, those genuine smiles and those rosy cheeks were commonly shared by all. I knew everybody looked a million times attractive then they were now.

So much had changed since then. I had lost contact with almost all of my friends in the photo. I myself had left college, gotten married and now had two cute daughters of my own. My mother had died three years ago.

Closing the album I walked up to the mirror atop my dressing table and looked at my reflection. I found myself staring at a woman in her mid forties with thin short hair graying at the temples. I visited the beauty salon once a month, bought dresses of my own free will, waxed my hands, used masks and did everything I could only dream at fifteen yet the face staring back at me had neither that glow nor that shine I had just witnessed in my album. Suddenly the door burst open and in hopped my fifteen year old daughter “Ammiiiiii….there’s no way I am wearing this purple thing to my final farewell. Why did you bring this? I thought I had grown up to choose my own things.” I smiled as I prepared for my side of excuses. After all I knew she was definitely going to wear that “purple thing” to the party.