Reality In Motion

He was not like the other helium ones which soared the heights, flaunting their brilliance to be seen for miles; he was just an ordinary one, who was so unassuming he would definitely be the last pick of the bunch.

The balloon-seller trudged on amidst the heavy downpour, desperate to get his daily pay. All the balloon wanted to do was get a change of hands, a chance to see the world and get away from the towering shadow of the other ones. Cows trudged along without a care in the world, people sought shelters to protect themselves from the seemingly endless barrage of rain, and no one bothered paying any attention to him. Not that he expected it, anyway.

He doesn’t know where his origins lay, nor does he know who moulded him into the boring shade of blue that he is. He was jailed to a pair of hands, which unclasped only when the seller had to give back change. He wished he could float away into the vast expanses of the cosmos, just like two of the cool ‘helium’ guys did the day before, much to the seller’s anguish, of course.

That day was full of purchases, none of which included him, much to his utter dismay. Balloons went and the cash came rolling in steadily, to the point by which he was the lone warrior standing, not before the parting balloons offered their cheeky grins, some even offering pitiful looks. The seller, so exhausted and desperate to dry himself up and earn his daily meal, shot a glance at him, and threw him into a corner of the nearby cul-de-sac, confident he was not gonna be the source of another roti.

So, there he lay, unnoticed for days. From dreaming about the peaks of life , to lying on a corner which served as a hotspot for gangs of dogs claiming to be their territories, it was a downgrade, to say the least. With the life ebbing out of him slowly but surely, all he could do was lament at his own fate, and watch the dogs howl late into the midnight hours, of course.

Does time heal? It definitely does not, for his kind, at the least. Perking up whenever there was the slightest of breezes, his airy heart took a deep drop when he realized there was no saving, even if the Wind God woke up, for he had transformed into a lump; a lump so distinctly unrecognizable from the earlier spheroid that he was, that one might even mistake him for an abnormally large bubblegum wad.

Was he thankful for the life he had? Definitely not; a lifelong dream of his shattered to bits; while the others found homes, he now had to spend his final hours lying on the rough concrete ground, waiting for the inevitable.

To every fairytale ending that a writer pens down, a heart gets disillusioned by its sheer creativity and hopes that it would somehow replicate itself in reality. Would Father Life be as kind? In a world where many like him are left on the streets, having the winds blown out of them, in search of their happy homes, and in a world where countless others are looked down upon for just being ‘plain ordinary’, reality is not so kind when it comes to giving many a second chance.

He looked down, and the plastic shell that housed him lay there, in a crumpled mess. Do balloons have souls? If they do, he’s probably rushing up into space, raring to meet the cool guys.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.