One man’s trash is another man’s inspiration

A coffee-tasted toffee in the evening is not my thing. Perhaps, it is because I am a coffee lover and I would definitely prefer a hot cup of coffee over a small toffee. But after a long day of fasting, my friend Ahmed wanted a toffee to break his sacred Ramzhan fasting. He bought a couple of ones from our dear Gopalan, who always greeted us with pleasant talks whenever we crossed his shop.

As per the general courtesy to share eatables with near ones, Ahamed offered me one sweet. I reluctantly took one, but gulped it fast because I had no pockets in my newly stitched pant to store it for later consumption. The busy gossip session prevented me from enjoying the taste of it. Only the sweetness of the toffee and the wrapper stayed back with me after a while.

Why should I carry a useless toffee wrapper? The thought popped up in my mind. And, yes, immediately the action followed. Being an iconic Indian, I repeated my urge to throw the wrapper on the road. It was floating in water in one of the million potholes of the highway road. We continued our walk to the nearby bus stop to catch the next bus to town.

“Oh! I think I lost my ten rupees,” screamed Shanu, who was walking with us, sharing her insights on office gossips. She seemed to have slipped a ten rupee note on the road while walking. A ten rupee is worth searching and we walked back through the same road gazing on the road.

Everybody was busy searching, when my attention caught on a little girl dancing around with a cute plastic flower in her hand. She was overjoyed by the sight of the little thing in her hand and was jumping around with it proudly.

I walked towards the little girl (obviously lost the thought of the fallen ten rupee note) and gazed at it for a moment. In its brown and golden exterior, the flower was truly adorable. Seeing me staring at it, the little girl brought it closer to my face. “I made this”, she flaunted.

I could recognize it somewhere. It looked familiar. My mind made a fast recap of the things in brown colour I saw recently. “Yes. This was the same wrapper I threw into the pothole on the road”, my mind made a louder confession. It was just a wrapper a moment ago and now it is a flower worth admiring.