Story One

Sitting at her study table Laila is typing a document on her laptop; the words of the documents are as follows:

“So first things first this story is not a work of fiction, it is about me and about a decision I made in my life. As we proceed into a phase of a life which we are actually very excited about usually, “Adulthood”, I found myself lost and desperately looking for the “right answers”. Here’s how I taught myself the art of loosing things with a smile. It all started when I decided to let go...”

Na! This doesn’t sound too good! Uff! What do I write about? With these thoughts, Laila reclines back and her hands simultaneously search for the matchbox and cigarettes kept in the drawer....She gets up from her chair and lights up a smoke. She was trying to recalling a memory that had now almost faded away from her mind. After all it had happened almost a decade back...

Exactly 6 months after finishing college, Laila was back to her hometown, she had come back to her home and well she should have been happy about it. But surprisingly she was not! Initially the change was welcoming but slowly as time flew, she could see her happiness fly by too. She often spent hours in her room locked up thinking about the days when life was crazy, when life was busy. What was left in her life now was a vacuum.

Back in the metropolitan, the life she led was somewhat well defined and far different from the slow motioned one she was leading right now. Office, friends, parties, social and professional commitments defined her life. Weekdays passed by producing content for websites and clients sitting in various parts of the world and weekends were mostly dedicated to friends. 

A month later after coming back to her very own city, all she could feel was a sense of loss and disillusionment. Her phone which used to be buzzing with messages and phone calls, now lay on her bedside like an abandoned lover, silent and desolate. Weekdays which always seemed too long to pass by quickly had started to appear longer. Weekends which were buzzing with friends, shopping, parties and other recreational activities were now spent watching TV at home.

As time passed by calls from friends, colleagues and other people who were an important part of her life at one point of time quickly diminished. Often a call from a friend would lighten up her mood but as soon as the call got disconnected she could feel the pinch even harder. Lost in her own thoughts, Laila slowly got detached from her family. She was rarely seen out of her room. She was now like the insect who felt the safest and most comfortable inside the deep and dark cocoon. But the urge to spread her wings and fly, made Laila also want to make a new beginning. But she didn’t know how!

Frustrated with her slow paced life, Laila found herself rekindling her love for books. She spent hours now reading endlessly and tirelessly books after books. Finally she found her answers in the books she read or probably the time she spent contemplating. She slowly and steadily realised that the first lesson that Adulthood teaches us is to learn how to Let Go! In order to find her own-self she had to let go off memories that were pulling her back. She had to grow where she had been planted and in order to grow she had to push herself out of the deep and dark cocoon.

As days passed by, months turned into a year and finally Laila learnt how to let go and remain happy. She realised that though the sudden transition from a fast paced life to a slow pace life was a drastic one, it was never impossible to find your way even in the darkest times.

A decade later, Laila lives in the same house where her parents lived and is now not only a successful writer but also a successful human being. She learnt that her ‘I’ was not that important as she felt it was. It was the time she spent with family, her pet, her school friends and her books that made her the happiest. Life had a boarder meaning and she only experienced it when she got back to her roots.

10 years back Laila had returned to city, jobless, hopeless and disillusioned. But today, there was a woman who lived in the same city, in the same house with a good name, a roaring career and an excellent life. But what she had apart from her varied assets was that one thing that made her a better and happier human being and that was the art of letting go things with a smile. She had let go off her fast and crazy life of a metropolis to find a person she was definitely happier being. In that one year Laila found inner peace and happiness. She was now a happy woman and as Audrey Hepburn puts it – “Happy girls are the prettiest” and so she was.