by Ayesha Imran

Created on: January 14, 2010   Last Updated: January 18, 2010

Three treasure boxes

On the side road, young flower vendors waited for customers with delicate threads strung with jasmines in their arms.

One young man could not wait to call it a day. He had been there for a long time and even though he had had more sales than anyone else present, he was not motivated.

The traffic lights turned red and he rushed forward to a car. The automatic window slid down smoothly and this young man felt the breeze of the car’s air conditioner on his face. It seemed unreal to him in the humid weather. Involuntarily he imagined the bliss that everyone in the car must be feeling…that they were exempted from this humidity.

The man in the driver’s seat paid for three strings of jasmines and handed them to his wife and daughters. They smiled.

The traffic lights turned green and the young man stepped back. For the umpteenth time he asked himself why these simple things such as flowers could please the richest of people. Was it because of the smell? He considered the smell to be satisfactory and deemed it pleasant on days when he could scavenge a bit more food or an unexpected luxury.

He began making his way home; a miserable little shack which he shared with six others. As he walked, he pondered about the injustice in this world.

As he entered the shack, he saw no one was home. He took out from under his bed a battered shoe box. It was his treasure box. He opened it. Inside were objects he had salvaged from the rich people’s garbage. There were pictures of cars and nice homes. There was a fake one hundred dollar bill from a monopoly set. There was on old worn out tie in there too. Ties to him meant businessmen and businessmen meant riches.

He touched these objects one by one and visualized himself as having what they represented.

He put the box away and once again depression rolled over him. He decided to go to sleep.

About some distance away was one of the richest households in the neighborhood. One young man of that family was just about to check his inbox.

He sat down on his chair before a magnificent LCD screen and signed in.

There was an email from one of his supposed friends. He opened it. It was the usual….a kind of a casual agenda for the next day. He looked at it wearily and once again the realization hit him that many of his friends were willing to be his friends only because of his popularity and money.

Again he looked at the email and saw that there was no ‘How are you?’ or anything of

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