People were walking towards the bazaar, like on every Sunday. Aima was standing on the terrace looking down towards them. It was early morning. The sun appeared from the shadow of the horizon, brightly, creating an image in the mind of Aima.

She was very interested in knowing about the formation of the sun and the functioning of nature. She was the kind of girl who loved to contemplate about nature and had a firm belief that nature consoled people miseries, as if it had some kind of healing power. She also thought that how ungrateful we human beings are for we tend to ignore the small and mundane things near us.

Whenever, she visited some park, garden or any other place, she observed the ants walking on the wall, the dance of the flowers, and little tiny drops of water on the leaves; she listened to echo of sounds in nature as she dropped the pebble in the river or water stream to check the effect of nature upon it. Therefore, her imaginative skills were very sharp; she loved to contemplate over things and nature.

Similarly, she had the habit of hanging at her terrace every dawn and dusk. There she contemplated the processing of natural functions and organisations of the natural order of this world. Then, she looked at the sun set and darkness spreading with the purple lightening all across the sky. Day by day, she observed the changes taking place.

One morning early when she came out on her balcony, she was stunned by the horrifying black smoke that seemed to be everywhere, even reaching the horizon. She looked down and realised that the smoke was generated from the vehicles on the road; there were also the industries nearby. She was shocked on seeing that this smoke merged with the winter fog. This change made things seem weird.

Soon Aima saw that this smoke had terrible effects on the environment and people. The mixture of fog and smoke that had become smog or black smog, entered into the throats of the people from their nasal and oral cavity. They sneezed and coughed, and a car crushed on the pavement because the driver was blinded by smog. There was now chaos on the street. On seeing this, Aima closed the door of balcony. She was really depressed as she missed seeing the beauty of nature.

Published in Dawn, Young World, July 3rd, 2021