THE RAINBOW LIVES ON…

In a world full of stress anything that brings peace of mind is welcome.

RAINBOWS have fascinated me since my childhood. I don’t know what it is that draws me to them. Is it their beauty, simplicity, vividness or the fact that they come and go as they please? But, what I do know is that even now as an adult whenever i see a rainbow, it takes me back to my childhood … to happy and simple times when i did not have worries in the world.

My first memory of a rainbow is when I was five-year old, crossing a bridge on the way to school. My driver pointed it out to me and i looked at it with wonder. I had never seen such a beautiful thing in my life! I wanted to reach out and touch it. The funny thing was that it had not rained. Rainbows generally come out after it rains (this, of course, I found out later on). However, it was as if God wanted me to see this wonder of nature in the desert of Saudi Arabia, where it rarely rained. It was as if God did not want my childhood to be deprived of rainbows.

After that, I became fascinated with rainbows, always on the hunt for them. I even drew them on a regular basis in my art class. So much so that my art teacher threatened me to draw something else for my final exam.

Then I grew up. Sadly, I forgot about rainbows. Their memories were stored somewhere in the back of my mind, waiting and hoping for me to call them out. One day, many years later, it happened. I saw a rainbow in my gallery. The light from the bulb was refracting in such a way that a rainbow appeared on the wall. At first i did not notice it but when I did, a rush of feelings and memories hit me. Rainbows! They had come back into my life and I was so grateful. I had not realized how much I had missed them now. How much I needed them.

Life moves so fast these days. There is so much to do and so little time that we don’t sit back and relax, enjoy life and forget about our worries for a while. My rainbow helps me to do that now it lives in my gallery! I can look at it whenever I want to and to be taken back to my childhood. I can bring back those innocent, carefree days just for a while, relax and be at peace before i get back to the dog-eat-dog world we live in.
I think of God and nature (although my rainbow is artificial!) and what is truly important in my life , and it gives me one of these really good feelings, the kind that you get really deep down in your heart. If rainbows can do this for me then what more do I need!

In fact, we all should look for our rainbows, and what gives us pleasure and peace. For our busy, responsibility-laden lives, even a few precious moments spent in the company of happy moments can let one catch their breath ( in more ways than one) and do wonders for t he soul. So let a rainbow seize your imagination and let it take you wherever you want to go.

Maria Khan, Pakistan.