Make a Wish

Make a wish. 

The instruction was simple. People waited with baited breath, with their palms vibrating with the anticipation to collide and let the celebration reach its catharsis. The cake lay meekly amidst a pile of confetti, awaiting its slaughter. Time slowed down. “Come on, girl,” barked one of her uncles who could never bother to remember her name, “Make a wish so we get this going.”

Time finally stopped. The flame of the birthday candle stilled. She stopped the dreadful process of inevitable ageing to think.

What do I wish for?

She wished for the uncle who didn’t remember her name to be gone. She wished he had not whispered a criticism of her mother for her sleeveless blouse to his wife.

But wishes didn’t rectify the past and those things were done for.

She widened her mind. She would wish for everyone to be happy, always.

But. She didn’t want her uncle to be happy and everyone included billions like her uncle. Or worse. Also, if a rapist was happy, someone else would not be, right? That’s how it worked.

She looked at her dog, now frozen mid leap in the air. She could wish all animals were happy, always. That seemed like a fair wish. They deserved to be happy.

But if he was happy always that would mean the stray cat who snuck in at times to scavenge a bit of food from the waste bin would be miserable. The dog was big and clumsy and was often found moping at the front gate after having failed to catch the cat. He being forever happy would mean a dead cat. Consequently, wishing for the cat to have a brimming hunting ground would mean a lot of dead birds and squirrels.

Maybe she was going about this the wrong way. What if she reeled in her bracket of well-wishing? Not everyone, but all the good creatures in the world could be happy.

But this lead to another problem. She believed all animals were essentially ‘good’ or even if they weren’t, they couldn’t be judged by the scale of human morality.

And yes, some humans were definitely better than others but who could grade that? What grade would one have to achieve to be eligible for this wish to apply to them? A person who has done nothing charitable or kind in his life would still be immensely better than a murderer. But that wouldn’t mean the person was good. He would just be better than the bad ones. Didn’t the world already glorify the apathetic No-Man? She didn’t want her wish to be wasted on him. It was almost as bad as wasting it on her uncle.

Okay, maybe she could narrow it down even further. She could focus her benevolence on the women like her father’s former colleague who managed an orphanage. She could focus on the people who did some tangible form of good.

But that ex-colleague of her father’s didn’t take in children who were not of her own faith. Lord knows how she managed to figure out the faith of creatures abandoned in a pile of dirty rags, but she did. And bestowing all of the Lord’s blessings on her would mean a lot of abandoned creatures of another faith lying out in the rain. Because this colleague of her father’s genuinely seemed to believe that some orphans deserved a home while some did not. Keeping her happy always would again, not do. And even if she broadened her scope again to ensure everyone who thought like her father’s ex-colleague, whichever faith they stuck to, received the everlasting happiness that she was wishing on them- they would not be happy if they found out everyone else was just as happy as them.

She took a breath.

There had to be a way out of this.

People stared at her with smiles that had died on their faces. She looked at her dog.

She looked back at the candle and blew on it.

Chaos erupted around her and time unfroze.

“What did you wish for?” one of her friends asked.

“Don’t ask her that!” a voice snapped back, “If she says it out loud it won’t come true.”

“I wished,” she announced to the room at large, “I wished for everyone to be happy. Always.”

 The mob around her quieted down and murmurs of appreciation broke around the room.

“Such a sensible girl.”

“Yes.”

“Worries about everyone.”

“Yes.”