Someday, a child will ask, "What does hope look like?"
And you might dig this picture up and say, "Like this."
"But why does hope look like beans, cauliflower, rice and stringy green things in a pot?" she will ask.
"Because one day, a girl was hungry. She had nothing ready to eat that would fill her stomach while nourishing her body, and she knew one should not live on a diet of chocolate and crackers. So, she chopped up the cauliflower that had been taking up her meagre refrigerator space, soaked up some soup beans, and threw them into a pot with some rice.
"It looked dreadfully insipid, but after she chopped up some fresh herbs that a distant relative had given her and threw them in, it wasn't so bad: only
terribly insipid, rather than
dreadfully.
"And, as she gave the potful a quick stir before putting it on to cook, she asked herself, 'Do you really think this cauliflower-bean-rice concoction is going to be something you can stomach eating for at least four meals?'
"And the girl answered herself, 'I
hope so,' as the late-afternoon sunlight glanced off the pot cover and images floated into her mind of other unlikely triumphs of the impossible, like the flight of the bumblebee, the formation of a rainbow's multicoloured beauty from something as prosaic as refracted light rays, and her own grace while dancing despite sometimes being unable to walk in a straight line without falling over.
"And in due time it was cooked, and she ate and was glad, for hope had won yet again, and now she could say from experience that hope was full of beans."
Bukit Mertajam, April 2007, some indecent hour of night when crankiness comes upon all unrested Tohs.
Petaling Jaya, October 2007. We like happy times.
