The Playschool Teacher
Miss Honey arrived every morning before the sun enveloped the classroom in its soft amber glow.
She would place a fresh sheet of paper on every desk for the children to doodle.
Today, she spruced up the nondescript look and décor of the classroom, giving it a whole new vibe and life. She took it upon herself to revive it, making the space inviting and appealing to little learners, sparking their interest and curiosity.
No more fading paint, peeling wallpaper, dusty corners and empty walls that stared blankly. Miss Honey brought in boxes of felt paper and paints, fairy lights, a couple of lanterns, animal-shaped rugs, sensory bins and lively posters. She even painted a young sapling – its branches reaching out to cuddle every child.
What’s more, Miss Honey created a magical reading corner, a pretty tent filled with cushions and crates. Tiny wooden crates stacked with picture books, sound books, pop up books and fairy tales. Above, felt stars and lanterns hung from the ceiling. The once prosaic corner now buzzed with giggles and laughter, euphoria and excitement.
The classroom literally came alive.
“Wonderland. School in wonderland,” someone gasped.
“Looks like a forest,” another gaped in awe.
Kind and affable, Miss Honey never tired of smiling. She would greet every child with a warm embrace and a grin illuminating her already pretty face.
Every time a child cried for their mother, she would bend down and whisper in their ears, “I’m here too.”
Miss Honey had a gift. She would ask a child to scribble something on the sheet and make a beautiful figure out of it – sometimes a unicorn or an alpaca, a gazelle or a hedgehog, other times a tractor or a trampoline.
She had the innate ability to transform every random scribble into a gorgeous masterpiece.
Once, the curly haired girl with pink cheeks and large black eyes, Vika, scribbled dark pink swirls across her sheet. Miss Honey picked it up gently and enthused, “Ah! I can see a beautiful jellyfish dancing in the rain.”
Vika’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Absolutely, my darling Vika.”
Miss Honey added an umbrella-shaped bell, squiggly arms and tiny droplets around the swirls.
“There, you see,” she smiled characteristically.
She made every child feel safe, seen and loved.
In a world that overlooked the small things, Miss Honey built her days around them and made a difference – one cuddle at a time, one masterpiece at a time.
2
The Masseuse
In a quiet spa tucked between a bakery and a bookstore, Laila – the best masseuse in town- worked. She had soft, gentle hands, a soothing voice, and a secret no one knew.
She could hear her client’s thoughts. She listened with her palms.
The moment her hands worked through their bodies, a barrage of thoughts would strike her head:
“My baby has only one mother. I need to take care of her too. I deserve to indulge. Bye-bye guilt.”
“I am not going to spend another year doing the same things that held me back in 2024.”
“Does my wife ever mean what she says or say what she means?”
“Should I ask him out to dinner? Or wait for him to make the move?”
“I miss you, Dad. I wish I hadn’t been so rude to you in your final days.”
A faint scent of eucalyptus permeated the air. A divine statue of Buddha rested silently amidst the hush of flowing water. And Laila’s aura only added to the beauty, tranquillity and divinity of the spa.
Broad and bespeckled, hair tied in a bun, a very ordinary woman, you wouldn’t take another look at Laila in the street. But here in the spa, she was revered like a magic goddess.
Laila’s skilled hands glided effortlessly over tensed bodies – stiff shoulders, knotted backs, tired feet and calloused hands.
Her clients walked in with bottled-up bodies and walked out lighter, carefree and with tears of joy and laughter.
“She healed more than my back,” a client grieving her divorce once confided into another on the verge of a breakup. “She’s magic.”
Some said she was a clairvoyant. A psychic. Others referred to her as the therapist with magic hands.
People came back, always. Not only to have their aches relieved but also for clarity and calm.
A stunning woman dressed in skinny jeans teamed with a cowl neck camisole, lacquered black ponytail, red lipstick and clacking heels walked in one evening. “My shoulder hurts,” she said. But her mind screamed something else. “I am sick of pretending like I have it all. I want to end this charade. I don’t know where the artificial ends and the real begins.”
Laila nodded and pressed gently into her shoulders. Laila just listened. When the session concluded, the woman sat up, voice heavy, eyeliner smudged, and whispered, “I don’t know what you did, but I think I am going to quit my job, take up crocheting, break up with my misogynist boyfriend, reconnect with my parents and sign up for a spiritual retreat.”
Laila’s hands not only smoothed the knots and relieved tension in the body but also helped fix unprocessed grief and emotions, rekindled long forgotten joys, revived relationships and made her clients confront truths they tried to escape.
Three days later, a thank-you letter arrived from the chic lady.
“For the first time in three months, I slept through the night. I really slept like a log. Thank you.”
No one knew how she did it. Not even Laila. But with her hands, she did what words never could.
3
The Gardener
He’s there, every single day after sunrise, the wise gardener, squatting on his knees, pulling weeds. Haggard, yet never rushed. His slow and steady hands pulled out weeds hiding between tomatoes and basil, dandelions and marigolds. Deftly, he loosens the soil, whispers something, then one by one he grabs the weed at its base and pulls it out by the roots.
“What are weeds?” a child asks him.
The gardener wipes his brow and points at a green sprout, “That one sucks water out of carrots, inhibiting their growth. But the one with soft purple flowers, right there, it feeds the bees, so I’ll let it stay.”
The boy pondered for a while.
“Do I have weeds? Do all of us have weeds?” Very innocently, he asks again.
The gardener cannot help grinning from ear to ear.
“Yes, we do. Fears, grudges, resentment, hatred, old patterns that hold us back, habits that don’t let us grow.”
“Do you pull them out, too?”
“I try to. It takes time, but one by one, I work at eliminating these weeds too.”
The boy began to help the gardener on weekends. He helped eliminate weeds in the garden as well as his own life – learning what to keep and what to let go gently.
