Broken can be Fixed

A few years back, my sister and I went down to our village after five years. She is my late Uncle’s daughter. Her family passed away in an accident when she was fifteen. My parents adopted her, and she’s been my best friend since then. Back in the village, each day she would stop by a potter’s shop in the main market and enjoy looking at the making of pots from powder. I didn’t question her because I could see peace and satisfaction smiling through her eyes. The last day she spoke, more to herself, still looking at the clay in the potter’s hands. She said, “The simple powder, which is of not much use as it is, goes through so much; only to become useful to us. But once the pot breaks, it again becomes useless and we throw it away.” She was now looking at me with moist eyes. She continued in a voice filled with pain, “When my family passed away, I was like a broken ceramic, broken to a measure which cannot be fixed and has to be thrown away.” I listened to her quietly; feeling her agony in every word. She wore a smile and said, “I couldn’t have been luckier to have found a family in the three of you. You glued my broken pieces back together, making me realize that broken things can be fixed; they don’t need to be thrown away; they can be a part of the world again.”

When I accidently broke a pot today, we glued its broken pieces together. She smiled at me and placed it in a cupboard with the rest of the glued pots.

— Lavisha Motwani