Fireworks

Exhausted, I trod on to the famous SM Mall of Asia. I push my feet to keep walking, praying that the rain would not pour again like it did just a few minutes ago. If not for my promise to my friend Carm, I would be on my way home by now. But I told her I'd be there, so here I am, tired, but still walking.

At last I reach the huge mall. We are to meet at a coffee shop in the back of the mall. Carm was bringing her nephew Red along so he could enjoy the fireworks display that the mall has every Friday and Saturday. I had seen this a few times before, and am not overly excited to see it again. I am too tired to appreciate anything. Not the kids who are on the giant blown-up slides who are too young to care about anything. Not the cute babies on their expensive strollers. Not even the sweethearts walking in front of me hand in hand. Nothing could prevent me from basking in this bad mood.

I arrive at the back of the mall at last, such a long walk for someone so tired. I must really, really love this friend of mine, to still be walking right now. Our meeting place is east of here. I turn right. Perhaps just a hundred steps more. Then I can sit. Then I can order my cappuccino. Then I can light a cigarette and puff away.

Suddenly, an explosion. And another. I turn to my left and see that the fireworks display had started. I try to resume walking to my destination, but I can't. The people in front of me had stopped. Trying to walk through this crowd would be like walking in a maze. It would irritate me further. I decide to stop.

I stand there, not recognizing anyone. I am a stranger in a crowd.

Then I look up to watch. Clouds of smoke come up from the jets that fire the display. Colorful lights are spit onto the sky and explode, and then explode once more into tinier shards of light. The lights are dancing to the music. I do not mind the cracking noise of the explosion that always bugs and irritates me. I stand, transfixed at the way the lights shoot up, sometimes one by one, sometimes altogether, to create one sweet harmony of different shapes, colors, heights and sizes. The music is building, and so are the lights. The lights and the music are one. Everything is going faster and faster and sweeter and more colorful now. And then all the imaginable kinds of lights we had seen in the last few minutes emerge at the sky, all at once, to bring us one final beautiful spectacle, the night sky brightened for one sweet second. Then darkness.

I stand there again, my head turning to every direction. I am still a stranger in a crowd.

Everybody else is a stranger in the crowd. We were all just passersby, trying to get to different places, to be with different people. We all just stopped transfixed for a few moments to one spectacular event that had somehow managed to bring us together.

I smile, as everybody, I realized, was doing. We are not smiling at one another. We are smiling because we couldn't help it. We are clapping and smiling and appreciating the sight that had beheld us for some minutes. We are applauding the ability of that tiny span of time to erase all our senseless anxieties and make us go on, to walk with the crowd, to walk with people, to walk and walk like we never get tired.

We all walk away, each to his own destination. But smiling now. Life is beautiful.