An Ambitious Agarbatti

Disclaimer:  I was tempted to use the english parallel 'incense stick' for agarbatti in this post. Then I thought that the alliteration that the title generated was very poetic.

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The lady placed the agarbatti in the praying area every day. Today, she placed it at the window.

The agarbatti looked out of the window. It saw buildings, lots of them - so many that it could not look at them any longer.

The agarbatti looked as high as it could and it saw the blue sky that was clogged with fluffy white clouds. 

Like the small dot of light on its tip, an idea flashed in the agarbatti's mind.

"So what if I am small and the sky is far far away, I want to create clouds with the fragrant smoke that emerges from my surface! The world will then see the clouds that I have created and know that I existed!", the agarbatti thought.

It began pumping out as much smoke as it could. It wanted the smoke to reach the sky and form clouds that would bear its identity before the world.

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We all are incense sticks - with dreams that touch the sky.

The agarbatti unfortunately could not create clouds in the sky. It, however, filled the room with the aroma of its smoke.

The agarbatti had made its presence felt.

Its ambition was the source of its life as it went on emitting smoke. Its ambition was the source of its death as it slowly burnt down into a pinchful of ash.

This is ambition. Reason enough to live with and reason enough to die for...