Thursday, July 08, 2021

Once upon a life

 


... there was a person who blogged here. Then turned the tides, and the tree that the blog was stopped branching. Its roots thought it was enough where it had got to. But one branch still wanted to grow. It wanted to reach out to another branch on another tree. How it happened was a curious thing.

Our branch, sprouted the last in that fall when the tree stopped. Slowly the branch sprouted fully and gained an awareness through its new sensorial leaves. It came to know that there was another tree nearby, that sometimes caught the sun, sometimes reflected more of it. The branches of that tree had a distinct, different smell from our branch, such that just a whiff of it kept our branch feeling invigorated for the day. It obviously wanted to reach out, to get closer. But no matter how much the branch tried, it could not get its parent tree to make it grow, neither could it get its word to the adjacent tree. The branch felt sad. But we all have friends, don't we!

Everyday, the trees were visited by birds. As we know, trees and birds have developed their own language to communicate things. They talk about a lot of things - like about the animals in the forest, the fruits on various trees, where a landslide had happened, or which insects are around. In fact, it was a Magpie bird which told our branch details about the adjacent tree - how it stood 40ft apart to the South, how it rose 20ft taller than our tree, how it donned a pink veil of new leaves every spring, how the bark was smooth like a plant's, how the leaves played tennis with raindrops, and how insects never bothered that tree. Of those birds, 3 birds had a special friendship with our branch - an Owl, a Mynah and a Woodpecker. The Mynah sang a melodious tune to wake up the branch every morning, the Woodpecker played music for the branch through the day, and the Owl made scary noises to chase away any animal that came to eat our branch at night.

Our branch shared how it felt sad. All the 3 birds felt bad. They tried to think of an idea to help their friend. Could they order the trees? They were so small while the trees were so big. 


The Owl had an idea..
It whispered the idea to the Mynah and the Woodpecker. The Woodpecker flew down to the base of the tree. There, it started knocking on the trunk rising out of the ground with its bill, as hard as it could. And it worked! The roots woke up disturbed by all the knocking.

The roots said "Stop it, we were sleeping!"
The Woodpecker replied "Better be growing than be sleeping. Until then I will be knocking."
The roots asked "What do you mean? Why can't you leave us alone?"
The Woodpecker then explained "I am very angry, because you are not letting our friend branch, grow more."
The roots said, "We are very old now. We feel very lazy and sleep all day."
The Woodpecker threatened them, "No sleep till you help my friend.. I will make noise so loud and dig a hole so big that you'll never get a peaceful sleep"
The roots begged, "No, please don't do that! You leave us alone. We will make the branch grow." And so the tree immediately sent more food supplies to our branch so it will grow.

The Mynah flew to the other tree. It sat down, quietly. After a few minutes, the tree asked.
"Why are you so quiet? Please sing a beautiful melody."
"I am quiet because I am thinking of living somewhere else."
"Why do you want to do that?"
"Because I want to build a nest."
"Why, my big branches have all the space you need to build a house. Why don't you?"
"Because I only build my nest where two trees meet."
"Oh is that so! I will then make my branches grow. There is a tree just 40ft away and my branches are nearly touching it. I will make those branches meet, but please don't go."
"If you are such a wonderful tree to help me build a good nest, then I won't leave you." said the Mynah and sang a flatteringly beautiful note. The tree felt happy and asked a branch to grow.

The three birds felt very proud of themselves. The day both the branches met, they help a party under the tree canopy and invited other forest animals. 

Uh, where was I?

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