Bolai – A short story by Rabindranath Tagore

After the whole night rain, the first golden sunlight falls on the Deodar trees over the mountain peaks – without any notice to anyone he silently reaches the quiet forest floor and stares at the beauty around amidst the forest – it’s a shivering experience – as if he can feel the presence of the people and their inner souls of these large trees around. They don’t speak a word, but stand still as if they know all, all id they are the grand fathers and gran mothers standing still from that old age, from the ancient time of ‘once-upon-a-time’ stories!

It’s not that his immersive vision is only towards the upward objects, many a times, I have found him searching for something down the ground in the garden. His inquisitiveness knows no bound looking at the newborn saplings blooming up with their heads up in the sunlight! As if every day he leans to them to ask ‘what’s next?’, ‘what’s next?’, ‘what’s next?’ they are all his never ending stories!

All those green little newborn leaves, how does he express his sense of union with them? Perhaps they also would like to greet him with queries in response to his interests in them, perhaps they would ask him ‘what’s your name?’, perhaps they’d have asked, ‘Where is your mom?’ Bolai would reply in his mind, ‘I don’t have a mom, dear!’

He just can’t stand someone plucking flowers from the plants. And he also understands that this reservations do not have any meaning to anyone else in this world. And may be because of that he wants to hide his pain in himself. Boys of his age would pelt stones at the trees and get the Amlaki’s down from the branches at height, he can’t say anything to them, and he just turns around at leaves the place.

Just to tease him, his friends would run through the garden by biting the bushes around, breaks the branch of a tree unnecessarily, – he shies away from crying so that his friends don’t perceive him as crazy. His most dangerous day is the day when the lawn mower comes to mow the lawn in the garden.

Because he has observed all those tiny little beautiful saplings raising their heads, tiny little violet flowers blooming out, little blue flowers with golden dots in their hearts, different little saplings came out of the seeds spread by the birds while breaking the Neem fruits over the heads, all those beautiful fresh green leaflets, all that are mown by the unforgiving lawn mower. Just because they are not a part of family of those artistic beauty for novel garden, nobody to listen to their cries, no one to notice their complaints!

Some of the days, he would come to his aunty and flung his arms around her neck and try to persuade her, “Why don’t you please tell the lawn mower not to mow the lawn? At least spare those of my tiny little plants in the garden, please!” His aunt would like to respond, “O my boy, would you not want the unwanted weeds to be cleaned in order to shape the garden? How could we spare the weeds, it won’t look good, right?”

Over a period of time Bolai could understand that there are some pins those are all for himself only, none of the people have any sensitivity to those except him.

He probably thinks that the process of his age started off in those millions of years ago when the mud came up beneath the sea where the future forest of the earth was lying dormant, shouting out the very first birth cry of their own life – when there is no animals, no birds born yet, no sign of life otherwise. All around there is only the stones, mud and water everywhere.

Pioneers of life in time, raises their folded hands towards the Sun and prays “I’ll stay, I’ll live, I am the eternal traveler, will traverse through life after death, beyond death into the eternal evolution of life, throughout the day and night, in the Sun and in the rains.

Even till date that cry of life from the plants and trees are resonating from the deep forests, mountains and creeks, in their branches and leaves, the life of planet earth resonates the sound everywhere, “I’ll stay, I’ll stay back”.

The mother of this eternal life of the planet earth, the trees and plant-life absorbs the elements of life from the cosmos since eternity, saves the vigor, nectar and the elegance of life for the eternal storehouse of life on the planet earth, and raises the voice of anxious life in to the sky to the eternal cosmos “I’m alive, I want to stay alive”. Somehow Bolai could sense that eternal call of life in his blood flow! We had sometimes perhaps laughed at that.