Bolai – A short story by Rabindranath Tagore

One day, I was reading the newspaper, suddenly Bolai comes and takes me to the garden hastily. Showing a sapling he asks, “Uncle, what is this plant called?”
Noticed that the Shimul sapling raised its head in the middle of the cobble stoned pathway to the garden.

Alas! Bolai did the mistake by bringing my attention to that. It has drawn his attention in its first appearance from the seed, in its first budding stage. And after that every day he has watered it, cared for its growth day in and day out, eagerly watched the growth of this new born baby.

Shimul grows quite fast, but not as fast as his interest to see the growth in the new born sapling. When it’s grown a couple of feet, looking at its blooming leaves he thought it to be a miraculous plant, just like a mother thinks her baby to be a miraculous baby when she first time notices the sign of intelligence in her child. Bolai thought that would surprise me as well!

I replied, “I’ll ask the gardener to uproot that immediately from there!”

Bolai just startled at that. What an unbelievable decision! He told me “I beg your pardon uncle, please, please, please, don’t uproot the plant!”
I told him, “Do you have any idea about this? It’s come up just in the middle of the path, once grown up it will make our life miserable by spreading the cottons all over the place!”

When he failed to convince me, he ran up to his aunty, adoring her he sobbingly requested “Aunty, please request uncle not to uproot the plant, please!”
Definitely he adopted the right approach. His aunty just summoned me, “Honey, can’t we keep the plant as is? Let it be there!”

What can I do? Just left it like that. Initially if Bolai would not have shown me the plant, I might not have been cared at all. But now it gets noticed every day. In a years’ time it grew up to a big one, a real big one! And it seems out of all the plants in the garden, this one becomes his most favorite!