Abaninadranath Tagore (সাথী)
At a stretch of wilderness there stood one Palmyra tree. In that never-ending horizon that Palmyra grew alone, it had no friend. There was a jungle of fan-palm trees at distance, where many Palmyras stood side by side, hugging each other, perhaps being friends forever. But the jungle was far away from our Palmyra, and it looked sap-green from there where this Palmyra stood.
At night the Palmyra could see countless stars, blinking on the vast dome above—twinkling and coaxing in light-hearted banter. Sometimes the light breeze hugged the lonely Palmyra, showered it with the fragrance of sweet flowers that it had carried, but it was not very often, rather rarely, only when it was spring time. In other seasons, the storm came, rain arrived riding deep ash-grey clouds, there struck the lightening near to that never-ending horizon. The Palmyra kept watching all these. Then Fall sneaked in, brought comb-wool-clouds, and the clouds brought migratory birds. They flew in line like a pearl necklace worn by the never ending horizon, they flew o’er the Palmyra tree.
The Palmyra was very keen on friendship with these birds, to listen to the stories from far-far-away-lands, from where they had migrated. Sometimes Palmyra even tried to touch them with its fan-leaves, but they never had a single moment to spare, e’er running for their games due on the other side of that never ending horizon! At the end, the Palmyra was always left alone, nevertheless it really wanted to play with the birds!
Suddenly, one sunny day, two weaver birds arrived, and for some unknown reason they kept coming back to the Palmyra. The Palmyra had no clue, they came, and they sat on the fan-leaves, and carried on chatting with each other for hours. Their incessant piffle filled the air around, within days they made a beautiful nest at the most beautiful leaf-stem of the Palmyra tree. The sunshine played hide and seek with the nest, now. The Palmyra was very happy, it knew that it had friends … perhaps friends forever … The Palmyra carefully cradled the nest, protected it.
Then came a day when three little birds flashed out of the nest at a wink!
Since then the Palmyra has been somber again, immersed into a trench of thick thoughts … no one knows what.