Leafy

Estimated time to read: 3 minutes

Blue Leafy flew…guided by the breeze that propelled him over the heads of the people that constituted the busy road. He flew even higher and further for a few seconds as he reached the chimney of the restaurant at the end of the road, then he descended..softly landing at the base of what he saw was the arc of a three-dimensional rubber surface. “This is it”, he thought, “This is how it all ends.”.

He had heard tales of these circular rubber beings trampling over his brethren ending their lives. They who were powerful as long as they stayed affixed to their host fathers, the Trees, were immediately at the mercy of every external agent, once disconnected. And he had heard of their merciless endings — crushed, shredded, ripped up. Some got lucky, of course. They ended up in the warm confines of these mysterious, loved cages called “books” as…”bookermarks”, he decided they were called. But he was wise beyond his years and he knew that even these safe-keepers were themselves descendants of his original caretakers, the Trees.

As he lay there, breathing in heavily and feeling the heat Mr RubberArc near by was radiating silently, he thought of many things. He thought of how it had all come to this, as he knew was the norm. When the end was near, Leaves must think of how it all came to this. And so he thought….

He thought of how even as a baby leaf, he was always the rebel, growing at the edge of Uncle Branch. All the other leaves were free to nestle up closer to Father Bark, but he would stand out — blue instead of green like the rest, he’d decided…err..even though it had sort-of been decided for him. And he thought about how once the evil Mr. Monkien had jumped up and down on Uncle Branch and even threatened to harm him! But his life had not ended then as their friendly visitor Winden had blown Monkien away.

But one incident stood out. It was when a huge metal blob had come out of nowhere and slammed squarely onto the torso of Father. And Father had let out a huge big roar of pain. But he had stood there and taken the brunt of the damage and save for Uncles Chip and Twig (may they wither in peace), the rest of the family was safe. Leafy would later learn that the metal blob was called a “Kaar” and it was intoxicated with some sort of liquid called “Petrol”. Of course, all of these was alien to Leafy and he did not care about things that did not cause him harm. The only liquid (pfft, of course, he knew about liquids — Paati Maramamma next door had yelled out the concepts to him and his siblings, when they were little. Sadly she had mysteriously reduced to a stump one day and Leafy’s lessons had ended there.) he cared about was “Water”, a rejuvenating drink he drank everytime the skies above grew dark and Winden grew very,very loud.

As he remembered these things, he was jerked to reality by the growing vibration of RubberArc and he muttered a silent goodbye to everyone, a goodbye he knew Winden would pass along. RubberArc was moving forward and suddenly came to a halt in sync with the shriek Leafy heard. Someone was moving swiftly towards him and before he knew it, he was being lifted and examined by a pair of glass panes….”Papa! Look! A blue leaf!”, the voice exclaimed. That was the last thing he heard before he passed out.

When he awoke he felt a strange, calming warmth and a gentle rustle on the tip of his head. He also noticed that he was propped up at a strange angle before he registered the fact that he wasn’t dead after all.

He was one of the lucky ones.