THE SOLITARY TREE

By: Devyani Nighoskar

One fine day, while I was roaming about in a forest I saw a solitary tree with absolutely no leaves. It just stood there, amidst a wide glade of nothing else but grass, where all other trees fell away revealing the bespeckled sky. Its branches shaped up beautifully and that just attracted my attention towards it. I wanted to go and ask, whether it was lonely? How did it feel to be cut off from the association of other trees? I stared at it for a long, long time. I saw other trees and noticed the difference. While other trees had leaves and fruits and flowers, their branches bent downwards with the weight,  this solitary tree was free, free from any sort of pressure as its knotted arms rose upwards, ready to grab any opportunity from a sky of endless possibilities. Who knew that something as empty as a leafless tree could be so beautiful?

The worries and the pressures of life , situations and society weigh us down all the time, yet we think of our life being beautiful, however, sometimes it’s that one individual who decides to let go of the encumbrance of the society and manages to rise to the top.  These are the individuals who might be not get accepted, but are the ones who are beautiful in the true sense.

Life is full of metaphors.