IT seemed like a dance of death as the peepul leaf floated down to me, “You poor leaf,” I cried, “Let me get some glue, you know the quick fix type and paste you back to the branch you fell from!” “No!” said the peepul leaf firmly, “I’m happy on the ground!” “But you belong on the tree,” I said, “Waving and whispering all day long!”
“That was good while it lasted, but my job is a bigger one now!” “What’s that?” I asked. “My job,” said the peepul leaf on the ground, “Is to point you to the mighty tree I came from! What’s the first thing you did when I fell near your coffee mug and the newspapers you read every morning?” “I looked up at the tree which formed you!” I said.
“You moved your eyes away from the robberies and rapes, death and dacoities. You glanced away from the horrors of lynching and the brutalities of the Russian invasion and glanced at the stately tree.” “Yes,” I said. “And suddenly your agitated, newspaper reading mind became still as you saw its still, mighty trunk, it’s thick branches and all my brothers and sister leaves, up there waving at you in the breeze!”
“So true!” I said. “That’s what I’m supposed to do now!” said the philosophical leaf, “move you to stiller moments. I point you to the tree that gave me life, and the quiet and calm that comes from there, gives you the same!” I looked thoughtfully at the leaf, then picked it up, “What are you doing?” it asked, “Hope you’re not trying to stick me back again?”
“No,” I said, “I want to keep you with me, to remind me about myself!” “Whoa! Whoa!” said the leaf, “I remind you of you?” “Of the me that I am supposed to be!” I said, “I have been placed on this earth by my Creator, to point people to Him, but do I do that or point to myself, saying ‘Look! How great I am!’?”
“There are leaves on the peepul tree who are like that!” sighed the leaf, “they pretend to themselves and the world they are not mere leaves but the very Tree itself!” “Yes,” I sighed, “That’s why I’m going to keep you with me, to remind myself that I am not God, but my duty is to remind others who our Creator is!” “We do have the same job!” said the leaf happily, as we walked away, the leaf and I..!
