I couldn’t find my new white ribbon that mummy got me the other day. 

‘Where is it, mom?’

‘What?’ Mummy as usual was busy in the kitchen. 

‘My white ribbon? I looked everywhere.’

‘Did you check the dressing table drawers? Check the last one’. And indeed it was there. And also, the hair clip that mashi gave me last time I went to Kolkata. 

‘Mum, please put them on!’ I went to the kitchen.

‘What’s the great hurry, Shreeya? We are going out only at 4 and now it is not even three thirty!’

I was excited. I honestly love that place, the Mukutmonipur Lake I mean. Jethu has come from Kolkata and we are taking him there—mum, dada, and I. 

In time, mom dressed me up in a polka dot white frock, did my hair with the ribbon at the centre and the hair brooch, polished my shoes, put my socks on and then went to get dressed herself while dada was still at the laptop. ‘Jeshaan, you need to hurry up! We have to be out in the next ten minutes’, she said as she closed the door of her room. 

Shortly after, she was out – all decked up. I want to be like my mother one day, so elegant, so neatly dressed in such a short time! She was in white shaare with a pale violet border and small red motifs all through, something she had kept for Jethu to come. 

And just then came that fateful SMS from my dance teacher. It was more of a missive than a message. Mum looked sadly at me. ‘Sona, I’m afraid, you have to go to your dance class now. They are having a dress rehearsal this afternoon for the final on Saturday.’

I felt like thumping the floor. I was mad, I was sad, too sad even to cry. Never before had I hated dance this much. Dad was there to take me to the school. All I could do is to hop into the car. I stopped thinking, felt like a zombie. 

I was dreaming of the lake from the night before. I like the smell over there. The robust leaves of tall trees, the verdant promise of the breeze, even the sky smells like fresh blossom. The rivers sluicing the lake are all dry now in summer, not even tickling threads of water, but the lake remains as grand as ever with silvery quiet ripples throughout the year. 

But the best part of the trip for me is the ride on the motor rickshaw van. I can visualize everything. Jethu must have taken quite a bit of space. So dada and mom had to squeeze a little, sitting cross-legged, mum still sporting her stylish sunglasses though by then the sun must have been down. They must be craning their heads this side and that. On the right was the lake, solemn and sovereign as ever. The sun was hidden behind a veil of thin clouds, turning the water ashy with only a mild hint of red. Curving away on the right dotted a few houses of red tile roofs left to the care of new vegetation, green as green could be. 

The driver held firm onto the handlebar, his torso slightly bent to the front. The road parted through the tough stalks that closed at a distance like a seam, mummy still humming ‘ei path jadi na sesh hoi’ (if this path never ends …), the driver couldn’t be bothered, Jethu making a fresh bid to join the hum, chorus-like, but mum as unconcerned as ever. 

Suddenly, in the pale thick light of the approaching evening, flew off a treepie from the coiled up thick, old veins of a huge tree. It flew, it fluttered, it flapped, it dived, it climbed up and up, all monarch-like.  

Dada hushed into the driver’s ears: ‘Stop!’ He noticed a blue-yellow something jutting out from a hole in the tree. 

‘Don’t go!’ mom cried out, ‘It could be a snake hole’. 

Dada cusped his palm outside the hole and pop came out a baby treepie. 

‘Don’t take it!’ Ma panicked. ‘The mother will swoop down on you and take your eyes out.’

When dada came back to the rickshaw with the baby bird, mom implored, ‘Chere de, beta! These treepies can be pretty wretched.’ Dada couldn’t care less. 

On the way back in the rickshaw, it was all dark. Jethu, more concerned about him than anyone else, felt safer and Ma panicked less. 

Coming home, Dada placed the baby bird on the dining table. The unexpected joy dissolved my afternoon gloom. Ma soon got a plastic dropper and tried to feed the little thing some milk. But it was too tiny, too helpless, too unexposed to the world to the world of humans to drink from a dropper. Then Ma took a saucer, poured some milk, dipped her finger in, and tried to put drops into her mouth. It worked, though clumsily. I had to do the same immediately and made a mess. Mom didn’t rebuke me. Instead, very tenderly she said, ‘Tomorrow morning I will show you the trick’.

From next day onwards, I took charge of feeding our new guest, my ‘BooBoo’. Soon, BooBoo became the centre of all attention. Dad used to whistle at her. She responded by taking a leg up and then down. Before going to school, I used to put her under a basket with plastic net, not that she would fly off but to keep her safe from a neighboring cat. 

Soon, BooBoo learnt to drink milk from the pot.  She started growing very fast. The trademark long tail flourished. She skipped on the floor and took small flights inside the house. When my friends came to visit her, she was at her chatty best. I waited for the day I could take her to my school but dare not tell my mom. 

When she was about six inches long, one day stealthily I took her with me to the school. I released her in the classroom. Expectedly, there was a real flurry. She flew from one corner to other, with my friends running after her. 

As soon as I heard the teacher coming, I tried to put her back into my bag. But she skipped out and hopped to one corner. At first Mrs Gupta didn’t notice her. When she did, she was pleasantly surprised. ‘See, what a lovely bird! Do you know her name?’ 

’Treepie!’ shouted the whole class. 

Then an odd chap released the secret: ‘Madam, she is Shreeya’s pet. The name is Boo-Boo.’

‘I see! What a lovely pet to have! But you shouldn’t bring her to the class. Otherwise, nobody will pay attention to the lessons.’

’Madam, pleeeease…’, said the whole class in one voice. 

‘Put her in a cage then and place at one corner of the floor.’

Next day, sulking, we put her in a cage. But soon a wild cat jumped down the window and almost got hold of the cage. The whole class shouted, ‘Shoo! Shoo!’ and chased the cat away. 

When Boo-Boo was released from the cage, she flew up to one corner of the ceiling. This resolved the matter. ‘Okay, let her stay there then!’ said Mrs Gupta.

Every day I used to enter the class with Boo-Boo sitting on my shoulder. Very obediently, as soon as Mrs Gupta arrived, she went up to that corner in the ceiling. At every break, she used to flit out of the window and darted back after some time and sat on my bench carrying the smell of sunshine. And again, flew back to the spot she herself had allotted for herself. 

From her solitary corner, she looked down at us, seeking our glance. Otherwise, she was a diligent listener. With keen attention, she followed everything that the teacher taught. At home too, when mom sat with me for my homework in the evening, she quietly would position herself next to her like an attentive student. Mom got Boo-Boo a small slender pencil and a copybook and helped her to write, holding the pencil with her beak. Boo-Boo was such a quick learner! Soon she became better than me in her studies. And I started copying from her my schoolwork when mom went to the kitchen which she did every now and then. 

Then came the annual exam. Boo-Boo worked harder than me. At the hall, she sat next to me and every time I got stuck, she wrote it down for me, without the teacher noticing. Like an oracle, she had all the answers. I came back home and announced proudly, ‘This time I am going to come first!’ Boo-Boo screamed and hurled round mother time and time again. Mom could understand what had happened. ‘She helped you out, isn’t it?’ Sheepishly, I said ‘Yes’. ‘You shouldn’t have done this’. ‘Why mom?’ ‘This is cheating.’ I kept quiet. But Boo-Boo seemed quite pleased that the secret has spilled out. 

A fortnight later, came the results. I indeed came first. On the appointed day, I went to collect my report card, all decked up and with Boo-Boo sitting on my shoulder. The teacher announced my name first. This hadn’t happened before for me. I proudly got up from my seat and as I was about to take the card from my teacher, Boo-Boo scooped it away, gushed past the window and flew off. The teacher was flabbergasted. She couldn’t understand this behavior of Boo-Boo, but I could. I came out of the class, sad and ashamed. 

Far way off there on the lawn, she sat on a tree but as I approached her, turned and flew off again, never to be seen. She must have gone back to the lake, maybe she dropped the report card there, maybe she is living in the rugged unknown of the surrounding bush, maybe she has set up a school where the other little birds are having their first taste of literacy, all first-generation learners. Suddenly, emptiness was all around me. I lost all cheer. Boo-Boo had become my dearest friend, my soul mate. 

 ‘At times I think we should have never met!’ I cry to my mom. ‘Beti,’ she says, ‘all love is like that. You lose what you love. But Boo-Boo’s memory will live in you like a lantern of fog. You will learn to cope.’

‘Mummy, is life sad then?’

Ma looked distant, quietly said, ‘Now, get up and bring your books. There’s a lot for tomorrow.’

[This story is written for my 9-year-old friend, Sreeya, then seven.]