Skip to main content

The Frog and the Nightingale



Bingle Bog became silent instantly. All the animals and birds were stunned into silence by a strange music. They were all used to the croaking of the bullfrog so far. The frog croaked away day and night and called it ‘The Voice of the Heart’. The frog considered himself the King of the Bog.

It was then that the nightingale appeared on the banyan tree and started singing. The nightingale soon became a sensation in the Bog. All the animals and birds gravitated towards the banyan tree to listen to the nightingale’s songs.

“You sing quite well, you know,” the Frog said to the Nightingale when the singing stopped.

“Oh, thank you so much,” said the Nightingale. “It’s so kind of you.”

“You know me?” Frog was a little surprised in spite of himself. He had come wearing his latest suit gifted by a bhakt. His name was embossed in gold on the coat.

“Oh, who doesn’t know you ji?” Nightingale said without concealing her admiration. “You are the great king of this Bog, the hero of heroes, the champion of champions, the warrior of warriors, the guardian of the Bog’s culture and tradition, the defender of its gods and totems...”

“I am also a connoisseur of music, you know.”

“Oh! Yet you say I sing well. I’m flattered ji. Thank you, thank you.”

“But your music lacks focus, you know. Without focus, music has no strength.”

Soon Frog became Nightingale’s instructor. Frog issued tickets to those who wished to listen to Nightingale. The price of the tickets went higher and higher day by day because of GST and Cess and Toll and whatever else that Frog chose to call it. “It is all for your future welfare,” Frog told the Bogians through his Voice of the Heart. The Bogians had immense faith in their king.

Nightingale sang different tunes under Frog’s instruction. Tunes with focus. But the Bogians began to lose interest in the new songs. They began to grumble on Facebook and WhatsApp and other social media.

Frog shouted at Nightingale. “You lousy bird! Your focus! Your focus!”

Frog taught Nightingale to focus. Day and night, Nightingale went through the yogic practices given by Frog. Day and night. Week after week.

Nightingale lost her voice finally. Lost her life.

She died.

‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ posters emerged soon all over the Bog.

The Bogians once again got used to posters and slogans and Frog’s croaks.

PS. Inspired by Vikram Seth’s poem The Frog and the Nightingale.


Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Childhood

They say that childhood is the best phase of one’s life. I sigh. And then I laugh. I wish I could laugh raucously. But my voice was snuffed out long ago. By the conservatism of the family. By the ignorance of the religious people who controlled the family. By educators who were puppets of the system fabricated by religion mostly and ignorant but self-important politicians for the rest. I laugh even if you can’t hear the sound of my laughter. You can’t hear the raucousness of my laughter because I have been civilised by the same system that smothered my childhood with soft tales about heaven and hell, about gods and devils, about the non sequiturs of life which were projected as great. I lost my childhood in the 1960s. My childhood belonged to a period of profound social, cultural and political change. All over the world. But global changes took time to reach my village in Kerala, India. India was going through severe crises when I was struggling to grow up in a country where

Trump in Indian Media

Aroon Purie, editor of India Today , thinks that Trump owes his victory to such issues as price rise, housing crisis, influx of immigrants, and the conservative rebellion against elite wokeism. Trump presidency portends populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism, says Purie quoting Condoleeza Rice. The world may not be a happier place with Trump leading America. “What is the world according to Trump?” India Today ’s senior journalist Raj Chengappa asks. His answer: “… it is ensuring America’s interests first with those of every other nation coming a very distant second.” Trump thinks that hitherto the other nations were eating America’s lunch. The allusion is not only to the immigrants but also to America “paying everyone else’s bills to maintain the global order.” Though Trump would like to play a key role in bringing the two wars [Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza] to an end, he will not do anything that will involve a price tag that the US has to pay for. Chengappa worri

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand