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 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
47 comments
Read more

Being Christian in BJP’s India

A moment of triumph for India’s women’s cricket team turned unexpectedly into a controversy about religious faith and expression, thanks to some right-wing footsloggers. After her stellar performance in the semi-final of the Wormen’s World Cup (2025), Jemimah Rodrigues thanked Jesus for her achievement. “Jesus fought for me,” she said quoting the Bible: “Stand still and God will fight for you” [1 Samuel 12:16]. Some BJP leaders and their mindless followers took strong exception to that and roiled the religious fervour of the bourgeoning right wing with acerbic remarks. If Ms Rodrigues were a Hindu, she would have thanked her deity: Ram or Hanuman or whoever. Since she is a Christian, she thanked Jesus. What’s wrong in that? If she was a nonbeliever like me, God wouldn’t have topped the list of her benefactors. Religion is a talisman for a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong in imagining that some god sitting in some heaven is taking care of you. In fact, it gives a lot of psychologic...
26 comments
Read more

Hollow Leaders

A century ago, T S Eliot wrote about the hollowness of his countrymen in a poem titled The Hollow Men . The World War I had led to a lot of disillusionment with the collapse of powerful empires and the savagery of the war itself which unleashed barbaric slaughter. The generation that survived was known as the “Lost Generation.” Before the war, Western civilisation was sustained by certain values and principles given by religion, the Enlightenment, and Victorian morality. The war showed that science and technology, which could improve life, had actually produced machine guns, gas warfare, and mass death. Religion became hollow. People became hollow. “We are the hollow men,” Eliot’s poem began. The civilisation looked sophisticated from outside, but it was empty inside. There is a lot of religion today in the world. My country has allegedly become so religious that it decides what you will eat, wear, which god you will pray to, and even the language for communication. The ultimat...
16 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Why India Needs to Reclaim its Liberal Soul

Russia’s Putin announced the demise of liberalism, America’s Trump wrote its obituary, and India’s Modi wielded the death as a political forge that transmuted him into a demigod. We are, unfortunately, passing through an era of so-called “strong leaders” like Putin, Trump, and Modi. A 2024 report based on a 2023 Pew survey found that 67% Indians endorsed a governing system with a “strong leader” who can make decisions without interference from courts or parliament. This support for autocracy was the highest among all surveyed nations and has increased consistently after Modi became the PM. Shockingly, the same 2023 survey found that 72% of Indian respondents expressed a favourable view of military rule. Indians don’t want individual freedom, it seems. We are used to the many gods who incarnated at appropriate times and destroyed evil ( Sambhavami yuge yuge ). Modi is our present divine incarnation. It is the duty of these avatars to conquer evil; hence individual freedom doesn’t ...
12 comments
Read more