[rajnish manga]

Two Mornings
Story By Anand Gouda

Smooth jazz is playing in my earphones, the weather is unlike typical summer morning it’s humid and cold. The park is full of joggers, old people and hot beverage vendors, I am lazy enough to do all those jogging and exercising part, I just come to park to enjoy the fresh air. In front of my bench there is a neem tree, since it’s after a slope I can see its branches, at the very end of a branch there is a nest with three little birds but one of them is different from the other two, a crow comes flying to the nest and feeds all the three and flies away, now I understand the different kind of bird is cuckoo, I had heard the that cuckoo lays its eggs in crow’s or magpie’s nest, it seems weird. ‘Doesn’t that cuckoo understand his mother has betrayed and abandoned him? And don’t those little crows hate that little cuckoo or their mother for feeding him?’ Such questions are interrogating me, as an old man comes and sits beside me on my bench, he is panting heavily, I offer him my bottled water he gently refuses it and takes a minute of rest and starts speaking pointing to the nest, I unplug my earphones to hear him, “I have seen this scene in the same tree years ago, when I was sitting with my daughter …” his voice chokes at the last word.

“Are you all right sir?” I ask holding his hand to make sure he is okay.

“Yeah, I am fine; it’s just that what you are seeing there is so true, in human life too”

“I don’t understand sir”
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