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The Man And The Mango Tree
Where West Market Street, with its brightly painted storefronts and makeshift stalls that sell odd trinkets to tourists, met the sturdier economic hub of Banker's Road, there grew the stunted mango tree.
It was an anomaly, out of place in the buzzing commercial landscape.
The city had decided, some decades ago, to let the tree be. Most of the elected members of the local bureaucracy felt it was harmless, and a few even felt it added a certain character to the locale.
No one could quite recall how old the tree was. The oldest members of the city council would tell you, that even in their childhood the tree had stood much the same as it did now.
It had stopped flowering and bearing fruit at some unknown year in the past. In fact none could even really remember if it ever had done those things.
At any rate, there it stood, odd and proud.
Beneath this curious tree, cross-legged and staring off into the abstract distance, sat the old beggar. Much like the tree, he too had become a characterful fixture of the locale.
None could really remember where he had come from, or when. He had acquired many names over the ages, the kindest of which was "Crazy Raghu".
With matted white hair and a thick, frizzled beard, he sat there wearing only a dhoti. He never spoke.
As a matter of fact, he had never really asked anything of anyone. It was those that walked by and took pity on him that had decided on his behalf that he was a beggar in need of their charitable will.
Strange, how silence invites meaning from the world.
Either way, he cared not. He simply carried on sitting in his spot, his eyes, sharp below the bushy brows, focused on something unknown.
The world carried on living and moving around him. As a matter of fact, it had been doing so for a very long time.
When he had first sat down to begin his intense prayer, kings and noblemen had come to pay their respects.
Seasons followed one another. Empires rose and fell. States and nations formed.
And the sage became a beggar.
Yet he carried on, oblivious to all but The One. Time, after all, was nothing but an old friend, on this journey.
© Artisancta
It was an anomaly, out of place in the buzzing commercial landscape.
The city had decided, some decades ago, to let the tree be. Most of the elected members of the local bureaucracy felt it was harmless, and a few even felt it added a certain character to the locale.
No one could quite recall how old the tree was. The oldest members of the city council would tell you, that even in their childhood the tree had stood much the same as it did now.
It had stopped flowering and bearing fruit at some unknown year in the past. In fact none could even really remember if it ever had done those things.
At any rate, there it stood, odd and proud.
Beneath this curious tree, cross-legged and staring off into the abstract distance, sat the old beggar. Much like the tree, he too had become a characterful fixture of the locale.
None could really remember where he had come from, or when. He had acquired many names over the ages, the kindest of which was "Crazy Raghu".
With matted white hair and a thick, frizzled beard, he sat there wearing only a dhoti. He never spoke.
As a matter of fact, he had never really asked anything of anyone. It was those that walked by and took pity on him that had decided on his behalf that he was a beggar in need of their charitable will.
Strange, how silence invites meaning from the world.
Either way, he cared not. He simply carried on sitting in his spot, his eyes, sharp below the bushy brows, focused on something unknown.
The world carried on living and moving around him. As a matter of fact, it had been doing so for a very long time.
When he had first sat down to begin his intense prayer, kings and noblemen had come to pay their respects.
Seasons followed one another. Empires rose and fell. States and nations formed.
And the sage became a beggar.
Yet he carried on, oblivious to all but The One. Time, after all, was nothing but an old friend, on this journey.
© Artisancta
