📖 Story 10: The Tree That Was Missing

(A memory, a small ride, and a promise that starts small)

🌿 A Morning with Appa

One Sunday morning,
Mukshi sat beside Appa, tying his shoelaces slowly.
“Want to come for a ride?” Appa asked.

Mukshi nodded.
Daksh blinked. That meant: “Yes.”

This time, Amma packed an extra water bottle and one big banana.
“Take the forest road,” she smiled.
“But be back before the sun grows too strong.”

They rode together—
Mukshi on his small cycle,
Appa on his old one, just ahead.

The forest road was quiet.
Birds chirped lazily. A squirrel darted across.
Everything felt the same… but Appa was quiet.

They stopped under a wide neem tree.
Mukshi looked around.
“Why do you look serious, Appa?”

Appa smiled gently.
“I came this way as a boy too. Same road. Same trees.”

“But…” he paused,
“there were more trees back then.”

Mukshi looked around again.
“More than now?”

“Many more,” Appa nodded.
“So tall, they touched the sky.
We used to sit here with friends.
It was always cool under the shade.”

Appa pointed to an empty patch near the corner.

“There was a tamarind tree there. Big one.
Fell last year in the storm.
But before that,
someone had already cut most of its branches.”

Mukshi didn’t say anything.
He looked at the empty spot as if it was still full.

Daksh blinked once.
That meant: “We saw it now.”

They sat quietly for a while.
The breeze touched their cheeks.

Then Appa said, “We can’t bring back all of it.
But we can keep what’s still left.”

Mukshi looked at the small seedling beside his foot.
“Can I plant something here next week?”
Appa nodded. “Yes. That’s how it begins again.”

On the way back, the sun was stronger.

But Mukshi rode slower, looking at every tree they passed—
as if meeting them for the first time.

He didn’t speak much that afternoon.
But he took out his notebook and drew a small sapling with a big smiley face.

The world changes quietly—tree by tree.
But so does care.
A small act. A quiet promise.
A little tree someone else might rest under.