Source: Bishnu Sarangi from Pixabay 

Ajit ji had only two dreams - First that there should be a luxurious house in the city and second that there should be a mango tree in the house. Ajit ji loved mango. He had even put a picture of a mango tree in the drawing-room. Whenever Ajit ji looked at that picture, he kept thinking that when his dream would come true! When he would plant a mango tree next to his main gate! Ajit ji had four children, three daughters, and one son. English medium fees of those 4 children schooling were not allowing Ajit ji’s dream to come true. And then later the daughters had to get married by paying a huge dowry. What would Ajit do, without dowry, for the three girls, the boys with government jobs were not even available. After all these expenses, all that was left was gone in the son’s engineering studies. Ajit ji had very little money left in the name of saving.

At the age of 55, when Ajit ji was free from all expenses, he fulfilled his dream of building a new house with the help of some previous savings and some loans. When one dream is fulfilled, how can another remain unfulfilled? He also planted a mango tree next to the main gate. Within a few years, the mango tree started producing sweet sweet fruits. Ajit ji took a beautiful picture of a mango tree with his old mobile And put the picture of the mango tree very next to the picture of the tree in the drawing-room by framing it. Ajit ji liked mangoes so much that during the mango season, he used to sit in front of the pictures of a mango tree and eat food with mango. There was no one better than Ajit in the whole locality in terms of spending money for family members. Ajit ji was a good person but he had two drawbacks. The first drawback was that he used to spend his free time with outsiders and the second drawback in him was that he did not even listen to the words of his wife and even if he listened, he used to ignore them. For all these reasons, Sonu and the whole family did not like Ajit at all. Sonu used to give respect only to the matter. But that mango tree was retaining its sweetness, the whole family loved the mango tree.

Time passed by. Ajit ji’s old age had come and one day Ajit ji died while battling the disease. It is said that.. at any stage of age, when mother or father passes away, our foundation becomes weak, it seems that the blessings have gone out of our heads because we become orphans. But Sonu, his sister, and his mother did not even for a moment feel that there is no more fathers' blessings on their heads. Yes, the family was more upset that the mango tree did not produce fruit this year. It never happened that the mango tree did not bear fruit. Don’t know what happened that year that the color of the mango tree had become discolored. Moreover, the picture of the mango tree was also blurred. Maybe something had happened to the tree and to the pictures of the tree, maybe there were no more Ajit’s blessings on the tree planted by Ajit ji, maybe there is no more blessing on the pictures of a tree which was framed by Ajit ji. Maybe the tree was orphaned!

That year passed and the next year the mango tree produced a lot of fruit. The whole family was very happy and waited for the mango to ripen. It is about the day Ajit died. On that day, Sonu’s three sisters had come to their maternal home from their in-laws’ house. On seeing the mango tree, Sonu remembered his father and noticed that the mangoes were ripe. Sonu went inside the house to get a long stick to pluck the mangoes, then suddenly his eyes fell on the picture of the mango tree and he saw that the whole picture had turned black. When Sonu called the sisters and mother and showed the picture of the tree, everyone was shocked. In front of their eyes, both the pictures of the mango tree fall and break. They all try to say something by looking at each other’s faces but then all of a sudden they heard the sound of the branch breaking off the tree. When the whole family came out of the house running, they saw that in front of them the green mango tree was falling. Sonu, his sister, and his mother feel as if the blessings have gone out of their heads. They feel like they are all orphans!

Perhaps wherever Ajit ji was, he used to remember both the pictures of the mango tree and the mango tree as well very much, and perhaps that is why he had called both the picture of the tree and the tree to himself.

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