Panchhi's flight

It was a misty morning, dew drops were glistening on the tip of leaves. A mild morning breeze blew through the forest. The quiet murmur of leaves was interspersed by the chirping of the black tailed monkeys that jumped playfully from one branch to another, from one tree to another.

Panchhi had woken up early, way before light had begun to fill the sky. Today was the day he had been waiting for. Today he would fly far and high. The wings had been tested in the low flights around the trees. Now they were ready for the higher skies.

So many emotions filled Panchhi’s heart today. He was excited that he would take the leap, yet he was apprehensive of leaving his nest, his parents, and his friends behind. And, though he had seen the sky from his nest so often, and had loves it so much, he did never gone deep into it. He did not know what to expect.

So, Panchhi looked at his nest for one last time and spread his wings to plunge into the sky.

Initially he saw the world he knew - the clutter of leaves, the black tailed monkeys, and the lake in the middle of the trees. But as it began to fly higher up, he saw a much larger forest – so many trees and lakes that he had never seen or imagined. It was green all around.

As Panchhi kept going higher air was getting colder, but there was a freshness about it; much like the blue of the sky. And down below, the color of the land was longer green. Blue of the ocean was beginning to mix in too. Panchhi was amazed. He had never known that there existed such a big lake.

Gradually Panchhi flew into the clouds. The air was getting rarer, yet his wings were striving to reach even higher.

And then, all of a sudden, when the view was most beautiful in a riot of colors, when his wings had to make no more effort to stay afloat, Panchhi felt an urge to fly no more. Suddenly the urge to go back home, to return to his nest.

So, he descended back to a forest.

This was a different forest. Not the same where he had grown up. Yet, this forest was so similar. The leaves were a little smaller, but they were green nevertheless.

Sitting at a perched branch on the top of a tree, Panchhi now wondered what was happening. All his life he had wanted to fly in the sky and today when he was floating above the clouds, he only wanted to come back home. As a child he had been sure that flying high was his destiny. And now, he was sitting on a branch, not knowing what to do.

Sun had begun to dip in the horizon. Night was beginning to fall. Stars glistened in a distant sky. Panchhi was feeling depressed.

In that darkness of the night, Panchhi tried to imagine all the colors he had seen while he flew. And he began to realize that the colors of the skies were the same as the colors of the forest, that the brush that painted the skies painted the forest too.

Suddenly his heart filled with joy. He knew that he would build a nest next morning, and that he would fly again to the highest skies if ever he felt like. That this tree he was on was the same as any tree he had ever been on. That flying in the highest skies was the same as sitting on this perched branch.