Mother Nature

Nothing can compare to the fairytales Granny tells. And one day she was telling one such fabulous tale to her bunch of grandchildren; “Once upon a time there was a mother-tree....”- it was a story about a tree that lost her child! This story begins from the tiny Shimultoli village somewhere in Bangladesh. And from that Shimultoli’s narrow path to its trees and herbs, birds, rivers, worms, frogs, bats, foxes –none was left out from this story. Neither was the human beings left out. The stars, the sun and the moon, the clouds, the butterflies and the earth, all were equal in Granny’s story. Written by, once a Dhaka Theatre and ‘Gram’ Theatre activist, and a child rights specialist, Mohammad Maruf Khan, and through the illustrations of Chandrashekhor Dey, the innocent human child and the nature seem to come to life in this very story. It seemed as if one small village of Bangladesh had transformed into the whole universe! The story is translated in English by Antara Raisa.