The box with the bow

To little Reba
editted by Mathwes Santhosh

It was Saturday morning. Mum had gone out for shopping. Nick and Helen were alone in the house. They were bored from their indoor games and the computer was not working.
There was a small garden in front of their building, so they decided to go down to play there.
“What shall we play?” Helen asked her brother.
“Hide and seek” he answered.
In the garden there were two or three little trees and some bushes behind which the children could be hidden.
Helen cleverly arranged for her brother to count.
Nick was not very happy with that but he leaned on a bitter orange tree in front of him and began to count.
“One, two, three…”
But soon he got bored with counting and he took a pen knife out from his pocket and began to engrave the trunk of the bitter orange.
“Oh, ooh!”
Nick frightened stop and looked around him. Nobody was there. Helen had been hidden somewhere.
“Ah, I didn’t hear well” thought Nick and went on engraving the bitter orange.
“Ah, ooh!”
This time Nick got really afraid.
“Who’s there?” asked terrified.
“I am. Don’t you see me? Why hurt me?”
Nick was wasting his breath and didn’t know what to say.
The voice was heard again.
“My boy, I’m speaking to you. Why do you knife me?”
This time Nick managed to mumble something.
“I am dreaming. The tree speaks?”
“I'm not just a tree. I’m a little beautiful brushy bitter orange tree and I make musky flowers and beautiful bigarades.
“I didn’t know trees can speak. I’m very sorry brushy little bitter orange tree”.
At this very moment Helen came back to see what was going on as she also got bored in waiting for her brother to come and find her. When she saw him apologizing to a tree, she brushed out in laughter.
“What are you doing, my brother? Are you crazy like our grandfather and speak to a tree?”
“You fool, it’s not a tree”. Nick said
“And what it is?” Helen said.
“It is a little beautiful brushy bitter orange tree and it’s getting angry because I hurt it with my pen knife”.
“How fool you are, my brother! Trees can’t talk. Look!”.
And she kicked the tree.
“Ouch! Don’t be so wicked!” the tree cried.
Helen got terrified.
“By all means, you really speak!” she murmured.
“Of course I speak. And above all I feel. Grown up people can’t hear me because they’ve got a lot of wax in their ears and many worries into their brains. They are running all the time and never reach anywhere. They don’t listen to what animals and trees are trying to tell them”.
“Oh, my God. Animals can speak too?” told the children in one voice.
“Of course we speak”, said the pushy cat, Mitsi, who came at that moment there to rub on the bitter orange.
“Look at your cat”, said the bitter orange tree, “how is her fur. It has lost its shine”.
“What it's the reason?” said Helen.
“ I know the reason, said Mitsi, “it is because I like to sit near the heater and you have always kept it on at high temperature”
“Do you hear that”, interrupted the bitter orange tree, “whole day in full temperature! Well, you don’t mind the cost of the oil! What about the fumes that come out and pollute the air?”
“What can we do?” said the children in one voice.
“You can use woolen clothes, rather than turning on the heater at higher temperature”, answered Mitsi. “Tell your parents also what you heard in the school about the problems faced by the earth”.
”How do you know all these?” Asked Helen.
“See the condition of my fur. It is getting molted. The turtle also, who is under that bush over there, told me about it” , answered the cat.
“What did she said exactly?” asked the children.
At that moment Elsa, the turtle, popped up from under the bush and spoke.
“I told the cat that I cannot go to sleep because it’s too hot, while we are still in the mid of the winter”
“Yes, yes. I also heard that”, said Nick, in a cheerful mode because he wanted to say something. And he went on saying:
“Last year, it was reported that the bears were very late to go to sleep in the winter because it was too warm”.
“So, aren't you glad, Elsa? When mum puts me to sleep, I’m really unhappy because I want to remain awake to play”, said Helen.

“How clever you are!”, answered Mitsi. “Sleep is necessary to get strength in life but people have turned everything upside down. Nowadays you can find young men and women go out of the house in the midnight and they say they are going out to have fun. In the older times nobody went out of the house in the night. Only cats prowled on the roofs at midnight ".
“The boy living in the opposite house sits late in night playing on the computer and do not awake up to go to school when his mother calls in the morning", added the bitter orange tree.

”What you want? Do you want to turn back in the older times, when there were not computes no television no electricity, no cars no heaters? Is this what you want, eh?” argued Nick.
Elsa, the turtle, Mitsi the cat and the bitter orange tree looked at the children with sorrow and said in one voice:
“This is what will be done if you not become more careful”.
“Yes, it is like I’m seeing the future in front of me”, said the bitter orange tree. “It is like a nightmare. All the ground is spoiled. Polluted water makes the people sick. Fruits are contaminated with poison instead of vitamins. Scarcity of oil; at last, my child, in one century you are burning so much oil that the earth made in millions of years, according to the educated people”.
And the bitter orange tree continued, "Are human beings that fool? And after that I see so much expensiveness. I see persons complaining about the loss of their jobs and others lamenting about the fall of share prices .There are some manufactures who do not want filters in the chimneys of their factories. They prefer to throw their garbage in the rivers. This makes children, even grownups, to cough all the time and use inhalers to survive, They have asthma and air kills them. Yes, I see all these things in front of me as if they are happening now. Don't think that they will happen after so many years. Look, they are already around us” and the tree stretched out one branch like a hand to warn about the pollution around.

Nick and Helen were very much afraid at this warning because they understood the reality of it.
“But what can we do?” asked Helen shyly. “We are but children. Grown up do not listen to us”.
“What are you talking about, my dear?”, the bitter orange tree interfered. “Your mum has two dustbins in the back yard and she puts the garbage for recycling in one and in the other she puts the rest”.
“Yes, I know it “murmured Nick with shame. “And I laugh at her and I keep saying to her: Oh, you will not save the world by separating the garbage”.

“You are right, my child. These things are for laugh”, the children heard a heavy voice behind them.
They turned around and saw two men well dressed with dark suits, pot belly and cigars in the mouth.
These are funny things”, repeated one of them.
“We can’t worry about these trifles. The earth is not going to suffer from anything. As it continued for thousands and millions of years, it will continue its existence. These words are spoken by some idle people who do neither want to work nor want others to do their work. They say :
Put filters in the factories! Use less sprays for the plants!, etc. Do you know how much all these cost? Do you know how much all these will cost to you my children? Don't you want to have beautiful cheap electronic games, beautiful clothes and comfortable life? Don't you want all these? We have here a beautiful gift for you”, and they took out two beautifully wrapped boxes and stretched them out to the children.

“What is there inside these boxes?” asked the children with distress.
“New games for the computer. Kill those who you want, gain points and lives and many others. Just make up your mind and they are yours”.
“What must we do?” asked the children.
“Cease dealing with these fooleries. Ecology and recycling and so on. We will make your life better. There are thousands of trees. If some of them are cut it does not matter much, because we can plant more trees. Don't bother about these silly things!"
The children, who silently listened to them, suddenly got angry.
“What are you talking about? Don't you know that without trees there would not be any life on earth? Do you have any children? “
“Of course we have” said the two gentlemen. “Do you mind if they breathe poison?” asked the children.
“Oh, we have villas in the countryside” they answered without any seriousness.
“Oh how foolish you are to believe that there will be clean air in your villas when all the earth will be polluted?" laughed the children the animals and the tree.
“What to do? Nothing can be done now. All our works are in vain".
Seeing the disappointment of the two gentlemen the children understood that the men had repented of their actions. So the children, the trees and the animals shouted "No, there is still hope. We can all work together and change many things."
So they seized the men by the hand, dropped their cigars and began to sing and dance.

Come to gather each of us the waste
Come to give life a new taste
Stretch out the hands around the earth
Let us celebrate a new birth

Let comes with us every child
Let everyone has a face smiled
pull the grownups by the hand
pass the happiness command

let everybody plants a tree
so we can hope to be free
To fill up the whole earth
Life is of great worth

A song of Love, a dove
Is always flying above
Stop the future burn
Another day let’s earn

Let us give a Promise now
So to continue life allow
Don’t drop a waste that’s not a waste
Recycle, not be bitten by the snake

Let’s maintain the right to life
for us, for the little bird on the tree
for the black, white and yellow kid.
Let’s maintain the right to life.