The Companion

The cotton tree visible from my hospital bed, it was so soothing and helped me maintain my sanity. Early morning the chirping of birds, there were small green birds that merged with the green cotton pods of early February the adjourning red flowers of what we kids called tiger claws but is more known as gulmohar. Few minutes later the squirrels would emerge, the green birds then flew away as though they were green leaves floating in the air with beak looking like the twigs
By mid march the pods turned brown now the green birds vanished too it was the home from brown birds of different kinds, the squirrels intact but there were attacks on the pods by crows.
End of march it was as if snow had settled on my tree, no more birds, not even the crow, it was just the squirrels with the wind blowing these cotton fluffs that rested within the pods that burst would be wind blown.
It was like the story at school I read at school—about a painter who painted a life like leaf on the wall of the tuberculosis sanatorium because of which the girl who was dying of tuberculosis survived.