Freedom in the mind!!

Every day Sarah used to check her son, Aarav's lunch box, and she was amazed at the fact that of late, Aarav used to finish off his lunch box and she was pretty happy about it. Days passed and this continued, so Sarah had stopped checking his lunch box as she assumed that Aarav would finish his lunch box daily. One day, Sarah thought of cleaning Aarav's school bag, and while taking out his books, she felt something soft at the bottom of his bag and as she pulled out her hands from the bag, she could see multi-colored feathers, which she assumed were of not one bird's but many. As she was pulling out more feathers, Aarav came in, and told her not to touch them as it was his collection of feathers. Sarah would not listen to him, and she cleared his bag off the feathers and cleaned his school bag. Aarav was adamant that she keeps the feathers back in his bag, to which Sarah said that he can keep them on his study table rather than keeping in his bag, which she felt made the bag look dirty. Aarav started crying profusely, and as he was inconsolable, she kept the feathers back in a paper cover, and found Aarav immediately stopped crying. Days passed by, and this incident, was somehow forgotten by Sarah. Sarah slowly started feeling that Aarav was not his own self because he had stopped talking to her, altogether. Sarah thought of calling on his class teacher, but waited till Parent Meeting because she thought that a phone call would not solve this issue. 

At parent meeting, Sarah wished his class teacher and sat down in an anxiety as she was the last one to meet the class teacher. Aarav's class teacher made sure that Aarav was sitting next to his mother during the meeting. Sarah was very eager to know the reason behind Aarav being quiet at home rather than his academics because she knew that Aarav had always topped in his class. His class teacher slowly started talking to Sarah in a calm and composed manner.

It all seemed like a story to Sarah, which she was totally unaware of. Aarav's class teacher said, this all started when Aarav used to see a baby bird sitting on the class windowsill, every day, during lunch break, chirping to catch the attention of all the students. Some kids also tried to shoo away the baby bird, but Aarav was somewhat concerned and felt that the baby bird was hungry and tried to feed some of the dry fruits that he had gotten in his lunch box to the baby bird. The baby bird was happy to eat them and flew away. This continued for a long period of time when other students started complaining to the class teacher that Aarav was giving away all his lunch box to the baby bird, which in fact was a big bird now. The class teacher slowly went to Aarav's place the next day and observed how lovingly Aarav fed the bird. She also observed that the baby bird, now a big bird, would stay until Aarav would finish eating the food from lunch box and flew away once he finished eating, chirping loudly. Aarav's class teacher was very happy that Aarav was the most compassionate one among the other students of her class. She was happy because Aarav who never used to finish his lunch box before, would not only finish it now, but would also feed the bird with only few of dry fruits from his lunch box, which would not affect him in anyway, but would rather strengthen Aarnav's love towards the bird. This continued for a few days, when on one fine day, all the students came to the class teacher and complained that Aarav had not finished his lunch box. Class teacher became concerned and headed straight towards his bench. As she spoke softly to Aarav, she found out that the bird who was fed by Aarav, had not come to visit him that day and that had made him upset. The class teacher pacified him somehow and convinced him to finish the box as the bird might have gone somewhere else to fetch the food.

The next day also, the bird did not return to Aarav's class. The class teacher thought it was high time to show the class something that they were not aware of, especially Aarav. She switched on the smart TV, and played the short film on Freedom of India and later she also explained to the students as to how Freedom plays an important role in everyone's lives. This definitely made a great impact on Aarav's life, if not others. He slowly realized that all these days, he had owned the bird by feeding, and now it was high time that the bird had become big, and that it had to fetch food somewhere else to feed it's own family and he ultimately had to let it go. 

Well, this was the reason, the class teacher, said behind Aarav's quietness. Suddenly, out of nowhere, came the lovely bird and chirped loudly, on hearing which Arnav rushed towards the windowsill, the bird handed him over tri-color feathers and within no time flew away, chirping into the sky. Aarav was in a shock and at the same time, very happy to see the tri-color feathers, which made him happy and rushed to Sarah and hugged her tightly and slowly came to shake hands with his class teacher thanking her immensely for making him understand the true spirit of Freedom because Freedom in the mind, shall make your mind set free to achieve your goals and fly high up in the sky!!! chu, chu, chu....