A Change that Changed Everything that was to be Changed

You sit down to eat dinner. Your pet dog by your side and a video-conference with your family ready to take place soon, you feel that this day can never get better. After all, this is one of the last days you spend here in this country. Your business is slow and you decide to go back home.

You take a bite of the food, the food that you relish and serve to your customers with pride, or rather, SERVED.

Within a minute, you start to mindlessly eat your food and your mind wanders off. It starts to go to your hometown, the place where you started your journey.

It wanders to your school, down the memory lane, right to one class. English.

You always liked English. The stories, poems and especially the writing part.

A poem strikes your brain, you did this in 11th grade.

The Laburnum Top, by Ted Hughes.

The Laburnum Top is silent, quite still

in the afternoon yellow September sunlight,

A few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen

Till the goldfinch comes, with a twitching chirrup

A suddeness, a startlement,at a branch end

Then sleek as a lizard, and alert and abrupt,

She enters the thickness,and a machine starts up

Of chitterings, and of tremor of wings,and trillings -

The whole tree trembles and thrills

It is the engine of her family.

She stokes it full, then flirts out to a branch-end

Showing her barred face identity mask

Then with eerie delicate whistle-chirrup whisperings

She launches away, towards the infinite

And the laburnum subsides to empty

You remember the question your teacher gave you to answer. And answer you did!

"By changing nothing, nothing changes. Is change good or bad in life?"

You had answered it so beautifully, if you must say so. So beautifully that you felt that you could achieve anything that you wanted after that.

You wrote in your legible, but not exactly beautiful writing, "Change is omnipresent and it is inevitable in one's life and in this world. Without change like day and night, summer and winter, our lives would be meaningless, monotonous and in short, non-existent. Change is the force that drives one forward, to do better and to be better. Without the onset of dusk, we don't appreciate the day and without the arrival of dawn, there is no importance of the night in our lives. Similarly, in the poem, 'The Laburnum Top' by Ted Hughes, the tree is silent and empty at first. But as the Goldfinch comes, the excitement of the events makes the tree lively. At the end, the tree becomes lifeless again when the Goldfinch leaves. This tells us the importance of change, both good and bad as it helps us to improve ourselves and to adapt to new situations. In a nutshell, change is the basic necessity of life without which no one can survive and it is the only thing constant in one's lives."

You laugh. "Oh my goodness! How do I remember all of this? And that too so precisely?"

Your dog looks at you with its puppy-dog eyes. You realize that it is hungry and you feed him some of the leftovers.

You hear a bell.

It's not your phone, you check and think.

You realize that it is the doorbell, or rather, the restaurant bell. Your face lits up. This is the first customer you have got in ages!

Smiling, you go over to where they are seated and hand them the menu.

It is only AFTER you give them the menu that you recognize them. It's the world-renowned author, Bheem Singh. You say, "Sir, it is such a pleasure to meet you. What can I get for you?"

"I'd like a piece of your famous chocolate cake with a side of vanilla ice-cream, please."

"H-How'd you know that? We've stopped serving it for ages. Well, no problem. I'll bring it to you anyways."

"Yeah. I used to come here to write. I actually wrote my first novel right here. It's so sad that you're going to shut it down..."

"Oh! I didn't know that."

"Yes."

You go into the kitchen, away from Bheem's eyes and think out loud, 'Wow! I am really lucky! I just baked a cake yesterday and here Bheem Singh, the world-famous author comes in and asks for it.'

You bring in the cake and the ice-cream. "Now, sir, which toppings would you like?"

"Please, call me Bheem. And I'll have caramel sauce over it, thank you."

"Sure, Bheem." You pour the sauce over the dish and serve it to your esteemed customer.

"Um,", he says between mouthfuls, "please do sit, after all, it is your restaurant."

You sit down beside him, thinking. Finally, you gather the courage and ask, "If you don't mind, I've got a question."

"Sure. Shoot away."

"I never saw you here. Then howcome you're saying that you came here?"

"When you are still undiscovered, people usually don't notice you. Wait a minute." He takes out his phone and scrolls the screen.

"Here you go. See this person in the background of all these students? That's me. This is my class photo. I was very shy and didn't have many friends then."

"Oh! I remember this class. I had to spend the whole night cleaning up after this party. Wait! This kid, YOU, you were the one who helped me clean up that night. You're the NICE kid!"

He blushes slightly, "Yes, that was me."

"Now I recognize you."

"Yes."

After a long pause, he says, "So, I heard you're closing up. Why so?"

"Um, business is slow these days. No one comes in since the pandemic. Apparently everyone's very scared."

"Oh."

"Yes."

"I have an idea. Why don't I help you renovate this place? We'll be partners."

"What?! Are you serious?"

"Yes, no kidding."

"This is going to be the perfect revamp and re-marketing for my restaurant. I'm listening."

"Not like this. If we're going to discuss the renovation of a restaurant, we should do it while eating something."

"But you just had dessert, and I just ate my dinner."

"No problem, a little dessert never did anything to anyone. I'll have another round of this amazingness." He said, pointing towards his now-empty plate.

You go into the kitchen again, take out another plate and are about to return with the desserts when someone behind you says, "Keep your hands where I can see them, and don't look back."

{NOTE: Includes the poem, 'The Laburnum Top' by Ted Hughes. This is his poem, not mine. Also, this story is inspired a bit from the answer the narrator speaks out loud. It is written by me for the same question. How's it?}