Every Leaf

After the great war was over and Rama had returned to Ayodhya, after the crown had been set on his head and the city had wept and laughed and lit lamps it had thought it would never light again, Hanuman could not settle. He sat in the corner of the court. He stood at the window. He walked the gardens. Everywhere he went, his heart was too full and his hands were too empty.

One morning he took a small reed and a pot of ink and he walked out of the city, past the river, into the forest where no one would call him. He sat under the first tree. He pulled down one leaf. He wrote on it, in small careful letters, the name Rama. He let the leaf go. The wind took it.

He pulled down another leaf. He wrote Rama. He let it go.

He did not stop.

By midday he had moved to the next tree. By evening to the next. By the second day people in nearby villages began to find leaves on their paths, on their thresholds, in their water pots, with the word Rama on them in a hand they did not recognise but somehow knew. They picked them up. They held them to their foreheads. They did not throw them away.

The rishis of the forest heard of this. They came to find him. They stood at the edge of his small clearing. One of them said, Hanuman, this is beautiful, but it is also wasteful. Why a whole leaf for one name? You could write the name a thousand times in a small book and carry it always with you.

Hanuman looked up. There were leaves in his hair. There was ink on his cheek. He said, Honoured sages, I have thought of that. But the forest will not stop being a forest. And as long as it grows leaves, I must write His name on them. There are not enough books in the world for what is in my chest. There are barely enough leaves.

The rishis bowed and walked away. They did not argue. Some loves are not meant to be reasoned with.

You are not writing on leaves tonight, but something very like it is happening inside you. Each cell that forms is taking on a small signature. A heart that will love particular people, in particular ways, with a fierceness no one else will quite understand. A hand that will hold yours and then, one day, hold someone else's. A name being written, leaf by leaf, in a hand the world has not yet seen. You do not need to know what the name is yet. The forest is growing. The ink will not run out.