A Flower-Maiden and a Flower Plant by Lakshminath Bezbaroa

Once upon a time there was a Malinee or female gardener and she planted a flower-plant with great care. Though she used to look after it with great care yet it would not flower. She therefore asked it one day,“Plant, Plant , why do you not flower?”The plant replied, “If I am to flower ,why then the cow eat my shoot?”The Malinee thereupon approached the cow and asked , “Cow ,Cow,why is it that you eat the shoot of the plant?”

Cow: Why doesn’t the cowherd look after me and why should not I then eat the shoot?
Malinee:  Cowherd,Cowherd,why don’t you mind the cow?
Cowherd: The cook does not give me rice,why hould I then mind her?
Malinee: Cook,Cook,why do you not give rice to the cowherd?
Cook:Why does not the faggot-seller give faggots, how else could I give rice?

Malinee: Faggot-seller, Faggot-seller,whydo’t you give faggots?
Faggot-seller: The blacksmith does not give me an axe ,how could I then give?
Malinee: Blacksmith, Blacksmith,,why do you not give an axe?
Blacksmith: The Charcoal-seller does not give me any charcoal,how could I give an axe?
Malinee: Charcoal-seller, Charcoal-seller,why do you not give charcoal?
Charcoal-seller: If I am to give charcoal,why does the cloud shower rain?
Malinee: Cloud,Cloud,why do you shower rain?
Cloud: Why does then the frog croak?
Malinee: Frog, Frog, why do you croak?
Frog: Why should I give up the practice of my ancestors?

Lakshminath Bezbaroa (1864-1938) was a great Assamese personality and celebrated pioneer of modern Assamese literature. He was one of the literary stalwarts of the Jonaki Era, the age of romanticism in Assamese literature when through his essays, plays, fiction, poetry and satires, he gave a new impetus to the then stagnating Assamese literary caravan.

Father of the Assamese short-story by common consent,Bezbarua in his short stories tried to depict life with its joys and sorrows.These stories reflect his strong social awareness.He experimented with the new form trying to blend it with the native technique of telling a tale and this perplexed the critic.But the best of his stories are among the best in world literature.By collecting and publishing the folk tales of Assam he did to his people what the Grim brothers did to the Germans.
Bezbarua was more than a writer,he was an institution by himself.He bullied his people, his readers, coaxed and cajoled them, laughed merrily with them sometimes to the point of being flippant and in short ,used all the tricks of his boyhood as a serious and comic writer to rouse them from their slumber,to make them face the reality of the changing times with wide open eyes.He taught his people to be justly proud of their rich heritage and to feel shame for their age old vices and new ones creeping in with the coming of the British.All this he did with his books and his mouthpiece the ‘Banhi’published from Calcutta.A life long exile in West Bengal and Orissa,working in the jungles as a timber merchant,he was a cosmopolitan.He married into the Thakur family of Calcutta.These connections have enriched his short stories where we find a large gallery of memorable characters drawn from those parts of British India.His ‘O mor aponar Desh ‘ has attained the status of an anthem for Assamese people and has not lost its electrifying influence .He died in Dibrugarh while on a visit to his motherland.