Double rainbow over Bengal

Apu loved to see the rainbow come; he would always try to find its end, wondering if he would see the patch of grass where its shards of colour first shot up into the sky. He would run, but the rainbow would always fade before he finished this task. This he took in good spirit, promising to run faster next time; to observe more closely where the colours began.

One day, he saw the most special of rainbows - the double. So lovely, arched over the steaming fields in the monsoon months. "I wonder if...." Apu began to run. He ran and ran and, this time, the colour seemed to hover for longer. In some way, it carried him onwards. He ran into landscapes he had not entered before, but he was not afraid. Eventually, realising he was lost, he sat and looked about. Recovering his breath, he found that still the colour stayed, compelling him to travel on until at last he saw what he often wondered about: the root of the rainbow in the long wet grass.

There it was, but it was the root of each of the rainbows of the double, beautifully and lovingly entwined. When he touched them, he found that the roots were soft, like the downy space between the ears of the family's buffalo. And then, without warning, they became arms and lifted him up, high over the plains of Bengal. He saw sights familiar and unfamiliar. Villages and ponds and ditches and emerald green and a train snaking through with a cluster of children running alongside. He began to recognise places closer to home: a roadside shrine, the river, silver and swollen. And still he was not afraid.

Finally, the rainbows set him down, not so far from home, by a Peepul tree he knew and in whose trunk he had carved his name. Apu walked on, into his village, not sure if he dreamed his journey. Whether he had or not, he was, from that moment, a little less sure of where the tangible world ended and where the intangible magic began.