Vocal+ Summer Stories: Sunlight in Every Word

The Banyan Tree Diary

Kabir hadn’t returned to his grandparents’ village in over seven years. The last time he’d visited, he was just eight—skinny, curious, and constantly clinging to his mother’s dupatta. Now fifteen, taller and quieter, he stepped off the dusty bus with a phone in one pocket and resentment in the other.

“Just one summer,” his mother had said. “It’ll be good for you.”

Good? Kabir didn’t think so. There was no Wi-Fi, no cold drinks, no malls. Just the scorching sun, a few sleepy cows, and memories he hadn’t asked to revisit.

His grandfather greeted him with the same wide smile he always wore. “You’ve grown into a young man,” he said, ruffling Kabir’s hair. Kabir offered a polite smile and followed him down the narrow dirt path that led to their old house. The scent of wet earth, neem trees, and distant smoke hit him all at once. It was overwhelming, but strangely comforting.

Over the next few days, Kabir wandered aimlessly. The village was quiet. The kids who used to play gilli-danda had grown up. The fields still swayed in the wind, and the pond where he once tried to catch fish was now half dry.

One afternoon, searching for shade, Kabir found himself under the ancient banyan tree at the edge of the village—the same tree his grandmother used to tell stories under. She had passed away three years ago, and no one had spoken much about her since.

Something about the silence under the tree pulled him in. He sat, leaned against its massive trunk, and closed his eyes.

And then he saw it.

Stuck in the tree’s thick roots was an old leather-bound diary, its corners weathered and pages yellowed with age. He pulled it out gently, surprised it hadn’t completely disintegrated.

On the first page, in faded ink, was a name: Meera. His grandmother.

Kabir’s heart skipped a beat.


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The diary was filled with handwritten stories—fables, poems, and personal memories. Some were joyful, filled with the laughter of her childhood. Others were heartbreaking—stories of leaving her family behind during Partition, of losing a child she never told anyone about, of waiting every summer for her grandson to return so she could tell him stories under the tree again.

Kabir felt a lump rise in his throat.

Day after day, he returned to the banyan tree, reading one page at a time. Slowly, the village around him started to feel different. More alive. The distant laughter of children, the rustle of the leaves, the old man selling kulfi on the corner—it all began to feel like home again.

The stories in the diary weren’t just stories. They were windows into his grandmother’s soul. Through them, he met the fearless, mischievous, loving woman he had barely known. And in those moments, beneath that old tree, he began to understand not just her—but himself.


---

On his final day in the village, Kabir took out his own notebook. Sitting under the same banyan tree, he began to write.

He didn’t write on his phone. He didn’t type it on a laptop. He let his pen dance across the pages, just like his grandmother once had.

“This summer, I found a voice I never knew I had—because I finally listened to someone else’s.”


---

As the bus pulled away from the village, Kabir looked out of the window at the banyan tree disappearing in the distance. He wasn’t the same boy who had arrived with headphones in his ears and anger in his chest.

He had found something far more powerful than Wi-Fi or cold drinks.

He had found stories. Real stories. And they would stay with him forever.