Kanksa (West Bengal): Oscar Wilde in his ‘The Happy Prince’ depicted an immaculate love between a swallow and a statue and here is a story of village girl’s strange and enchanting bond with a starling bird. No one knows when the love story started but everyday Ankita Bagdi- a student of class III of Shivpur Primary School at Kanksa in West Burdwan appeared in the school, she is accompanied by this little bird.
Mithu – the bird named by Ankita – has developed an aesthetic and unblemished love for this little girl. Every day, as Ankita sat on her bench in the classroom, she felt the gentle flutter of wings upon her head, and there was Mithu, the starling bird, perching on her shoulder. Mithu was no ordinary bird. It was a free spirit, one that did not fly away when the bell rang or the children began to move around the classroom. Instead, it would stay there, perched on Ankita's head, quietly listening to the lessons and looking around at the other students.
As tiffin time approached, Ankita would share her food with Mithu, and the bird would play with the other children, hopping from one hand to the other, taking cakes and biscuits from their palms. The school is enchanted by the peculiar bird that had found a friend in Ankita. "I love the bird and she also loves me. On days, when school is over, Mithu goes back to his tree house. Mithu reaches school 'on time' every day. I get upset when Mithu comes late", Ankita told ETV Bharat.
Ramdas Soren, the teacher in charge of the school, had never seen anything quite like it before. He marvelled at the bond between the girl and the bird. It was a strange friendship that he had not witnessed anywhere else. Mithu was always on time, arriving at school every day without fail. When Ankita didn't show up, Mithu would fly to her house to check up on her, as if it knew that Ankita was its only friend in the world.
“Though the bird has developed a strange bonding with the girl but we love it. All the students are equally familiar with the bird. We all give it food. When the bird is not around us, we all feel said,” Soren said.
The other children fascinated by the bird tried to make friends with it, but Mithu would stay with Ankita. It's strange. Nobody could quite explain. Perhaps the bird had found in Ankita a kindred spirit, a friend that it could rely on in a world that was otherwise unfamiliar and hostile.
And so, the strange friendship continues, day after day, with Ankita and Mithu growing closer and closer with each passing moment. They are inseparable, these two, as if bound together by an invisible thread of love and trust. It's a friendship that reminds one of the Happy Prince, a story told by the great Oscar Wilde.
In the story, a swallow befriends the statue of the Happy Prince, and together, they embark on a journey of love and compassion that transforms the lives of all those around them. Ankita and Mithu are like that. Two unlikely friends that had found each other in a world that didn't quite understand them.
The love transcends the barrier of language and biological family. It's a friendship that was pure and true, a testament to the power of love and the beauty of the human spirit. It was a love story that had captivated the entire town, a tale of friendship and loyalty that would live on forever in the hearts of all those who had witnessed it.
