Tejimola

In a village in Assam there lived a kind little girl named Tejimola. Her own mother had passed away, and she lived now with her father, a merchant, and her stepmother. Her father loved her more than anything in the world. But one day his work took him far away, down the great river by boat, and he had to leave Tejimola behind.

While he was gone, the stepmother, who had never warmed to the girl, grew unkind, and then crueller still. She set Tejimola to the heaviest work, from dawn until dark, bent over the dheki, the great wooden pedal that pounds the rice. And then, one terrible day, the stepmother’s cruelty went too far. When it was over, Tejimola was gone, and the wicked woman hid what she had done and told no one.

But a love like the one between Tejimola and her father is not so easily ended. From the very place where she was lost, a gourd vine began to grow, green and quietly reaching. When the stepmother angrily cut the new vine down, a lotus bloomed in its place in the village pond. And when that lotus was plucked, a small grey dove rose up into the trees, and there it waited.

At last, after many days, her father came home. He called and called for his Tejimola, but the house was empty and no one would tell him the truth. Heartbroken, he sat down by the river. And as he sat there, a little dove fluttered down beside him and began to sing, in a small, sweet, sorrowful voice. And the song was Tejimola’s own. She sang of all that had happened, of the cruelty, and of how she had been lost, and changed, and had waited and waited for him to come home.

Weeping with love, the father gently, gently cupped the little dove in his two hands. And because a father’s love is one of the strongest things there is, stronger even than death, the dove shimmered and softened and grew, and there, all at once, was Tejimola herself, his own daughter, whole and warm and crying and laughing together. He held her close, and never let any cruelty near her again, and the two of them lived in love for all their days.