Q1.
Let us Read — The Wise Parrot. Read the story and enjoy it.
Answer
Read the story once for the fun of it. Then read it a second time and stop at every place where the parrot speaks. Every single thing that parrot says is part of its plan.
The story, part by part:
- The golden cage (page 41). In a quiet village a rich merchant keeps a bright, talkative parrot in a cage of gold. The parrot has a sharp mind. It tells the merchant stories and sings him songs. But deep inside it longs for the open sky and the green trees.
- The offer (page 41). The merchant is going far away on business. He wants to please his pet, so he asks, “My beloved parrot, I am about to travel to a far-off land. What can I bring for you from there?”
- The parrot asks straight out (page 42). The parrot says it has tasted every tender fruit and chilli already. What it wants is “the joy of flying in the sky”. It asks to be let go.
- The merchant says no (page 42). “You are very dear to me and I cannot bear to let you go away. Ask for anything else.” So asking has not worked.
- The small request (page 42). The bird sighs and asks for something tiny instead — please tell my friends in the jungle that I send them greetings from my cage.
- The forest (page 42). In a far forest the merchant sees a flight of parrots the same colour as his pet. He calls out the message. At once one parrot drops like a stone from the tree and falls on the ground.
- Back home (page 43). The merchant is distressed and hurries away. At home he tells his pet about the journey, about the message he passed on, and about the bird that fell. As soon as he finishes, his own parrot falls from its perch to the floor of the cage.
- The escape (page 44). The merchant cannot understand it. He lifts the still-warm body out of the cage and lays it on the windowsill. He steps back — and the bird stirs, stretches its green wings and flies off, saying, “My friend showed me how I could escape and now I can fly in the sky. Goodbye!”
Why the story is clever: The message was never really a greeting. It was a question — how do I get out? The forest parrot could not send words back, because the merchant would have carried those words home too. So it sent an action: fall down as if dead. The merchant himself carried the answer home, and he never knew he was carrying it.
Read it aloud like this: Say the merchant’s lines warmly — he truly loves the bird. Say the parrot’s lines quietly and politely. Then read the last line, “Goodbye!”, brightly and quickly, as if the bird is already high up in the air.
One thing to notice: Nobody is wicked in this story. The merchant is kind, feeds the parrot well and gives it a cage of gold. He simply does not understand that a bird needs the sky more than it needs gold.