The Tortoiseshell Beetle

There’s a boy in school Who sits near the blackboard every day, Squinting at the chalk-words To get his spellings right.

Rohith tries hard to fix himself With his small, blunt pencil, Which won’t stop inverting his letters.

One monsoon day as he sits alone, Staring at the margins in his notebook, Uneasy to the noise within the school’s four walls, Sudha Ma’am calls him outside.

With his small, chequered handkerchief She wipes away the dejected faces of other adults And takes him on a walk along the lake nearby.

She shows him the waving trails of procession ants on the sand Moving up the bund where the water had risen. Looking for a new place to nest after the rains. They follow the ants’ paths Right until the dense, thorny cane bushes.

Sudha Ma’am and Rohith watch the skittering frogs As they run on the water’s surface. When they walk close to them, the frogs plop into the tea-brown lake, Which grows lily pads for the frogs to rest on.

Palm swifts make long ribbons with their flight, then settle among the palm fronds.

Under the heart-shaped leaves of the morning-glory plants, Rohith finds strange black hairy specks Nibbling little paths on the leaves’ laminae. He shows them to Sudha Ma’am and asks who they are.

She says, “No one would ever guess that, months later, these small, slowly crawling creatures...

“Transform into tortoiseshell beetles. The only creatures that shine like golden star-glitter By this lakeside.”

Rohith’s face brightens like the morning sun rising over the palmyras. He says, “Let’s go find the beetle.”