Coconut Dreams

***Coconut Dreams***
(#StorytellingSalemStory #999,992 out of 1mil:)

🎶So I’ve been travelling across the country—
town to town/city to city/State to State;
sitting down in random locations—
across this Nation— with a whiteboard in my haaand;
I’ve been asking pplllll:
“What’s Yor Story?”🎶

But this time, I was in Kochi, India, sitting beneath the hanging roots of a banyan tree not far from the old spice market, where bicycles weave through tuk-tuks and the air carries cumin, diesel, and sea brine all at once.

A middle-aged man in sandals and a faded cricket jersey, pushing a cart stacked with coconuts and a single Bluetooth speaker playing old Bollywood songs, paused. He leaned on the cart, read the question, and said:

⸻

“When I was young, I played cricket every evening.
Rubber ball, dust-everywhere, ten boys- and a single stump wedged into the lot.

I had a good arm. Fast bowler. Not professional—just fast enough for the others to flinch.
But then life came.
Girlfriend got pregnant. I left school. Started selling coconuts with my uncle.

Now I know every alley in this part of the city. Every dog that sleeps near the temple. Every cop who pretends not to see me when I play my music too loud.
I’ve watched people rise, fall, come back again.

Last year, I found a kid crying on the curb—his bat was broken.
So I gave him mine.
Still had it, old and cracked, but it could still swing.

That’s the thing about some dreams—they don’t disappear.
They just get passed along. Like old jerseys. Like street songs. Like giving a chance for a new generation to swing for those dreams. They might succeed better than we- or like bruises that turn into stories & warnings later; they might tell the next generation how to swing & not miss.”

⸻

And then he cracked open a coconut with two clean strikes, handed it to me without a word, and rolled his cart back into the afternoon traffic, music drifting behind him like the tail of a kite.

🎶And iii?
I stayed in the banyan’s shade, sipping quietly,
whiteboard at my side, still asking:
“What’s Yor Story?”
waiting for the next person to walk my byyyy~🎶

(#StorytellingSalemStory #999,992)