The Old Banyan Tree's Stories
A tree that lives for centuries — the biology of longevity.
The Story
The Oldest Resident
In a village near Sivasagar, Assam, there stands a banyan tree so old and so large that its aerial roots have become trunks, and its trunks have become a small forest. The villagers say it was planted two hundred years ago, though nobody remembers by whom.
The tree has a name. The villagers call it Borua Bor Gos — the Great Old Tree. It covers an area as large as a school playground, and its shade is so deep and cool that even in the burning heat of April, the ground beneath it stays damp.
A girl named Dimpi liked to sit in the crook of Borua Bor Gos's lowest branch, her feet dangling, her notebook open on her knees. She was twelve and wanted to be a writer, but she never knew what to write about.
"I wish I had stories," she said aloud one evening.
And the tree answered.
The Tree Speaks
The voice was deep and slow, like the creaking of ancient wood. It came from everywhere and nowhere — from the roots, the bark, the leaves.
"You want stories? I have two hundred years of them."
Dimpi nearly fell off the branch. "You can talk?"
"I've always been able to talk. But only children who sit still long enough can hear me. Adults are too busy."
Dimpi gripped the branch and leaned in. "Tell me a story."
"Which one? I have seen the Ahom kings ride past on elephants. I have seen the Brahmaputra flood so high that fish swam through my branches. I have watched British soldiers march down the road and freedom fighters march after them. I have sheltered a hundred monsoons, a thousand weddings, and more arguments between neighbours than I care to count."
The Flood Story
"In 1950," said the tree, "the great earthquake came. The ground shook so hard that my roots hummed like a tuning fork. Then the river rose — not slowly, the way it does in monsoon, but all at once, a wall of brown water that swallowed the fields in minutes."
"The villagers climbed into my branches. Forty-three people — men, women, children, even two goats and a cat. They stayed in my arms for three days while the water swirled below. I held them. I didn't let a single branch break, though some were so heavy with people that they bent to the water."
"On the third day, the water receded. The people climbed down, and every one of them touched my trunk and said thank you. That was the proudest day of my two hundred years."
Dimpi was writing furiously. "What else?"
The Wedding Story
"In 1985, a young couple from the village wanted to marry, but the girl's family said the boy was too poor. They came to me at midnight and held their wedding under my branches with only the stars and the fireflies as witnesses. The boy tied a thread around my trunk as a promise. The thread is still there — look, that ridge in my bark, that's where the thread grew into me."
Dimpi ran her fingers over the ridge. It was smooth and old and real.
"They've been married forty-one years now. They still come and sit under me on their anniversary. He brings her tea. She brings him paan. They don't say much. They don't need to."
The Children's Story
"But my favourite stories," said the tree, "are about the children. I have watched five generations of children grow up under my shade. They climb my branches and think they've conquered the world. They hide behind my trunks during games of hide-and-seek. They carve their names into my bark — which hurts, by the way — and come back twenty years later to show their own children."
"Right now, there's a girl named Dimpi sitting on my branch, writing stories. In twenty years, she'll bring her daughter here and say, 'This is where I became a writer.' And I'll still be here, waiting, with another two hundred years of stories to tell."
Dimpi closed her notebook. Her eyes were shining. "Thank you," she whispered.
"Don't thank me," said the tree. "Just write it down. That's what stories are for — so the things that happened don't disappear when the ones who remember them are gone."
Dimpi climbed down from the branch, walked home in the golden evening light, and began to write. She wrote all night. And when she finally slept, she dreamed of a tree that held forty-three people in a flood and never let go.
The end.
Before you start
Try It Yourself
Choose your level. Everyone starts with the story — the code gets deeper as you go.
Story Progress
0%Ready to Start Coding?
Here is a taste of what Level 1 looks like for this lesson:
# How much carbon does a tree store?
trunk_diameter = 1.5 # metres (a large banyan)
height = 15 # metres
# Approximate volume (simplified cylinder)
import math
volume = math.pi * (trunk_diameter/2)**2 * height # cubic metres
wood_density = 600 # kg per cubic metre (average wood)
mass = volume * wood_density
carbon = mass * 0.5 # trees are ~50% carbon by dry weight
print(f"Trunk volume: {volume:.1f} cubic metres")
print(f"Wood mass: {mass:.0f} kg")
print(f"Carbon stored: {carbon:.0f} kg")
print(f"That is {carbon * 3.67:.0f} kg of CO2 pulled from the air!")This is just the first of 6 coding exercises in Level 1. By Level 4, you will build: Analyze Tree Growth Using Ring Data.
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Level 0: Listener
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Level 0 is always free. Coding levels (1-4) are part of our 12-Month Curriculum.