In Kindergarten I was often asked to write about my house, my school, my parents, my best friend... about a domestic animal, a wild animal, a tree! Yes, a Tree. I have little doubt about the failure of those early attempts. Here is my second take, on a tree.
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The Deodar stood like a mast towering adamantly over a sea of rooftops. A perfect anomaly amidst rows of colonial houses. Every summer when the Nor'wester roared, it swayed ever so slightly. As if to say to the wind God, "You may have my allegiance but never my obeisance". The kaal-baishakhi shattered windows, uprooted lesser trees and bent many a lamp post. Tin roofs flew like dead leaves and the dead leaves mixed with the birds fluttering helter-skelter against their will. But the green behemoth stood unscathed, weathering every storm. How it happened to be there would have been a curious case for a historian. My father said that it must have been planted when the British owned all this land by the Ganges. The Brits meticulous as they were established factories along the river bank and built campuses to house their officers. The gora sahib's penchant for beauty must have led to the planting of the deodars and cedars along the walkways of the campus. Post Independence these factories lost their hallowed place in the state's machinery, and piece by piece the industrial land was nibbled away by the real estate market. Where the godowns were now rose rows of Lego flats. The lavishness of the British Raj was rapidly replaced by the need of the bourgeois to have a makaan. The felling of the conifers was a mere collateral of this process. And slowly yet surely they all fell like dominos, one after another. Except one that stood surreptitiously in the corner growing inch by inch, from strength to strength.
Like a scarecrow it stood as rows of houses germinated around it. They surrounded it like guards waiting to take the captive away. I lived on the ground floor of one of those houses. Each morning as I dressed for school I could hear the soft rustling of its leaves. The behemoth stood there towering over our front porch blocking the morning sun; It ushered a dullness that rightly represented my mood before going to school. The tree had a massive gaping hollow at its base. Perhaps from an old termite attack. This large yawning mass of nothingness scared me greatly. Every time I passed it my subconscious half-anticipated a mad dog or a terrible reptile to leap out of it. Of course none of that happened and the hollow remained the void that it was, perhaps at times only serving as a safe haven for the litter of abandoned puppies. But this did not impede the birth of myriads of frightening thoughts in my fretful mind. On the nights when the storm howled outside I hid my head under the blanket. And sure enough through that dark hole stared the green sparkling eyes of the mad dog. I quivered under the pillow.
The summer brought both joy and torment. The joy of the long summer holiday and late evenings of playing in the field were preceded by the torment of school exams and the toils of routine evening study. Also, during these months the factory went through the annual ritual of hartaal (lock-out). The lock-out resulted in the shutting down of machinery. And that meant the generators too. So long hours of the evenings were spent under the flickering light of the candle. The summer breeze was often too strong for the puny white ones. So ma had bought the bigger ones like those that stand in the church alter. They stood on my study table like sentinels supervising my lessons. Once in a while I would muster the courage to look up from my books. Outside the night was dark, but the tree always seemed a shade darker. "The wickedness in humans often show in their countenance" I remember my Bengali teacher saying. Perhaps the same holds true for trees too, I thought. I often wondered how the birds that lived on that tree survived in that dense canopy in the sooty darkness of the night. No wonder the owls ran amuck. You could hear the screeches through the night. I couldn't tell if they were the sounds of agony of the prey of the triumph of the predator. But it always sent a chill down my spine.
As the months stretched, the load-sheddings became longer and went past supper time. Every night after supper the candles were blown out (if they hadn't already quivered away). I would hurriedly hop onto my bed and hide my head under the pillow. The eerie darkness of the room always made me uneasy. My parents preferred to leave the window open for the breeze. But unknown to them were the elements of the outer world that came along with the wind. On a moonlit night as the diffused rays seeped though the assortment of branches the room became a play-field of grotesque shadows, each engaged in a playful orgy with another. I have seen the slender fingers of an old woman beckoning me. The disheveled mane of an angry lion; Or the gigantic cobweb made by an overgrown spider. As those shapes fell on the whitewashed walls my imagination flapped wildly like the wings of an archaeopteryx. The iron rods that made the window railings were my sole protectors from that dark world. They stood like guards protecting me from the tangible danger outside. But the shadows. They lingered. They slithered inch by inch moving across the wall and nearing the hem of the bed-sheet as the moon beams slanted with the clock tick. The shadow of the deodar's long slender branches with finger-like leaves came closer with every passing minute. I held my breath and prayed. I prayed that one day they would hack down the tree. That they would cut it into pieces and load it in a truck and send away to some yonder place. Oh why keep a monster like that amidst civilization. I must have fallen asleep before those cold fingers of death touched my flushed cheek.
Children are often faced with adult disregard for their opinion. This is not uncommon. Unlike stubborn kids I did not fight it. But that morning as I walked up to my father I felt a certain confidence in my stride. A confidence that I would he heard and empathized with. "We must cut down that tree, I started." That was as far as I could go. Father did not hear which tree I was talking about or where it stood or why. He sent me back teary-eyed saying that he was ashamed that I had even thought of bringing down some harmless tree. All the terrible tales from the night remained bundled inside as their reverberating laughter mocked me till I cried. That evening my father's friends came over for a cup of coffee. After discussing office they decided to go out for a smoke. The coterie stood for a while under the deodar as I watched from my window. Then one of them sat on the cemented plinth that circled the tree. Then they all sat down. My father sat with his back to the gaping hole. I watched with my heart pounding so loud that I could barely hear what they spoke. "Should I rush to tell him not to sit there?" I argued. "But then since he is the one who wants the tree there perhaps it will serve him well to have a black hound pounce from behind." I thought in anger. It was just then that one of his friends Mr Sethi said out loud, Arre yeh ped aur kitna din rhega idhar. Isko hum kaat deten hain. To which my father turned into the hound that I was waiting all this while to appear. To my surprise several others joined forces with Mr Sethi. One said that his wife could not sleep during amavasya nights from fear of the departed souls climbing down the deodar's spine . To this my father retorted saying he could arrange for a tall ladder from the factory to save the poor souls the inconvenience of climbing down rough cone-filled branches. This did not go well with his Bengali-Brahmin friend. The man wounded by the betrayal of a fellow brahmin tacitly said that the souls of the departed were not to be mocked about. Inside I felt a seething rage for the stubborn man, my father. It was one thing to ignore a little boy's request. And completely brash and foolhardy to pay no heed to friends, colleagues and well-wishers both matured in age and understanding than I was. The fight must have had scared the hound for it never showed up.
That night I did not go to him to hear bedtime stories. I sat on the corner of the bed with my chin stuck to my chest sitting glum and licking the wound of the supposed insult. I was now more sure than before of the standing of my own opinion. Inside the house I may be alone fighting him, but in the outside world I had the support of all those adult men. Together we could bring father down, and the cursed deodar. After dinner father came to me and put his hand over my head. His slender fingers felt like the deodar leaves. I tried to move my head away but the little thing stayed put under the weight of his palm. He said something like there being more things in heaven and earth than I could dream of; And then he walked away. How did he know what I dreamed of, I wondered. I never did tell him, did I? Wondering still, I went to bed.
That night the wind howled, the branches cracked and the moon got engulfed by the cumulonimbus before it could create the frightening kaleidoscope through the deodar branches. The darkness was total and the pandemonium complete. The lightnings struck so close that there was no pause between the brilliant light and the deafening sound. That night the destructive forces were all in sync. But they were on my side.
Next morning was especially bright. I felt an unexplained sense of triumph over an intangible adversary. I felt no animosity against father. It was a fight well fought and I had a feeling that the deserving side won. As I walked out to the porch the bright daylight hit hard. Nothing stood between the fierce sun and the porch floor. There was no deodar. I swung open the wooden gate and rushed out. There was the giant tree, slayed by the forces of nature. It had cracked from the base and was now lying prostrate, lifeless, with its branches clawing at the outside wall of our house. Folks had gathered around to see the spectacle. Some said it was a miracle that a major nuisance was removed without anyone getting hurt. Mr Sethi was deep in prayer thanking the almighty with clasped hands. Just then my father came out too. Seeing him a cheerful voice from the crowd point out, "Look the tree lover !" Even the tree knows it, said another. See how it has fallen over his house as if to give him the last hug. They all guffawed in unison. True, the deodar had fallen towards our house. Its branches still clung to our outside wall as if clawing to the last few moments of life. Some of those branches had slipped down and found their way through our window through the iron bar grills. The rest had fallen over the drain beneath. The once wild branches like the hair of a bohemian were now matted and somnolent. The hollow had cracked open and as the sun rays fell through it I could see that there was no mystery in it. Just dead wood. They were talking of planting a kadam tree in its place. Or perhaps use it better for parking space. In a mad disgust tears welled down my cheek as I felt suffocated among this herd of men and women. I felt like a traitor. I ran towards father.
That night I cried.
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The Deodar stood like a mast towering adamantly over a sea of rooftops. A perfect anomaly amidst rows of colonial houses. Every summer when the Nor'wester roared, it swayed ever so slightly. As if to say to the wind God, "You may have my allegiance but never my obeisance". The kaal-baishakhi shattered windows, uprooted lesser trees and bent many a lamp post. Tin roofs flew like dead leaves and the dead leaves mixed with the birds fluttering helter-skelter against their will. But the green behemoth stood unscathed, weathering every storm. How it happened to be there would have been a curious case for a historian. My father said that it must have been planted when the British owned all this land by the Ganges. The Brits meticulous as they were established factories along the river bank and built campuses to house their officers. The gora sahib's penchant for beauty must have led to the planting of the deodars and cedars along the walkways of the campus. Post Independence these factories lost their hallowed place in the state's machinery, and piece by piece the industrial land was nibbled away by the real estate market. Where the godowns were now rose rows of Lego flats. The lavishness of the British Raj was rapidly replaced by the need of the bourgeois to have a makaan. The felling of the conifers was a mere collateral of this process. And slowly yet surely they all fell like dominos, one after another. Except one that stood surreptitiously in the corner growing inch by inch, from strength to strength.
Like a scarecrow it stood as rows of houses germinated around it. They surrounded it like guards waiting to take the captive away. I lived on the ground floor of one of those houses. Each morning as I dressed for school I could hear the soft rustling of its leaves. The behemoth stood there towering over our front porch blocking the morning sun; It ushered a dullness that rightly represented my mood before going to school. The tree had a massive gaping hollow at its base. Perhaps from an old termite attack. This large yawning mass of nothingness scared me greatly. Every time I passed it my subconscious half-anticipated a mad dog or a terrible reptile to leap out of it. Of course none of that happened and the hollow remained the void that it was, perhaps at times only serving as a safe haven for the litter of abandoned puppies. But this did not impede the birth of myriads of frightening thoughts in my fretful mind. On the nights when the storm howled outside I hid my head under the blanket. And sure enough through that dark hole stared the green sparkling eyes of the mad dog. I quivered under the pillow.
The summer brought both joy and torment. The joy of the long summer holiday and late evenings of playing in the field were preceded by the torment of school exams and the toils of routine evening study. Also, during these months the factory went through the annual ritual of hartaal (lock-out). The lock-out resulted in the shutting down of machinery. And that meant the generators too. So long hours of the evenings were spent under the flickering light of the candle. The summer breeze was often too strong for the puny white ones. So ma had bought the bigger ones like those that stand in the church alter. They stood on my study table like sentinels supervising my lessons. Once in a while I would muster the courage to look up from my books. Outside the night was dark, but the tree always seemed a shade darker. "The wickedness in humans often show in their countenance" I remember my Bengali teacher saying. Perhaps the same holds true for trees too, I thought. I often wondered how the birds that lived on that tree survived in that dense canopy in the sooty darkness of the night. No wonder the owls ran amuck. You could hear the screeches through the night. I couldn't tell if they were the sounds of agony of the prey of the triumph of the predator. But it always sent a chill down my spine.
As the months stretched, the load-sheddings became longer and went past supper time. Every night after supper the candles were blown out (if they hadn't already quivered away). I would hurriedly hop onto my bed and hide my head under the pillow. The eerie darkness of the room always made me uneasy. My parents preferred to leave the window open for the breeze. But unknown to them were the elements of the outer world that came along with the wind. On a moonlit night as the diffused rays seeped though the assortment of branches the room became a play-field of grotesque shadows, each engaged in a playful orgy with another. I have seen the slender fingers of an old woman beckoning me. The disheveled mane of an angry lion; Or the gigantic cobweb made by an overgrown spider. As those shapes fell on the whitewashed walls my imagination flapped wildly like the wings of an archaeopteryx. The iron rods that made the window railings were my sole protectors from that dark world. They stood like guards protecting me from the tangible danger outside. But the shadows. They lingered. They slithered inch by inch moving across the wall and nearing the hem of the bed-sheet as the moon beams slanted with the clock tick. The shadow of the deodar's long slender branches with finger-like leaves came closer with every passing minute. I held my breath and prayed. I prayed that one day they would hack down the tree. That they would cut it into pieces and load it in a truck and send away to some yonder place. Oh why keep a monster like that amidst civilization. I must have fallen asleep before those cold fingers of death touched my flushed cheek.
Children are often faced with adult disregard for their opinion. This is not uncommon. Unlike stubborn kids I did not fight it. But that morning as I walked up to my father I felt a certain confidence in my stride. A confidence that I would he heard and empathized with. "We must cut down that tree, I started." That was as far as I could go. Father did not hear which tree I was talking about or where it stood or why. He sent me back teary-eyed saying that he was ashamed that I had even thought of bringing down some harmless tree. All the terrible tales from the night remained bundled inside as their reverberating laughter mocked me till I cried. That evening my father's friends came over for a cup of coffee. After discussing office they decided to go out for a smoke. The coterie stood for a while under the deodar as I watched from my window. Then one of them sat on the cemented plinth that circled the tree. Then they all sat down. My father sat with his back to the gaping hole. I watched with my heart pounding so loud that I could barely hear what they spoke. "Should I rush to tell him not to sit there?" I argued. "But then since he is the one who wants the tree there perhaps it will serve him well to have a black hound pounce from behind." I thought in anger. It was just then that one of his friends Mr Sethi said out loud, Arre yeh ped aur kitna din rhega idhar. Isko hum kaat deten hain. To which my father turned into the hound that I was waiting all this while to appear. To my surprise several others joined forces with Mr Sethi. One said that his wife could not sleep during amavasya nights from fear of the departed souls climbing down the deodar's spine . To this my father retorted saying he could arrange for a tall ladder from the factory to save the poor souls the inconvenience of climbing down rough cone-filled branches. This did not go well with his Bengali-Brahmin friend. The man wounded by the betrayal of a fellow brahmin tacitly said that the souls of the departed were not to be mocked about. Inside I felt a seething rage for the stubborn man, my father. It was one thing to ignore a little boy's request. And completely brash and foolhardy to pay no heed to friends, colleagues and well-wishers both matured in age and understanding than I was. The fight must have had scared the hound for it never showed up.
That night I did not go to him to hear bedtime stories. I sat on the corner of the bed with my chin stuck to my chest sitting glum and licking the wound of the supposed insult. I was now more sure than before of the standing of my own opinion. Inside the house I may be alone fighting him, but in the outside world I had the support of all those adult men. Together we could bring father down, and the cursed deodar. After dinner father came to me and put his hand over my head. His slender fingers felt like the deodar leaves. I tried to move my head away but the little thing stayed put under the weight of his palm. He said something like there being more things in heaven and earth than I could dream of; And then he walked away. How did he know what I dreamed of, I wondered. I never did tell him, did I? Wondering still, I went to bed.
That night the wind howled, the branches cracked and the moon got engulfed by the cumulonimbus before it could create the frightening kaleidoscope through the deodar branches. The darkness was total and the pandemonium complete. The lightnings struck so close that there was no pause between the brilliant light and the deafening sound. That night the destructive forces were all in sync. But they were on my side.
Next morning was especially bright. I felt an unexplained sense of triumph over an intangible adversary. I felt no animosity against father. It was a fight well fought and I had a feeling that the deserving side won. As I walked out to the porch the bright daylight hit hard. Nothing stood between the fierce sun and the porch floor. There was no deodar. I swung open the wooden gate and rushed out. There was the giant tree, slayed by the forces of nature. It had cracked from the base and was now lying prostrate, lifeless, with its branches clawing at the outside wall of our house. Folks had gathered around to see the spectacle. Some said it was a miracle that a major nuisance was removed without anyone getting hurt. Mr Sethi was deep in prayer thanking the almighty with clasped hands. Just then my father came out too. Seeing him a cheerful voice from the crowd point out, "Look the tree lover !" Even the tree knows it, said another. See how it has fallen over his house as if to give him the last hug. They all guffawed in unison. True, the deodar had fallen towards our house. Its branches still clung to our outside wall as if clawing to the last few moments of life. Some of those branches had slipped down and found their way through our window through the iron bar grills. The rest had fallen over the drain beneath. The once wild branches like the hair of a bohemian were now matted and somnolent. The hollow had cracked open and as the sun rays fell through it I could see that there was no mystery in it. Just dead wood. They were talking of planting a kadam tree in its place. Or perhaps use it better for parking space. In a mad disgust tears welled down my cheek as I felt suffocated among this herd of men and women. I felt like a traitor. I ran towards father.
That night I cried.
2 comments:
Good.Try to write more frequently
A wonderful post. Thank you for this one. brought back many fond memories from long back.
We had a mango tree in our back yard. A huge one. And that old one was like a grandfather to me, to whom I could run away whenever things weren't going well. and that tree would just embrace me dearly. Hide me when I was scared of Ma coming after me for something I did. Listen to my stories when I had no one to talk to and also let me sleep in its cool shade.
The best times were during the kaal baishakis. The tree would shed some branches, leaves and the much awaited fruits. I remember running helter skelter with my brother in my garden, trying to collect the mangoes. Raw and ripe ones. Sitting under that tree and making a raw pickle out of it with salt and pepper and eating it as our teeth froze because of the taste.
The tree had to be cut down last year because the roots had punctured an underground pipe. My heart ached to see the huge tree fall down, and with it fell all my memories. The sad and the happy ones.
I miss my friend. There is a void there in the back yard when I look out of the window. There is no one there any more to run to and hug and hide and cry and laugh with.
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