Tree of Life

During those days the paint of the left wall was blistered. If you scratched it a bit, you could smell saline walls with odor of monsoon rain. The front veranda had a yellow paint and walls were filled with lizards.

It was an old house, with old trees and old ghosts. There were myths and stories like all other stories. Most of them were a result of fertile imagination of the people living within the four walls other’s tales like all other tales. I only remember the blue gate, the rough stairs, over grown unkempt grass in front lawns, Bougainvillea covering the left wall and the 8 trees.

Why 8?

Why not 10?

My memory fails here. I only remember 8… only 8..

The first 4 were of Jamun, a cousin of mulberry found in that part of world, 2 of dates and other two of mangoes. They were distributed equally here and there around the house. Old, exotic and sometimes frightening. Old trees are like old relics. They memorize the things around them. Quiet witness to change and agony.

I wonder if trees have eyes? Or if trees have memory?

Can they see and feel things around them. Things dying and growing old. But things remain things only life dies. Or life grows? We were scared of trees. In those days we were taught that genies lived on trees. Not in bottles.And that they can occupy the body making soul redundant, dead. Whatever was the truth, the only thing I knew was the fact that trees were a soul to that house.

Mesmerizing, giant powerful. In evenings when “amman” will place the chai tray in lawn you could see birds flying towards the trees. In monsoon we would have a swing attached with one of the older mango trees. That would later bend because of the weight. Mangoes are not meant for swings.

They are fragile. Another lesson I learned fast.

The date tree was at the end of the house. In a dark corner. It was really tall. Tall enough to give me goose bumps. There was something strange about the tree. It had bricks attached with the stem. Almost 5 feet higher than the ground. Bricks don’t grow on trees?

Do they?

It was another mystery in that old house.

It was the same house when I discovered “Apu”. I have no idea why I called her “Apu”. She was just 3 years older than me. Slighly thinner and much taller.

And she had more stories to tell..

Elaborate.. long ..mysterious stories.

For she believed that there is another world under our world. Where small people lived. People size of our thumb and if we dig the earth we can reach them.

In those humid evening we would dig the earth to find those small people. All of us got worms in the end..

Reality is stranger than imagination.

“Apu” was lonelier than me. She would stand in front of the tree and would talk to it. The date tree..

And she would talk when no one was looking at her.

“you talk with the tree”.

I shouted one evening after our fight.

She became frightened as her secret was out , sucking her left thumb more violently.

She was a thumb sucker, I nail eater.

We were lonely kids in a huge family…

“She is my friend” she smiled

“Who?” I asked again..

“The date tree..

She talks”

I was now more silent..

After the small people I had lost faith in her stories. But still….

There was something there…

We tried to talk to the tree, in our own rituals.

Silent starring, beating at its stem, shouting.

Writing letters to her and burying it under the stem, but nothing happened.

And then she went away. On a white plane like she had done before.

I went on living in that house.

We met again and again.. In her home across the planet, in dreams, on phone but never under that tree…

I always thought that she had some strange powers. She believed that things could talk.

Then she got married. We met again one summer , for sisters are always there to give a shoulder to cry.

“Do you remember that date tree”.

She asked me during our meeting…

“Do you remember the house”.

She was asking in a curious tone as if I had a record of her insanity.

She was now different..

Lady in the white coat. Slightly angry on life.

“why it happened with me? She looked at my face”.

“you need to cry mourn and pray, I said silently”.

“DO we mourn for the unborn?”

She asked me with a straight face,

“lets go back”…

It was a plea..My plea…

That summer we went back to that house…

House that was ours and was of our people.

Silent, dead old house…

In the flight she was silent and depress..

We entered the house. Every thing was same, but new.

Except the talking tree was not there…. It died when we left….

And that day I saw her crying!!