The Liquor-lover’s Gift

 

Once a nicely sloshed farmer was seen lumbering zigzag in the muddy street. The mud on his clothes proved his difficulty in managing his vertical. Anyway, he approached nearer and I saw that he was holding a banana sapling in his hand. Whether he really meant to carry it on purpose or it just got into his hand after a fall, I’m not sure. In any case, he seemed to carry it on purpose as he would grab the article again while getting up from the latest fall. He must have loved bananas.

Face to face, I smiled and he laughed. I stood awestruck by the majesty of his gaiety and he gyrated with full spirits as if mocking at my colourless life. Then God knows why he turned abusive and gave a full display of the choicest expletives. Even my well-poised demeanour was shaken a bit, forcing me to give a mild rap at the back of his head. It coincided with his next fall. He would have fallen in any case even without my effort. But the timing of the mild rap and a hard fall matched to a class that made it look like the effect of my hit.

He thought he had been hit so hard that it dusted him in one go. He panicked. I saw the fear in his eyes as if I was a slayer of the drunkards. I got down to assure him that my proceedings in the matter stood ended. Then he cried. ‘You are so kind, you are almost a God to help me!’ he howled. I helped him stand to his feet—for the time being at least, as it was my duty to help him regain his vertical for at least once after contributing to the cause of his latest fall.

He would have again fallen if he hadn’t clutched me with full brotherly force. ‘You are my brother. You are for me while all of them abandoned me!’ he embraced me tight and sang a sluggish, frothy, smelly song of brotherhood in my ear. I tried to extricate myself from the claws of his drunken love but he won’t let go of the long-lost brother he had been looking for so long. I tried pushing him away but he was really hungry for human affection.

I had to push him, which I did to good effect and again he went down and cried once more for being stabbed in the back by someone whom he respected more than his real brother. I found it appropriate to take my presence off the scene. As I walked away, I felt his gift tucked into my shirt around the collar, a bit of it out grazing my nape. I pulled it out. The banana sapling! Maybe he was trying to crown me with it on my head and make me the King of all drunkards. However, he misplaced the item a bit.

I looked at the banana sapling. Despite the mistreatment and mauling, it seemed reasonably well in shape. The leaf would open up as the root was intact. Without thinking too much, I just allowed it to stay in my hands. So that’s how my dears the plant changed its master. I wonder if the banana spirit had a role in playing out this drama.

After changing the masters, the plant very well managed to get a new root-hold in a fresh yard. There it stood with its half-mauled single leaf. Drunk with the gay spirits of its erstwhile master, it blossomed up. From a kid to a boy to an adolescent to a dandy young man, it just sprinted towards claiming more of life and living. Its huge green leaves swayed to winds like majestic banners of the banana kingdom.

A couple of years after its arrival in my garden, the rains turned out to be very, very lenient. It just grew and grew through the rainy season. The lateral shoots from its roots grew forcefully to push out the bricks around. It wanted to become the king of bananas, I suppose. It was a big clump now and furled its leafy sails for a life well lived and enjoyed. It gave the unkempt courtyard a wilder look than it really was.

Well, then maybe a krait snake was also duped in taking it as a really wild place. It slithered in to stay in the clumpy banana encroachment. It had to be dispossessed of its free-hold with much fearful action. Then another little baby snake was also found.

A suspicious-looking neighbour gave his expert verdict that one day a cobra will also greet me. ‘Why do you have such an overgrown banana in your garden? It attracts snakes like a magnet pulls iron!’ he admonished.

‘Really!’ I nearly trembled and looked at the banana.

Snakes can surely put us out of our wits. My mother’s rusted wood-cutting scythe was brought out of retirement from a musty corner in the barn. I was expecting resistance from the resident reptilian tenants in the clump. My strikes were shaky. Thank God there weren’t any more snakes, or if there was any it must have gone out with its girlfriend to give her a kiss of venom. I decided to remove all the lateral encroachments and leave only the sleek central trunk to avoid the complete murder of a tree. I had to save my nature-loving aesthetics as well.

A banana is no woody mass. It’s a herbaceous plant, a mere layer after layer of the leafy fibre forming the trunk. The rusted scythe looked full of vengeance and easily cut through the soft juicy fibre like a knife does to the butter. Imagine, such a soft trunk would bear storms and high winds! It’s because nature hasn’t got sharp edges like us. It pushes and prods in a circular way that even a blade of grass would weather the mightiest storms.

The banana clump bore the sharp edges of my fear and insecurities and the bushy clump turned into a single sleek strand. It still smiled. Thank God, the trees aren’t vindictive like we humans, otherwise they would stop producing oxygen as we put them to axe. We survive because the rest of the creation is far more adjusting and tolerant than us.

These trees never miss their smiles. A gust of breeze ruffled the leafy banners. A big leafy overhang brushed my face and aired my perspiring face as if to say, ‘Why worry so much. You are all right and so am I!’ I think they forgive very easily. I took the consolation that a single strand of banana is better than no banana at all.