A small tree in a poet's garden

 

Most of the people say it’s a shrub, but I insist it’s a tree—small though having slender woody stems and a thin main trunk. The fact is jatropha integerrima or peregrina is a flowering shrub. It’s bigger than a plant and smaller than a tree. If you prune it well and keep it single trunked it grows 15-16 feet tall with a luxuriant round canopy having glossy elliptic or oval leaves. Mine is about 12 feet tall if I consider the highest shoot trying to touch the sky with its flowery head. Had I kept it single-stemmed it could have gone to 15 feet and then I won’t have to defend its tree status with arguments. My peregrina has several slender trunks that inhibit its vertical growth. But vertical loss is horizontal gain. It has a domed canopy broader than the tall guys of its species. Most importantly, the slender side stems have plenty of leaves and flowers that keep their crimson smiles year around.

The little tree is always smiling with its clusters of star-shaped crimson flowers, a bright and flashy smile. Irrespective of the wars and political intrigues, there it’s with its bright smile most of the year. The flowers sharply silhouetted against, like lofty overseers, the humanoid background where everyone is trying to reach the majestic zenith with taut bosoms, whipping up mad frenzy. It’s a world where the majority is bustling, but some are relaxed and languid—like yours truly—and the latter enjoy the charm of these lovely flowers. As people prance for profiteering, huffing and puffing with their progressively worsening mood, here I’m safely holed and peacefully cornered to enjoy the bouquet of beauty offered by this little tree. Your royal majesties, you can convulse with pain for penury gain, here I enjoy the free booty of mother nature.

The scientists say that its parts are toxic. Its milky sap can cause skin inflation and rashes. Its seeds are also toxic in nature. The smoke of its leaves is also said to be harmful to our lungs. I’m happy that this little tree knows how to hit back. It does so with its numerous flowery smiles. In any case, it’s merely our human-centric view. I’m happy that it gives us a knee-kick in terms of utility. Beyond our consumerist whinnying—although it has various medicinal usages—the beauty stands proud and nonchalant. Its essence has something sweet because usually its flowers are laden with honeybees. But the honeybees are vanishing at an alarming rate. While each cluster had several of them till a couple of years back, now there is just one for several clusters. Maybe there is a tiny ball of honeycomb still surviving somewhere. That sweetens my hope a little.

It’s dreary and dismal in a horribly vindictive world. My fading enthusiasm is revived this sultry morning. The crimson blooms are extra happy today. There is a swarm of small grass yellow butterflies (eurema briggita) fluttering with exciting feminine artifice. Aha, the bounding quintessence of life! All perplexities melt. It’s a very comforting sight. They flutter jovially. Spirituous sallies in the little dense rain-fed dome. There are a few honeybees as well who sometimes butt into the butterflies. But no hard feelings like we have in the form of road rages.

I’m lost in this beautiful spectacle. Suddenly my reverie is broken by the frisky, twittering tik-tikking by the resident squirrel, the one who had arrived with her little ones a few days ago. A brown-yellow stripped feral cat is a great hunter. To the mother squirrel her little ones are the star of her eyes. A small-time writer like me has poetic sentiments. But to the cat, it’s simply food. I see the cat running away with its breakfast tucked in its mouth. Mother squirrel is inconsolable. I see the curled tail of the stolen baby sticking out of the cat’s mouth. It’s slightly bigger than the previous occasion when I saw it tucked in its mother’s mouth, its bushy tail curled sideways, mother cautiously carrying it to a new house she had prepared among the top branches of the parijat tree in the yard. Now it was again tucked up in a different mouth. The tail curled exactly like earlier.

My pitying reverie is suddenly broken. The wire-tail swallow couple almost chip away lice from my head, if there is any among the one-week old crop on my top. I think the elder chick is flying with them now and needs semi-care. They must be guarding the small chick, the latter hatch, because they have objections even against a poet marveling at the butterflies and sympathizing with a grieving squirrel.