The story of a wounded tree

 

This is for the history-minded common people who care to know about small things. We trees are highly underpaid and under-appreciated. What’s something preposterous is that it’s we who have sired the evolution of mankind and now we depend on him for our survival. We are numbered now—from that countless status when mother earth was lush green earlier—and there will be a time when the heritage lobby will be fighting to keep our ruins as a memorial for the past when mother earth was alive. There will be machines all around and human brain itself will be replaced by the artificial intelligence.

I’m a seemal (silk cotton) tree standing by the canal-side pathway. It used to be a beautiful thin ribbon of solitude between the canals overgrown with few trees and lots of grass, bushes and reeds. A poetic man would walk in somber profundity on the path. Then the developers hoeing the dirty grind of parasitic business arrived. The sand mafia would arrive at night and scoop away the sand from the canals and the path between them. The chauvinistic pigs would scrape out as much grains of sand as possible to build their big buildings. The earthmover’s claws were lucid, pertinent and driven by soulless precision. It would work with pure sense of abstraction. Its zealousness would cut the upper lateral roots of we trees to dig out more and more sand to fill the truck to the brim. The solitudional luminosity for the lone poetic man was gone; the grass, reeds and bushes obliterated; the smaller trees fell and bigger ones like me survived the onslaught with cut limbs and big gaping wounds. The cast and crew of development are too big actors now.

When the poetic man came and saw my big roots exposed and cut, he put a healing sad hand on my trunk. The edifying notes of his love touched my innermost rings in the trunk. He made a very little effort, this is all he could manage being a poetic man, and sweated for a couple of hours to gather soil around my wounded roots. For me the spiritual symbolism of this love is beyond its physical limits. It feels good to be cared and one’s pain acknowledged. But a small group of thugs took away even that little heap of earth this man’s poetic hands had built around me. I think they did it specifically to make it seem self-mocking to the poet—that your kind of emotions are meaningless in the modern age; that this artistic outlet is nothing more than a speck of dust in the face of the horses of greed in full trot. Since then I have tried to muster up courage to the extent of granitic endurance just for that poetic man who sometimes comes and puts a friendly hand on my bark. But I missed my flowers this season, the beautiful big red flowers, one of which I had intentionally dropped on his head as he walked under me. That’s when we became friends. So there have been no flowers because I have been using all my energies in keeping myself up with the remaining roots. My foliage also has been the same for the last one year. It’s pale without any new shoots. I’m still in mourning, you know.

They have cut a little square on my bark, a sort of numbered nameplate declaring my number, a kind of my leasehold to stand on this small portion of earth till they decide to terminate it any time. I sanctify their insinuations and grotesqueness by oozing my sap, my tears, through the square marking. This disquieting incision on my skin keeps reminding me that I’m their numbered property under some forest law that easily allows some thugs to lacerate me. I have a message for the bloodhound. I let out a yellowish sap through this little square of licensing cut. It coagulates to a meaty sanguine blob. I have obliterated their despicable number that they had assigned me. It’s my revolt. I don’t agree to their lease contract under whatever forest laws they have. The law that doesn’t provide me any protection and leaves me open to be vandalized by any thug whose spirit itches to play truant.

The poetic man sometimes comes and puts his gentle fingers on the protruding sanguine crust from my guts. I see his mournful countenance. This human touch is astonishing. It snaps off the thread of pain for a few moments. How I wish more humans could touch we trees like this! How I wish that more humans realized we are half of their lungs!

Vrindavan Verve

 

Last drops in the leaking bucket of memories

 

Tau Hoshiyar Singh is almost hundred now. There is a langar organized at the village. He was walking in that direction as if driven by the sense of smell. He is nearly blind but still manages to walk in the streets groping the pitfalls of life with his stick. He has four sharp senses to guide him apart from the majorly damaged fifth, sight.

Today he seems to walk effortlessly. Maybe the fragrance of fresh laddoos emanating from the community feast’s huge cauldron did the magic trick, allowing him to walk just like anyone else. I offer him a pillion ride to the destination on my scooty. He smartly clambers for the pillion ride, shaking the scooty with the force of his still reasonably broad skeleton. Clutching my shoulder with one hand, he holds his lathi over my head.

Jat elders have an inclination to prod the ribs of the youngsters with the end of their sticks. I have to be very careful. Beyond all the warnings by the doctors regarding sugar intake he is tremendously receptive to sugar-saturated laddoos and jelabis. At the community feast, he eats with elegance, with methodical precision, out of reverential respect for the prasadam. Not a little crumb escapes his attention. Doing full justice to his generation he has finished six laddoos while I’m still struggling with the first one.

A laddoo is simply a ball of sugar. We have our phobias that restrict us; he has none. Most importantly, the laddoos leave only one effect—on his tongue. On the other hand, we have many in the mind.

‘Tau take two more and put them in your pocket for later use,’ I whisper in his ear. Tau has a loud voice. His whisper comes dangerously close to a public announcement. As a result, the entire gathering takes a mulling pause as Tau is heard saying, ‘Why should I have two in the pocket? I have many in the stomach and have already fixed the desire. Why don’t you take a few in your pocket and fulfill the quota. You have just one in your stomach.’ So he has been keeping an eye on my plate as well! Not as blind as I suppose him to be. Now everyone comes to know what I have been telling him. Many villagers stare at me. Everyone knows what I have been putting into his ears. I’m completely washed with embarrassment. I think Tau has taken revenge; retaliation against my election-time joke at his cost.

The last to last assembly elections took place about nine years back. Tau has been very vocal about support to a regional satrap on caste grounds. He even raised his lathi to strike when I crossed the boundaries of vote-canvassing, asking him to vote for someone else. On the voting day I took my revenge as he lined up to vote very early in the morning. ‘TauI hope you are enjoying casting your final vote in this life!’ I taunted. He was around ninety at that time and I felt sure about my calculations regarding his future voting chances. But he has been around for one more decade  and has cast multiple votes in local, state and central elections. The state and central elections are due in 2024. Now I’m sure Tau will be there in support of his favorite candidate.

PS: He has done it. The vote I mean. The other day I found him negotiating the village street with the help of his last remains of senses and stick. He had gone to the village barber to get shaved. I shouted in his ear and put up a task whether he can recognize me. He dropped the bucket of effort in the deep well of memories. The rusted iron bucket is leaking and by the time it comes out only little dribbles of memory are left. He can just recall my grandfather's name-de-plume Masterji. I'm about to comment on his fading memory but his face is extra stern after shaving and his grip on the stick is quite authoritative. So I let go off my teasing itch.   

Your tiny nest of wellbeing

 

Try to build a little nest of friendship that would cozily hold a few friendly people who would always care. I think friendship is the bedrock of all relationships, be it lovers, husband, wife, children, siblings. It’s the foundation of all that survives the vicissitudes of life. Don’t ask or expect too much from yourself or the other person. Just be a friend first, and all partnerships acquire a better shape by default. And be such a good friend that if at all circumstances force you out of a partnership, even with all the related losses you still are at least left as a nice old friend. Friends to begin with, friends to end with. Not a bad situation I suppose.

Silent zigzags of a village night

 

The village has spread on both sides of the road as it grew in population. The district road got upgraded to become a national highway without adding to its width because of the houses on both sides. So there were a lot of crushed bones of humans and dogs, and sometimes even crows. It was almost bumper to bumper traffic comprising a broad range of vehicles from massive trawlers to two-wheelers and bicycles. The road looked busy till deep into the folds of night. Speed bumps were set up to check their rampant prowl. Then the bypass circuiting the village got operationalized. It was a kind of savior. The woes of the peasant woman crossing the road with dung heaps on their heads lessened a bit. The dogs too stood a better chance of survival while loitering around the road. The traffic lessened as most of it took the bypass to avoid the bottleneck congestion.

But the villagers who resided by the side of the road felt some discomfort. They had become so used to the noise that now when the nights turned still and silent, they got a feeling as if ghostly entities were on the prowl. What has happened to make sannnatta so weird and spooky, many thought. We are now habituated to the noise so much that silence scares us. I hope the villagers find peace with silence. I’m reasonably away from the road so the silent nights are still better. And now when they are getting used to the silence, any noise hits their ears more effectively. The road-bumps don’t have white strips to make them visible from a safe distance. So now and then some trawlers jump over the speed-bumps with full speed. And a loud thump goes booming across the silence of the night. The people in the roadside houses jump with the vibrations, taking it as an earthquake. As a result, the new sarpanch has been requested to remove the bumps. He is very keen to launch public work initiatives and the request has been accepted. The people have calculated that it’s better to have a few more dead dogs, with a human fatality in between, rather than being jolted out of their sleep thinking the world was being shaken out to the limits of annihilation. To be more sure of being there on solid ground, they have removed the speed-bumps.