They cut down my Tree

The first time I stepped into this room switching off the lights was a mixed feeling. The walls were terrible shades of blue (5 in fact) experimented on by a man who did not live here for half the year and rest of the half...he spent it in other rooms of the normal parts of the house or were hanging out with his friends. In short, it didn't matter to the bachelor whether the walls were electric blue, whether the room was furnished by a single chair and a gawky looking furniture that uncomfortably boasted of the ability to station artefacts of different shapes and sizes. I switched off the light and settled in the corner of the bed. It was my first night at this new place, an unsure future which I was locking myself in with irrevocable surety. Nothing matched with my life except for the colour of the ceiling, with the lights turned off. I comforted myself into a foetal position and closed my eyes. I guess I was too tired as I had not really realized when I fell asleep. I woke up with a shiver. There was a storm outside and the first thing I noticed was the terrifying shadow of a huge tree dancing madly to the chaotic rhythm of the wind. I froze in my bed. Hypnotized I kept looking at it for a few minutes before I could not take in the terror anymore. I decided to get out for it was impossible to stay in that same room with the dancing of the foliage.

  Unaccustomed to the new ups and downs I bumped a couple of times and finally reached my father in law. (No..it was waaay before the era of smartphones) Too desperate in my fear I woke him up and expressed my predicaments trying to overcome the language barrier. I still can]|

not fathom what he must have thought of my brutal honesty, but in the absence of his wife at that particular time he left the bedroom and permitted me to sleep on his bed. I comfortably settled down in the dark room drawing the sheets over my ears to cut out the sound of my first andhi. I pressed myself hard against an enormously fat pillow still left on the recently vacated bed and drifted off to an uncomfortable sleep where the shadow of that huge tree haunted me throughout.

The next day I stood at the edge of the staircase and stared at the looming tree. It must have been over 40 feet. The leaves were slender and beautiful and the trunk was brown with darker striations. It did not look scary. A light wind was blowing and the leaves shivered against the blue sky. My journey with the tree had started.

 It slowly grew to be a part of my existence. It was kind of a reassuring presence. The dancing shadows did not scare me anymore. In fact, my sleepy eyes would look for its movement in case my sleep broke in the middle of the night.

My husband is stationed abroad for most of the year and upon his return pressing matters and commitments kept him busy. The bride and wife in me grew up steadily accompanied by the presence of the tree. To me it seemed to have all the answers and the passive comfort that it could provide being rooted to where it was. I found that rather intense. It could in fact hand hold me..but not make me completely dependent on it. It was making me self-sufficient.

Yet, life, as they say is not a bed of roses. For me it had its more than fair share of ups and downs. It was one such sultry afternoon. Life was at its lowest ebb. Being a weekend, I did not have the privilege of drowning myself in work. I sat on the stair case idly looking out on the desolate road. Something bothered me and my eyes welled up. I went up to the terrace. The heat was scorching. As I rested against the walls, my knees buckled and I sank to the floor crying. It was just at that moment that I heard the sweet cry of an oriole. Being an avid ornithologist, I could not ignore the call. It made me get back on my feet. The bird called again. I knew that the bird was hidden between the thin leaves. I could not camouflage. It was too bright for that. Wiping my tears, I looked out intently, and with a sudden gust of wind I saw it. As if the curtains had been drawn apart and the lead cast revealed himself in all his glory. It was not the usual black headed oriole. In fact, it was my first Golden Oriole sighting. It was brilliantly golden in the blinding heat of the north Indian summer. I smiled. This was the first time my evergreen had literally wiped my tears and made me smile.

Thereafter, he opened up a whole new world in front of me. As if on that day I had bared my soul to him and told him of my passions. In the period of the next few years the list of spottings were enriched thus: an owl couple, multiple palm squirrels, red-vented bulbuls singing melodiously, a hornbill, a shikra couple, a roofus treepie couple, swarms of bee-eaters, the seven bablers, oriental white-eyes, the alexandrine parakeet and the sunbirds that used it like a transit point. Some of the couples I could even study for their behavioural pattern. They became so easy for me spot as if the leaves were made of gossamer just for me…to look through the veil and gaze on the beauty that lay hidden beyond. We had established our bond for life.

The evenings were beautiful as the melting rays of the sun put the final stokes of gold on the verdure before the sun settled down after a mighty day’s work.

When I had children, they too grew accustomed to the closeness that their mother shared with the tree. They, too would shriek with delight pointing out the running ‘skugil’ that darted on the spread-out branches. Just as dotingly as a father would allow his offspring to play all over him. They learnt to identify at least seven bird species doing their practical bit of spotting the birds in the green mesh of the huge tree.

The tree had not only helped me to evolve but it was also helping my children grow adding that finesse that only Nature can.

It must have witnessed a lot. For it held its head high and its roots penetrated deep. The stormy evenings were incomparable in beauty as the tree lurched and fought the wrath of the zephyr. It indeed was scary, but I had grown partial towards my forever-companion and my heart danced with a heady delight as I saw my soldier withstand all odds and emerge victorious. The after math of the storm would be broken branches and a carpet of green dismembered from the tree. It too, as a sight to behold.

But sometimes too much beauty becomes too much to behold. People start confusing between the Gaia and the Gorgon. And then one day they declared my tree to be threat, for its looming height as well as its deep roots.

Despite my protests, drowned by the timbre of the elders that justified why the timber should be put down. I could only extricate a false promise that they would spare the tree as much I measured, and I am no basketball player.

This promise too, was not honoured. They cut down my tree nearly from the base and then spared a couple of feet as I rose to action, leaving me bewildered. My confounding passions were shared by many birds who came to perch on the branches they had known for years but were confused to find that it simply did not exist anymore. They flew around and flittered before settling down on the wires or other trees.

 I am not adding any spice to a write up I want to have a dramatic ending. Two things I have observed since the day my daughter came and stood in front of me, declaring with a slight annoyance in her voice: ‘Mother, they cut down your tree.”

I was not keeping well my medication had to be increased. Secondly a sharp change in the behavioural pattern of my children who had become curt and obstinate all of a sudden. I pray to God that I am putting more than two and two together. And I pray to God that one day I can see green sprouts from the sides of the trunk that is left…just like a holocaust survivor who decides to testify against his tormentors and demands they be put to justice.

Illusions

I feel I have integrally known love. Physically felt its presence. When I close my eyes I can see him...in different ways. Sometimes I see him at a distance, a dark silhouette again the reddish lavender sky...and I can't figure out whether it's dawn or dusk. I observe him looking ahead, a lean thin fiigure discounting the toll that age took on the observer and her subject, likewise) looking ahead into the stretch of water. The sun making the background look like molten gold and giving me the pleasure of looking at the detailed contour of his physique. The wind that blows making me shiver and I see him again... Now through the panes of the glass hazed by rain...I observe him on the green grass clad in white and denim and I wonder, darting back to the present....why do our lives dwell in the memories created in the backdrop of the past...I wipe the pane and I see the top two buttons of his shirt unbuttoned. I can see the smoothness of the skin a bit too clearly. It's raining and the water drops from his hair..it trickles down the nape ...down the throat...further....down the chest...I wish to touch him...and then I can feel the cool rain drops on my self as I step out under the beautiful grey sky....I am near him...and I stretch out my hand to touch. And the moment my fingers touch him the silhouette becomes smoke, the water drenching my hand trickles betwern my fingers...I can't hold on to the falling drops as they escape my clenched fist. My eyes, my hand and my being all left stooping in the rain or shivering as the wind suddenly becomes too chilly. It's after all a vacuum....love!!

Prayer

 Sometimes my soul desires to be liberated from its carnal cage.

When inebriated it seeks solace diving into the emerald green waters of peace.... 

to rediscover itself on the paths of the necropolis built by the pieces of uncertainty sewn together.

The day I left home full of fallacious fantasies. to this that I roam as a vagabond in the desert..... 

My weary soul prays it has sinned less enough to be liberated from its carnal cage. 

Towards the 'spotless sunsine of the eternal'...

The Lover

Drugged sleep that refused to overpower the faculties An imaginary conversation with a not so imaginary person A dire need to realise the futility of fostering emotions that in the deepest crevices of the mind the protagonist knew would have proven not so soothing or profitable to the heart and the hearth... .......or would it??? The darkness had forever, in a disturbing manner, been a catalyst to the thoughts... and now more so in this self inflicted lonliness... It harboured itself like an acceptable disease. If there was yet another time...yet another conversation...intrepid and well framed....the person was convinced of irrefutable victory. .....but then it was all in the mind and the stars in the sky....well probably they were not crossed after all. In memory....till in memoriam.

ANALOGY

My father is a smoker. Ever since I was born, I had seen him with a stick dangling from his lips, off and on. As I grew older, the literature too glorified the men who smoked.

It was one life changing day when I was standing with my father in our balcony. Baba often slipped into a philosophical mode, with scotch in his hand, and gave his only target sermons. During those times my eyes shifted from here to there trying to look for an exit. But as I grew older, I started enjoying the sessions. In fact, I looked forward to the Saturday nights that would be filled with like-minded congregation, beautiful mellow light, the golden scotch that sparkled on the ice cubes moving rhythmically as people debated over heavy topics. As the night percolated, the music flowed, classical, light..and what not… and then my father would slip into his favourite mode and start with his explanation of ‘OM’and the meaning of ‘Life’. I liked listening to him. It had in fact started giving a sense of direction in life. Anyway, I guess I am digressing from the point.

So it was that evening when I stood by him listening to the philosophies, but I was particularly attracted to the cigarette. As it consumed itself. That was the first time I desperately wanted a drag myself. Not that I was any stranger to the taste.. a couple of times, a couple of drags..flavoured and normal. Stolen from my friend’s father’s box, and offered by our European friend with my parents as witnesses. Come to think of it, now, I do belong to a very aberrant family. But they did a good job of bringing me up. Digressing again.

So that night, I pretended to sleep till the night set in, motionless. The moonshine crept into my bed and made a silver dash towards my pillow. I sat up and went stealthily into the living room where the cigarette lay benignly under the switched off crystal lamp. I went to my parents’ room and pressed my ears against the door. No sound, except for my pounding heart. I tip toed back to where the temptation lay. I took out a stick and Baba’s lighter and went to the terrace. It was flooded with moonlight and a beautiful breeze blew. It was as if God was setting the scene for my crime. Crime? No. Retrospecting, I would not call it a crime. It was a blessing.

I knew the drill. I put the stick between my lips and lit it. This was the first time I actually ‘wanted’ a smoke and it was fulfilling. After a couple of drags I sat down on the floor and gazed at the moon. Something was sinking into me..making me heady. Then I looked at the burning stick. It resembled the analogy of life right in front of me. Between my fingers. Just like we say, our life IS in our hands.

The fire was making a thin ring and the once solid stick was turning into grey ash…the wind blew some of it away. I had heard that it was real cool not to let the ash fall..but the winds of time blew away parts of the life into oblivion. Isn’t that the same thing which happens with us? Incidents that consume us and never leave us the same. Each and every episode leaves a burning mark, positive or negative, but a mark indeed. Another drag, the fire was even redder, just like the efforts we give to make concepts materialize. The moon was beautiful. I was incinerated with a drunk feeling, and the breeze did not let me burn. After a while I saw that the fire on the cigarette head had died down. And the spark was gone. It was soot-black. And I was conscious of a sour taste in my mouth. I took the lighter again and lit it, putting in a lot of effort where I was curiously conscious of moving my hands and lowering my head to avoid the wind around.

Years later I had tried to put an end to my futile life. Just like the cigarette, my life, midway had some parts of it blown away as ashes, and some parts of it had made me so heady that I could consider myself a junkie for the love of life. And then there was total darkness. And it did leave a sour taste in my mouth not to mention the pain I went through to reignite what was left of the cancerous component (metaphorically) that was left of me. I had hated myself and that foul taste that was left in my mouth. As I had left the nursing home with my parents just like the cupped hands that would protect the flame from going out, I remained for several days in a stooping posture just like when I had tried to inhale the cigarette the moment the flame from the lighter had kissed its lips. No. It was not shame. I remained like that due to exhaustion, physical and mental.

That night, like a de ja vu had told me that our lives are like cigarette sticks, some privileged enough to be a big, fat, Moroccan cigar..but none the less we have a specific length beyond which we can’t go on, and life finally burns us all out. The length is variable but the end is inevitable. I smoked again, and somewhere as I neared the butt, it started to ‘feel good’ again. Was it the second chance that life gave us? And we should make the most of it. And boy! Does it not make us feel regaled under the heady moonlight being carried away by the breeze? Being a first timer, I did not know where to stop. I even inhaled part of the butt and threw it away immediately. So ..another of life’s lessons..we must know where to stop. Keep yourself grounded and do not get carried away. Wasn’t that what my father always taught me? It was all coming back like a full circle. Like the burning circular ring that consumed the whole cigarette. I was done. The headiness was gone. The bad taste of the butt was there and I wanted pure water and to go back to bed. But the moon was intoxicating.

They say every cigarette you consume takes away five minutes of your life. I have heard my mother ranting this ‘n’ number of times to my father. And here I was. I had given away a part of my life, sitting all alone in the dark. I would not have smoked in public. But when you self-destruct you are fated to be alone. And everything around looks dark. Though there may be the heavenly halo of the moon..God knows if that can be a metaphor for the Gates of Heaven..but finally in life you die alone, being consumed by all your deeds.

That was the last day that I had a smoke. But it taught me so much. And now when I spend sleepless nights nestled between my little ones, I remember that night. That one single stick that had like Nostradamus predicted the entire course of my life..ups, downs… success…failure and the all- consuming loneliness. Baba and Maa had taught me well to deal with things. Not to lose control and take a step at a time. But my inanimate teacher had taught me not to inhale too hard, to let go before you reach the butt and let life consume you and prepare you for the inevitable darkness.

And the final smoke that comes out of that long cylindrical chimney..the grey serpentine smoke taking you back you where you belong..the longest cigarette….till then….carpe diem!