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.