Titin - Chronicles of an improbable journey - trees and a diamond!

The trees of 4/7 brought me up – they held me in their bosom when I was down, they let me play with their branches when I was up, they hid me in their shade when the sun was bright, they covered my head when it rained, they weathered the nor’westers (Kal baishakhis as they are known in West Bengal) to protect me, with their heads and leaves swaying furiously with the merciless winds, they whispered to me when I was alone, they hugged me when I cried. I look at myself today, living a life without trees around me, and I cannot even begin to express how sad it feels.

It is therefore fit for this reminiscing piece of literature to invite you to a nostalgic journey with me around 4/7, as a tribute to my long lost friends. We start the trip around the house, to the left, from a guava tree on the eastern side of the house, hugging the wall of the courtyard. The color of the guava tree’s trunk, a salmon-brown with dark patches of fibrous knots, gave it a sense of invincibility – a strength that stands the test of time – yet it did not; another sad departure of a beloved friend, that had withstood my antics for five long years, before it fell to our garage. By the fence on the eastern side was a tagor tree (unfortunately I do not know the English name for it), blooming every morning in dutiful regularity, with its pretty and small white flowers. One of my favorite kicks from those flowers – pluck them out and suck the tiny stem for that tiny tinge of honey. From there on till the back-end of the plot of land, a wild variety of grass with coarse bushes and shrubs held their sway till we planted some more trees around – a few cashew nut trees – we never could actually extract a cashew from the cashew fruit and a lime tree (Gandharaj variety).

Right behind the window of our main bedroom (which was at the extreme back of the house), was a Dalim tree. It produced a yellowish fruit with fleshy seeds that we ate heartily. Smack in the middle of the backyard, there were two trees hugging each other almost – one a sajne data and the other a neem tree. Both of these played a tremendous role in my later years and I will come to that at some point. At the southwest corner was a mango tree; this was my favorite – not because of the mangoes; I actually don’t eat mangoes, which is plenty strange given the fabulous quality of mangoes that this tree produced. I simply loved climbing up the tree, perching myself somewhere in its myriad tangle of branches and daydreaming. There couldn’t have been a better spot, for a romantic teenager hopelessly in love with a girl in the neighborhood. It gave me a feeling of being on top of the world without one bit of care for the rest. That my friends, I call ultimate freedom. This tree also served to provide natural shade for one of the windows of the second bedroom. Which is a great thing to have during a scorching Durgapur summer, but equally bad to have during the monsoons and winter. This later on became my bedroom – I remember complaining about the winter or the monsoons – the mango tree was one of my biggest friends and you can’t betray a friend.

Beside the mango tree, hugging the fence on the western side were two columns of banana trees. The soil under these trees was soft. Which served the purpose of generations of stray dogs to burrow and give birth to a fresh set of litter. We named them – Sona Bubuli etc. The leaves of the banana trees often carried a particular variety of green caterpillars. These banana trees however left much to be desired, when it came to producing bananas. So now, we come the third arm of the “U’ around the house. Right in front of the mango tree, within a few yards, stood another giant – a big jackfruit tree. Now, I hate jackfruit. I can’t stand its smell. So, while there was every reason for me to fall in love with this tree as well, I never quite managed to. There are two other reasons; this was a difficult tree to climb, because it did not have too many strong branches at the base. And, two of my other friends had their home in that tree – two squirrels.

Another guava tree, a smaller one with a perfect “Y” branch at about 4 feet from the ground, had dug its roots right beside our kitchen. That “Y”, was my place to hang upside down – which is probably how I have looked at life anyways; and one can argue that it all started from here. A papaya tree, stood by the side of the small paved area by the kitchen. It was really little when we moved in, grew rapidly up in a few years, and then…the rest is a story in itself, I will narrate later. Finally, three more trees – a Joba tree with its red flowers, a lotus tree and another tree producing white little flowers whose name I do not know. We used to call it “Pauruti” – the flowers had bread like feel and its leaves had burgundy-ish color. We would locate the buds that were ready to blossom and press them a little bit between our thumbs and forefinger – pop you have a flower! There is another really stupid thing I remember about this tree. Someone at some point had provided me with the information that coal, when kept long enough underground turns into diamond. I had dutifully taken a piece of charcoal from Mom’s store, dug a little hole just by that tree – as much as my five-six year old hands could – and put the piece in, and covered it back with the excavated soil. I did look for the diamond, dutifully for a while and then gave up. So, back at 4/7, that piece of coal should still be there; May be if I dig now I will find that elusive diamond!