A Birthday Tree
By Anitha S
18 January, 2014
Countercurrents.org
I am Achu alias Dev. I am 8 years old. I live in the city of Kozhikode in Kerala with my parents. I love the month of January as my birthday falls in the first half. I love to call my friends home, receive gifts, be taken to the temple and eat the delicious ghee rice, chicken curry and sweet that my mother specially makes for me. This year my birthday was made special by an event that happened in secret with my father. Let me tell you the background that led to this event.
A few months back, I traveled with my parents to Thiruvananthapuram. There we met a friend of my father who was busy writing about a tree. She told me the story of a grandmother Rain tree that has been in the city for more than 70 years in the midst of many old buildings and huge trees. The reason for this was the imminent threat to the grandmother tree from a textile shop that had come adjacent to the tree. The group Tree Walk was celebrating the grandmother tree. I really liked the idea and wished I could also participate. Since then, I have started looking at trees a lot. The best time to enjoy the beauty of a tree is when I travel on a bike with my father- I then lean back on him and look up. The leaves and branches will appear to reach towards the sky. The best sight is to go for a ride on a moonlit night and look up. The Rain tree especially has a very nice way of filtering light through its leaves.
It is this new found love for trees that led to the secret event on my birthday. I live in an apartment in front of which there is a park with a lot of trees and space to play and relax. I like to look out of the window and see this green sight. I do not like it so much when the smoke from the burning of leaves comes in and makes me cough. The dry black patches where leaves are burnt makes me wonder if it will not hurt Mother Earth when fire blazes on her. My father took me to the park that morning and showed me two huge concrete bases. He said that 2 big trees grew there before which had fallen and died. He asked if it would be good to plant a Birthday tree. Since I like fruits a lot, we went in search of a fruit tree sapling. My father is friends with a person who takes saplings around in a push-cart. We went to him and looked for a good, healthy fruit tree sapling. Though I really wanted a gooseberry sapling there were no good ones. Then I saw what I wanted. A tall, slim smart looking Gauva sapling. We immediately bought it.
My father had arranged for a pit to be dug in the middle of the concrete base. He had got dried cow dung and filled the pit with it and water. So the earth was ready to receive the roots of the guava sapling. I felt so good to hold the sapling, remove the plastic case covering its base and lower it into the pit. We worked in silence- my father and me as if this was the most important event of the day. I forgot about balloons and crackers, about chicken curry and sweets, about the gifts and wishes when I was doing it. I could see the huge juicy guavas. I have seen my grandmother cover the guava fruits with a plastic cover to save it from the greedy bats. I could imagine my friends and me feasting on the fruits. I wondered if the inside of this variety would be pink or white. I realized that when you plant a tree, you have so much to look forward to- the way it grows, the flowers, the fruits, the living beings that come to the tree- all of this is new to me. I felt a special bonding with this tree as it was planted on my birthday. It felt good to carry water in a bottle and pour it at the base of the tree.
My father told me about a man, who many years back had started to plant in the soil there which was dry and parched. He would sit on the ground and slowly rake up the cracked earth and prepare it for planting. It was he who planted all the trees there, watered them and ensured that they grow well. He did it in memory of a friend who left the world. Now the man who planted trees is is no longer there, but his memory lives through the huge green shade that the trees give to all of us. We have not seen him even once but through this image of his painstaking effort, we are able to see his loving heart and thoughts. My father says the best statue that we can make to remember a person is a Tree that will give oxygen, shade, fruits and flowers. The 30 odd trees that grow here are the most fitting tribute that a friend could give to another friend who passed away suddenly.
I have been making sure that my guava brother is watered and is happy to be growing in our midst. The other day, my mother took a few bottles of water and left it there. The group which comes to play shuttle every morning has promised they will water the tree. Though we did this in secret, many people came to know of it. Some were happy, some looked shocked, some surprised. But what made me most happy is the news that a friend of mine whose birthday is in the last week of January has decided to plant a tree in the other vacant pit. Like the friendship between me and him, theses two trees would also grow together as companions in the rain, wind and sun.
A friendship between Birthday Trees.
Anitha.S in conversation with Achu and Manoj on 12.01.2014.
For details of Tree Walk- Thiruvananthapuram write to [email protected]
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