The Tamarind Tree
Somehow, the wind has changed. The direction, the intensity andthe chill – everything has changed Here it caresses him, there it stabs him. It shrieks insolently about his ears and there it humsas he breathes and takes in the air.
The ghosts sitting in the tree are wide-awake this blazing afternoon. Not for them the routine of the night. They have waited for a very long time for him to comeback to his village.
When the letter from his mother reached him, it had seemed that the ink was still fresh. As though she had been in the next room, written the letter and had it sent the very next minute. In the letter, she had announced her impending death in avery firm handwriting. “I am ill and I have decided to die”, she had written. “Now I have only you and after me, you will have no one. It is best if we can meet one last time.” The ink still glistened.
From the Railway station at Kuppam, he had taken the bus to his village. It was a short journey that passed with little incident. No one recognized him. No one hadtime for a returning son.
In the village, certain things had changed. Most had not. The two huge Banyan trees near the bus stand still watched over the few who transited. The bus stand seemed to have been renovated and the walls had been whitewashed. A few streetlights seemed to make the place ugly. He walked the short distance to hismother’s hut.
Now he is here. The street dogs lie about in shades and bark perfunctorily. They seem to ask, rather resentfully, what his business is. Not as though they were asking a stranger, but rather, a wayward old friend who had not kept his wordand done his duty.
Outside the hut, the old family cow still sits, eyes half closed, her jaws constantly moving, chewing. Does she really chew grass or does she analyze her memories and observations on the human condition? She really knows more about us thenwe might think, he feels. Unknowingly, we have had a spy watching our home.We have paid no heed to her, quarreled, and discussed the frailties of ourfriends and relatives. The cow has sat quietly, ignored by us, listening and taking everything in, processing, processing….
The wind has announced to the world that he has arrived. The leaves of the tamarind tree laugh but the Mango tree seems to hiss. In each leaf is a drop oflove for the woman who looked after it since it started its journey upwards, predestined to failure. The tamarind tree gave and gave for her every meal. Butshe always preferred the Mango tree. Had she done the right thing?
His mother’s voice still seemed to float about the hut. What a sweet and delicate voice she had, he now thought. While we rushed in and out, demanding our meals, ignoring her every need, she sang and sang old songs. If not for her songs, the food might not have tasted the same; they were that intangible extra spice that went in to the sambar with the tamarind juice.
The walls stood silently, darkened here by the smoke and neglect of years, lightened elsewhere by the filtered sunlight from smudged windows. My Mother! My Mother! They were her silent friends, having absorbed all her music and her silent thoughts. Was she their real mother? Was I related only by blood?
She lies calmly and peacefully, on the bed at the far wall. A faint fragrant breeze blows in through the small window near her feet. Many small tamarind leaves have spread all over the white bed sheet she had pulled over herself neatly. Her white hair has been neatly combed. She seems to have had a final bath andprayed one last time. The incense sticks has not quite extinguished and the old pictureof Rama and Sita with their perennial smiles stands propped up at exactly the place they have been for untold years.
The years of loneliness have finally converged to this day and this time. The son who could not be there while she lived has returned to her a little too late.
Behind him, in his wake, the air has stilled and rested on the hard brown road.
The ghosts have noted the event in their diaries. They will return to haunt with a vengeance. The sparrows have returned earlier than usual and rest quietly on the branches on the Mango tree. The crows watch him discretely from the other tree.
Is that where her soul has gone to rest?
