On Hurting and Forgiveness

Having spent a long time in the highlands, I was happy to see the trees changing colours in Kaza. With an arduously long day waiting for me before I was off to another village, I decided to spend the day roaming the colony of trees which were planted by a girl who had wanted her home to have trees and thus, had planted a garden of willow by the riverside, quite a long ago.

Today, the Shaam region in Spiti has a lot of trees. Willows, Poplars, Wild Willows, Apples, Apricots and many exotic species too. Kaza is full of these trees too. It’s quite a merry sight to spot these around the town, especially when the spring is around the corner. I was flittering about the town counting the trees and guessing their ages. On my way near the old rest house, between a line of beautiful willows, I saw a tree chopped off at its stump with only a few nascent branches remaining on its nodes. It was a painful sight. A sort of moment which makes your breath heavy.

*

And suddenly it took me many years back into my own childhood when I was a little boy of maybe just 6 or 7. I had chanced upon a long iron nail and a hammer in my father's store and I wanted to hammer the nail in somewhere in order to gauge the strength of my incoming manliness. And, so, I was off to the roof trying to stick it into one of the walls, but it didn't happen. The wall was too hard and my hands too delicate for any mark to be made. I had to choose another target for my nail to gore. Out of the blue, the idea of the mango tree I had planted 2-3 years ago struck me. It was still only a young adult when it came to a tree and its stem was still tender. So, in a flash, I was down in the garden, with a firm grip placed around the nail and hammer ready. With a few blows, the nail was deeply lodged in the tender flesh of the tree. The tree made no sound. No reflexes. There was no blood. It just continued to sway in the light breeze of December.

From the corner of his eyes, my grandfather was seeing it all happen in front of his eyes. Grandfather was a lover of all things alive and beautiful. He wouldn't remove a cobweb above his bed for it would mean removing a praani from its home. And yet, he didn't stop me. It was only after I had satiated my growing manliness and I was returning back into the house with a grin on my face that he faced me and asked me what I was doing. I told him about the thrill of finding the nail. He then asked me why had I lodged it in the tree. I had already found a reason for this by that time. I casually told him that I wanted to punish the tree for not having borne any fruit even after I had watered it for so long. Fearing an incoming lecture I ran off into the kitchen without letting him speak a word.

Back then, the pink house in front of our house used to have a huge Kadamba tree in its lawn. It was so grand that it dwarfed the house behind it with its sprawl and height. About a week after the nail had been buried in the mango tree by me, I woke up to the dreadful sight of the Kadamba tree being horrendously chopped at its base. Like my mango tree, it didn’t protest the atrocity. In an hour or so, all that remained of the tree was a neatly sliced stem. Its green leaves, its acrid fruit and its shade, now only a fleeting memory which would be too removed to mention with due course of time.

That day, I found myself going into the verandah every half an hour to check if the tree was really gone. It was really gone. I had sometimes wondered how the pink house would have looked without the tree. Today, it gleamed brightly in the winter sunlight and God, did it look ugly. The day somehow passed. The next morning, I woke up and went to check if the tree was gone, yet again. I was stupefied at what I saw. The abruptly chopped stem of the tree was shedding water drops from its flattened top. Like someone had opened a tap there. Lightning struck me and I understood what was happening.

The Tree was crying.

It had stood silent when It was being murdered by the very hands that sowed its seeds all those years ago. But, now it could not stop itself. It had been deceived. It was hurting.

Within moments of this realization, I was tearing up too. I ran back into the house, straight into my grandfather’s room. I leaped into his arms and bawled like the baby I was, not the man I had wanted to become a week ago. When I had wet his dhoti properly and felt lighter, I rose up and told him that the Kadamba tree was crying. Baba breathed a heavy sigh and looked deeply at me.

“I know” he’d said.

*

‘A tree, because it does not, cannot, know the difference between a gardener and a woodcutter, would treat both equally and not keep its breath of oxygen, flower, fruit and fragrance from either.’

I recently read this sentence in a beautiful book where the author traces her journey of becoming a tree. There was something nostalgic about reading this sentence then. I couldn’t remember it while reading. Standing in front of the willow and reminiscing it all brought back the memory.

*

 It was because, on that day, Baba had told me the same thing.

“Do you remember the nail you put into the mango tree in the garden? You said you did it because the tree wasn’t giving us mangoes. But, see how the tree has always been giving. Right from the moment when the little sapling germinated and plumbed out of the soil, it has given you oxygen. When its young leaves spiralled out and shined bright in the flowerless garden, it gave you a reason to cheer up when spring was far away. Today, even as it is still young enough to not bear fruit, it gives you shade when your school van is late in the scorching summer morning. Do you see now?

The tree has always had something to give to you. In return, it has, but asked only a little water from you, that too, not often.”

By this time, we were in the garden.

 “In a year or two, there will be sweet mangoes up there. Hundreds of them and the tree will drop them for you to eat.”

I started crying again. Baba wiped my tears and together, we decided that we would remove the nail. It was nailed deep into the skin, but the wound was still fresh. We managed to remove the nail without a lot of effort. After this, Baba left me alone with the Tree. He wanted me to have a word with it, alone. I wept more and apologized to the tree with all my earnest intent. The tree didn’t move. I knew it was hurting and its silence made me feel worse. You can make mistakes and you can realize that you’ve made them but what happens when you can’t apologize for them? Where do you go from there?

Across the road, the Kadamba stood leafless. To the rational, its roots didn’t know that its body was gone, so it was still sending up water through the xylem. To my broken, guilt-ridden heart, it was still crying. It cried for days, not realizing that no one would wipe its tears. And then slowly, the stem lost its sheen and shrivelled. The old Kadamba had taken its last breath. It had died hopeless. Soon, its memory would die too. Or perhaps not?

By this time, the mango tree had healed itself of the wound inflicted by me. Only a scar remained. On an otherwise spotless stem, the scar lingered as a telling reminder of my mistake. The tree still hadn’t replied to my apology. Would it ever forgive me?

Winter passed, a short spring came and went in a jiffy and the long summer arrived. One early morning in May, when the summer vacations had just begun and long hours of sleep were starting to become a habit, Baba woke me up from deep slumber and took me into the garden. He took my fingers and pointed at the mango tree. Through half-opened sleepy eyes, I first saw the scar which I had grown used to seeing first and then readjusting the aperture, I saw what my grandfather wanted me to see.

There were tiny green mangoes on the tree.

The Mango Tree had listened to me. It had accepted my plea. It had forgiven me.

Since that year, the Mango Tree always continued to give us sweet mangoes every year. It is something that makes me look forward to summer, even though winter is my favourite time of the year. This year, I came back home from Mumbai to a dismaying sight. My parents told me that the tree was leaning too much and it had started to touch the electric wires lined across the poles so that they had to trim it down a bit. It was a rational decision to make, but, it made home a little less homely. The tree hasn’t borne fruit this year. I am not angry. I think we deserve the punishment if you can call it a punishment because it was still breathing out air for me, and keeping Kaalu cool with its shade.

How do you explain such kindness?

‘What is forgiveness? It’s the fragrance give when they are crushed.’~ Rumi.

 Rumi’s word ring true to me every time, I see a bouquet of roses removed from beautiful gardens, all in the spirit of shallow appreciation later to be discarded across the road.

What folly is it to look for a bush of roses without thorns?

*

Standing in front of the willow, I wondered if It was hurting. Surely, It was. The tundra soil of Spiti does not allow trees to spend much water into the business of crying. Why should any tree need to cry after what It continues to do throughout Its life? The tree was sobbing, albeit silently. I gulped an ounce of sadness down my throat and abandoned my plan to go down the riverside. Instead, I went back to my room and slept.

In the evening, I left Kaza and climbed to the village of Demul. The alpine highlands devoid of any tree life soon made me forget about The Tree as my days in the village grew in number.

It was only on my penultimate day in Spiti that I was reminded of It. I’d decided that I would spend my morning beside the river among the trees, the long-tailed shrikes and oriental turtle doves which dwelt in the undergrowth. But here’s the catch. To avoid the gruesome sight of the Willow Tree, I selfishly took a different route to the riverbank. I didn’t want to spoil my mood. It was a pulchrous morning well spent among the trees and their soft rustling and swaying against the sun and the wind. I felt good but something was still irking my conscience. The Willow Tree. I needed to see it. It was not the call of melancholy. It was as if, I had to check on it, as one checks on a wounded friend to see if they are all right.

I said a quick hello to the goldfinches who had arrived from Eurasia and made way for the Tree. By the time, I reached the old rest house, I had run out of breath. The thin air at 13,000 feet makes breathing a pricey affair. However, as my eyes settled on the Willow, breathing became easier.

The Willow Tree was moving again.