Trees

Trees never fail to fascinate me.

The first ones in my memory are the ones that grew in our neighbour's garden, in our ancestral home in Naradevi. It was the only house with a garden. They had trees and flowers. No weed. The garden had exactly three big trees. Two, that bore a fruit called Yomari in Newari. I'm not sure what it's Nepali or English equivalent is.
So, the tree bore fruits that were green, and if you pressed them between your palms, they cracked, offering you an inside that tasted something like Kiwi fruit, but sweeter.

I only got to taste the fruit once. Once.

But when I sat in our room in Naradevi house and looked out the window- where I always sat doing my home-work- the trees always gave me stories. Most of the time, it was the story about the Yomari tree that a girl climbed to run away from demons and later kept feeding them fruits, until they were all gone and they finally carried her off. So in my five year old head, the story underwent improvisations. The girl had to be rescued!

I don't know if the garden still exists, or the trees.

My other memory of trees are the ones that stood in front of our house in Mahankal. Two. They were at the edge of a patch of land that was lower than the level of the one where our house stood, so I could see nests on them at eye-level. There were always birds and berries on them. And thorns.

One day, Sita, who used to cook us meals and keep the house clean, climbed one of the trees and started chopping off it's branches. It made me angry. When the branches thinned, Ring Road was suddenly not so far and I hated the thought of being close to a Road. Sita made me angry that day. She was young, beautiful and full of some angry energy and I was just a child. When she came back into the house, her hands and legs were bleeding. That's when I realized the tree had thorns.

The branches grew themselves back. And although Sita went back to her village to get married, I always thought of her when I saw those trees.

My other favorite tree was the one near Kancha Jyapu's house in Boudha, where I so often went for walks with my cousins. This one we climbed. It had low hung branches, offering to be clung to. I don't know what tree that one was, either. But we did rope down a swing on it once, near Dashain. At other times, just climbed up and down it and pretended it was home.

Then, a flowering tree in my Ta Maa's garden comes to my mind. It was a good one to get into if you were playing hide and seek.

There were trees during my Darjeeling years, that became shelter. Their trunks were home when I felt home-sick. The orchids that fed on them, an object of attention. Those are trees of the Oval Garden, which have stood there, watching convent girls, nuns and other women of all ages and generations.

Smriti's home in Ganesh Basti had two very pretty peach trees. They blossomed every spring. And when the wind broke the petals, they scattered on the roof of the extended TV room, on which we would climb if we wanted to talk for hours without being discovered.

Then one afternoon, I walked into Smriti's yard to find that the twin trees had been scalped to the ground. Smriti's snow-flowers were gone.

Trees.

My favourite tree these days is the one near the town of Banepa. Every year, when we visit my in-laws, I look at the tree for as long as I can see it. It's a crazy tree, with its branches curving right down to touch the ground. You could run in and out of its archways. Paddy or some sort of green always grows at its base.

And every time I pass that tree, I say in a near whisper- "My favourite tree", as though I'm afraid people will hear me. Sometimes, it feels as though I go to Banepa every Dashain and Tihar, not to visit people and receive tika, but just so that I can drive past that tree again and whisper- My favourite tree!