The Tree

 

It was a rainy day, rather windy, I would say… a thunderstorm or something… I could listen to that fast wind blowing through my door and the window, my hair was running far away from my face like that in a typical Bollywood movie, I was enjoying it, until I started feeling cold and the wind brought with it those invisible dust particles which troubled my eyelashes… I got up to close the window, the plan was to come back in, sit there, complete my book but as soon as I reached to get the window, I saw that the trees infront were bending more than I do in my yoga sessions, initially it looked trenchant, but not much later I realised it was concerning.

I went out, the rain was yet to start, and I parked my scooty away from the tree. As soon as I came in, it started pouring. Heavily. Lashing. How arduous for the clouds… I was sitting in my chair watching the rain through the door, my slippers were soaking wet, and I did not go out to pick them because this rain was pretty just from a distance. After a few moments, I started reading again, but I could hear the wind squeezing in through the small sash of the window. That sound was kinda disturbing. Did I mention the winds were blowing crazy now?

Ignoring all that, I was almost to restart till I heard a huge crash! I ran to the window just to see that the beautiful tree had collapsed. I was heartbroken. I’ve seen that tree provide shade to people in summer, a place for parking vehicles, a place for kids to play, and ladies to chat. Of course, my first thought was, “thank god I moved my scooty”, but the next thought was, what now? It’s just gone? It fell apart in that one windstorm?

The rain stopped after pouring for a long hour. I went outside, saw the fallen tree, which had now blocked the whole road. I came inside, told my dad about the tree… he said, “It was quite old, it had no strength to hold up now”

It might be a hundred years old. Maybe even older. People love to quote nature every now and then. We also love to make analogies around these humble standing creatures. Today, I do nothing less. All I can think is how growing older is a phase, when a mango tree turns 30-40ish, it will give you maximum fruits, but later, it grows older and one day it's of no use to fulfil our expectations.

This is the point where I introduce humans into the picture. That tree was taken away the next week. Till the time it gave us something, we are happy with it; it is happy with itself. But then it starts feeling worthless and falls apart. Don’t they say expectations kill you or something… it does to us humans too. Maybe we don’t just let that wind take us away, but we keep waiting for that disastrous wind to come. Because sometimes these expectations from yourself are going to bother, maybe not the mangoes, but the shadow we stop looking at.

-aditi