Eucalyptus buds are vase shaped with fluffy yellow to off-white caps (Stamens- at least that’s what I think they are called if my Botany knowledge doesn’t fail me), which if fall on the ground, give it an illusion of an amateur artist’s mottled yellow painting. Once the caps wither off, the hardened and lifeless buds in the right hands can be easily manoeuvred into spinning tops. Although very minuscule in appearance, they serve the purpose just fine enough.
Back in my paternal village, there was a pair of middle-aged Eucalyptus trees. About 50 meters away from the gnarly old Peepal, they swayed freely as if grooving to the honey soaked voice of David Bowie singing ‘Wild is the Wind’) along the roadside, near a raised platform. Elders who convened there, with either a hookah or a bunch of cards in their hands, used to talk about current affairs as the horizon would be busy swallowing an orange-red sun.
Trees are truly magnificent in that it doesn’t matter for how long, but they do make you forget about the world that exists outside their perimeter. Each tree has a unique character and a different story waiting to be told- be it Eucalyptus, Peepal, Banyan, Mango, Acacia, Jamun or any other, I find them all equally mystifying.
Afternoons saw a nearby Kikar/Babul tree (Acacia) proving useful to all those who would seek relief from the merciless noon sun and its soul-draining heat waves. Eucalyptus, although one of the tallest plants known, isn’t extremely useful when it comes to dispensing shade.
On the contrary, despite being more useful, Kikar tree could never garner a sense of respect in the community for certain reasons that I could never understand throughout my childhood. It has beautiful and more vibrant yellow flowers, its bark has innumerable medicinal properties, its thick enough canopy is all you are looking forward to while catching your breath on a blazing summer day, but in some ridiculous way it was seen as a jinx.
There was a folk-song as well that goes like “Kikraan de fullan di adeya kaun karenda raakhi ve!” which roughly translates to “O lover! Who protects the flowers of a Kikar tree!”
Perhaps, it amounts to a disembodied melancholy around it, as there’s nothing more desolate than the sight of a dry, wrinkly and forlorn looking Kikar tree during the autumn.
Coming back to the lofty eucalyptus trees, unlike Kikar, their tops towered high into the sky. Keeping a dispassionate watch on the activities of the entire village and seldom bothered about what’s happening on the surface, time to time, they would take a transient interest in shedding off their leaves in the various shades of green along with the waning florescence. Apart from being a source of play for little children, frayed ends of Eucalyptus’s twigs served as an excellent teeth cleanser. Although Kikar could also easily, rather more efficiently serve the same purpose, it wasn’t chosen commonly.
*****
It wasn’t nearly the festive season but the local shopkeepers had started displaying all the different fireworks outside their shops. Dussehra was almost a month away but as always, children were curiously stepping over to their shops for having a detailed look at all the new crackers.
Perhaps, Mitthu’s appearance during winter was the only event in the whole year that could surpass the joy that we’d get from gathering all those new goodies.
However, with each passing year, the innocent curiosity dwindles down so much that by the time your twenties commence, you are forced by your mother to at least burst a few crackers on the auspicious occasion. Well, that is definitely not the case when you are a child.
Just like the rest of the days would witness us sneaking secret jars of marbles or cricket balls, around this time of the year too, our entire pocket money was directed towards fire crackers, although the really big ones were forbidden, both by the parents and the shopkeeper.
~
One clear and breezy evening after the school, I was busy making black snakes out of the very popular snake firework pills and like many other children of that age (7-8 years), I hadn’t completely changed out of my school dress. With the shirt tucked out, legs dangling down the platform and face towards the road; I was taking turns to play with either eucalyptus buds scattered on the ground or the snake pills. It was just then I realized someone was sniggering behind me, and….”BAMMM….!!” It was a sudden blasting sound, loud enough to literally send shivers down my spine. I stood stock-still staring around blankly with ringing sensation in ears. Feeling a sharp burning sensation on my lower back and barely able to pull myself together I saw two boys whom I knew as not so friendly twins, laughing and writhing in joy. They ran away saying, “We attached a cracker to the belt loop of your shorts.” To my utter surprise, no one else was there to see what the twins had done. Although it happened right under the nose of the eucalyptus, it was Kikar that stood as a more promising witness. Alas, neither of them could speak for me. The sheer injustice and suddenness of it all welled up inside me so much that I wanted to yell with fury. Not sure whether to chase them or see what the damage is, I finally trundled back home.
Grandma, unsuccessfully trying to pacify me said it’s not as bad as it looks, just a little reddening of the lower back. It was excruciatingly painful. Grandpa was also there, he applied some kind of ointment and told me sternly not to fall in any kind of trouble with those children as their family was not on very good terms with rest of the people in the locality. With the fire of revenge seething inside and discomfort from the burns overpowering my body’s desire to sleep, I went to bed thinking of all the fool-proof ways to give it back to them, after all, the twins were a year or two older than me. The loud noise of that cracker was still causing a buzzing sensation in my ears as I tried to sleep in prone position.
*****
A few days passed by and much to my disappointment there was no development on the twins front, although I had seen them once or twice smiling devilishly in the distance and probably having fun describing their accomplishment to the others. One evening when I saw them playing on a dry sand heap that was unloaded there for construction purposes, as the ebbing sunlight fell on the brooding trees, I set off in the dusk toward the twins. With their backs towards me, it was my clear chance for vengeance in days. And the thing that followed, I would probably never ever do that to the worst of my enemies (if any). Not rationalizing whether it was a right or apt response, it was something that was not at all less cruel than what the twins had done to me. Sizing them up from behind I sneaked up slowly towards the mound where they were playing, and not giving them an opportunity to realize what’s happening I grabbed them by the hair, whirled and bumped their heads into each other. Startled, they started crying, but wait, this was not nearly comparable to bursting crackers on the back of an unsuspecting person. With slaps one after the other, I grabbed both of them by their collars. It turned out they weren’t the big bad guys after all. “Sorry, sorry! Won’t do it again…”, they sobbed in a chorus. My back was still hurting from the burns and I was in no mood this evening to put up with the mindless frenzy of this loathsome duo, ergo they merely increased my sense of grumbling resentment. This is the part I am talking about that could have easily been enough to diagnose me as an IED child.
I took sand in both my hands and stuffed it into all their visible orifices, especially mouth, and gave them a butt-kick each as I was being taken away by some older boys who intervened about time. “How does it feel now?”, I asked the crying twins who were washing their faces from the tap under eucalyptus trees. They ran in opposite direction to their houses as I walked home with a triumphant gait.
It was not an hour since the ordeal that I heard someone shouting at the top of her lungs in an unpleasant shrilly voice. It was the mother of the twins. Hiding behind her, they still had red faces and ears from the beatings that they had just received.
“Your boy has done this to my sons, is this what you teach your children?”, she almost, for the lack of a better term, barked at my mother who had just reached home after a long day of work at her office.
Mom knew that these were the boys who had exploded the fire cracker on my back.
“Do you know the whole story?” Mom asked politely. “These two lit a fire cracker on his back, show her”, mom lifted my shirt as she showed the incompletely healed burns on my back.
Not ready to listen, the lady started shouting again, “Your son put sand in my boys’ eyes and they were both bleeding too”.
Mom looked at me with an angry face.
“They are lying. They weren’t bleeding and I just put a little bit of sand into their mouth”, well, I had my own reasons not to cower down in front of the bullies who were just trying to act like smart-asses.
“Look, sister. They are just children. Fighting today, tomorrow they’ll be playing together. I know it’s his mistake that he did this to your sons but who started it first?”, mom gave a befitting reply.
Curling her lips and still mumbling something inappropriate she left our house with a warning, “If anything happens to my children, you will see what we are capable of doing!”
Mom and Grandma reprimanded me badly, telling me not to do anything of this sort again. Indeed, I never got into any altercations of such violent magnitude after that. But after it was all over, I experienced what I direly wanted to the day since their attack, sleep with a grin on face and dreams of contentment.
*****
After the incident, I don’t recall those two ever trying to trouble anyone in the vicinity again. In fact, we were friends (sort of) for the remaining years that I spent in our village. With a feeling of mingled dread and anger, somewhere inside, the twins couldn’t digest the fact that they were beaten up by a younger child, but probably thought it’s better not to meddle in the activities that involved pestering unsuspecting people.
I was happy and proud enough that I had tackled two of them single-handedly. Only if starting from childhood, all such bullies in life could be handled appropriately, albeit, in a non-violent manner, it would be great. When I’d play by the platform for next few days, Kikar tree would give a hint of a gloating smile, as if only its testimony had helped me get my score even with the twins. Eucalyptus trees, as silent as they always were, never paid significant attention to the whole series of events. Perhaps, like my mother, who sort of knew that children will figure out these things on their own.
I was happy and proud enough that I had tackled two of them single-handedly. Only if starting from childhood, all such bullies in life could be handled appropriately, albeit, in a non-violent manner, it would be great. When I’d play by the platform for next few days, Kikar tree would give a hint of a gloating smile, as if only its testimony had helped me get my score even with the twins. Eucalyptus trees, as silent as they always were, never paid significant attention to the whole series of events. Perhaps, like my mother, who sort of knew that children will figure out these things on their own.
Signing off with these beautiful lines by Shiv Kumar Batalvi on trees. (Translated and slightly paraphrased from his poem Rukh.)
Trees
Some trees are like sons to me,
and some, like mothers.
Some are brides, daughters,
and a few are like brothers.
Some remind me of my grandfather,
sparse and withered.
And some come across as my grandma,
feeding a little bird.
Few of them are like true friends,
I hug them whenever we meet.
One of them is my beloved,
difficult yet sweet .
Some trees I wish I could walk with,
carry them like a child on shoulders.
And few others I wish I could kiss,
and just evaporate from these boulders.
Their tops sway together as the heavy winds blow,
for who knows the mystic language of their leaves.
I hope that in next life, I am reborn as a tree,
My songs would echo from the canvas- an old craftsman weaves.
*****
The Unpatched Jackets 