I look down lazily at a lady in red dhoti which has been dulled with dust. “Yes?”
“Is the guava tree yours?” she asks.[break]
I nod, expecting what will come next, and yet I am surprised when she speaks. “Could you please sell us some?” she is polite, “We’re digging in the next field and they look so luscious.”
I look at her. She could have been my sanima¸ my phupu, a hard-working lady who is naturally tempted by the succulent guavas in our backyard.
“Oh no, we don’t sell,” I reply, blushing a little. “But I could give you some.”
Buwa is so pleased by the uncharacteristic civility that he instructs me to give her four, and I clamber up the tree and hand down the ones that she points to. “Give me green ones,” she says,
“I love them when they are crunchy.”
She leaves gratified, and I pluck some for buwa too, who asks for salt-and-chili to go with it.
***
Having trees in the backyard brings happiness; that much I know. Even though I can recognize barely 10 plants in the world and have never planted anything other than runner beans as a science experiment in primary school, greenery does make me as joyful as anyone else. So, when I look upon the peach and pear and avocado and banana dotting the backyard, particularly when they begin blossoming in a burst of pink and white and red, it even turns me poetic.
But poetry is not the only thing that trees beckon to. Over the years, we have learnt that there are plenty, plenty more – and not all of them can be welcomed. Barely a week before the thoughtful lady described above, I was having my midday nap when I was roused by a swishing sound. I dashed to the verandah and looked down at two women, poking at the branches with a stick.
“What are you doing?” I tried to remain calm, hollering at elders not being an option.
“We’re trying to bring down guavas, they just don’t fall,” she replied without a pause in action.
When ama arrived and persuaded them that such irreverent poking would harm other guavas, they laughed, “Oh, we didn’t know of that…” and continued prodding for all they were worth.
At least these people stayed outside the walls. Many times I have had to yell at mothers who push their children up to the roof of the outhouse, where it is easy to get at the fruit; or fathers who balance their children on their shoulders and instruct them to pull at this branch or that. These are normal occurrences, though it is a bother to go and make faces at people every time they approach the tree. Buwa helps by sending messages like “See if guava thieves have come” at intervals.
There are other fruits in the garden, but none of them obsess me as much as guavas. They remind me of the jampandu of Hyderabad and ambak of Jhapa that I devoured in my childhood and which gave me many a stomach cramps. So other fruits may blossom and wither and may be pecked at by crows, but guavas I guard zealously. It does not help that they choose to ripen at almost exactly the same time as dashain, when kids have their holidays and long-lost acquaintances choose to visit our home in hordes.
Raids from kids are to be expected – after all, which children can restrain themselves when they see yellow and light green guavas drooping down from over-laden branches?
They come from far and near, they come singly and in groups, sometimes in hiding, other times openly flaunting. I can almost hear their conversation as they skip home from school, “Shall we make a detour at the house which has the guava tree? There’s no one there except one Medusa, and she can’t do anything else than yell at us a bit.” Everyone agrees, and they come rushing up, flinging stones in the delicious hope that a guava will come tumbling down in their hands.
Kids I can deal with, it is more the grownups that bother me. Once, I saw with horror two burly men sitting atop the outhouse, munching calmly on guavas. When they saw me, they took a last bite out of their fruits and climbed down to the other side, walking away amidst laughs. Many of them pull so ruthlessly at the branches that they snap and break, leaving only a pitiable emptiness in the place where ten guavas dangled merrily a while ago.
And then there are the insatiable ones. “Wow, what lovely guavas,” they will say, looking out of the kitchen. I agree, pleased at my tree being praised. I offer them the ripe ones, for I love the feeling of contentment when friends and neighbors can be given a share of our bountiful crop. But no, there are some people for whom a guava or two is never enough. They must climb up themselves, must pluck every fruit they can reach, even though a guava might still be a dark, dark green baby. They will just taste one tiny bit, say, “Oh, this one is unripe/bitter/hard,” and fling it away carelessly, while I mentally wring my hands and stop trying to imagine what a big, juicy one it would have turned to.
***
There are plenty from the animal kingdom who demand their share too. Birds, of course, peck at the fruits all day, and then come to rest outside our doors at night. Six, seven, sometimes eight of them. Every morning, there is a jumble of feathers and bird droppings littering the floor. Before it is dark, the birds will have retired to their abode, cooing and chirruping and cheeping as is their wont. We grumble about the mess and noise they make, but if they are late by ten minutes, buwa will look out anxiously and say, “Why aren’t the cheruwas here yet?”
There are mice digging holes all over the soft earth, and a mongoose or two. Frogs are in plenty, and I saw squirrels a couple of times. But the most surprising visitor was a lengthy snake, dangling effortlessly from the telephone cable outside the window, which it was politely tapping, as if asking to be let inside. I stood frozen in dramatic horror, as buwa came up beside me.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ve seen more than five hundred snakes in my life.” I know, but I am the girl who has seen only four, and they were all securely encased inside the glass cases of the zoo.
Ama came running at the commotion, took a brief look and counseled, “The sons of a tiger and a snake don’t remain in the same place for more than a day.” How sexist, I wanted to say, but she had already rushed back to her favorite daily soap involving a tight-lipped businessman who looks ugly when he smiles and a Punjabi girl who looks ravishing at all times.
Bina, my fiery cousin, exclai-med “What a beautifully patterned snake!” Yes, it would only fascinate her, who has grown up in the plains and whose mattress a snake had once sneaked into.
***
After every fiasco of this sort, my parents tend to soothe me. “We’ll cut down the trees,” they say. “Don’t worry.”
And as I nod and smile at this latest reassurance, I know that these trees will never be cut down, birds will never be shooed away, snakes will never be screamed at. Blossoms and feathers will continue to spice all my days.
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