Mango tree

 

Since I’ve indulged too much in these talks of gloom and doom as of late, I thought I should share something nice for a change. Well, this is a bit sad too, but in a pleasant way, the kind of sadness you’d feel looking at old school photographs. Anyways, I figured I’d talk about a certain mango tree.

Mind you, this is no ordinary mango tree, this is a great big mango tree—greater and bigger than any other mango tree you and I have ever seen. Imagine a trunk like the baobab, roots like a banyan, spreading farther than the mightiest oaks and reaching heights rivalling that of a sequoia. You might be thinking this is a gross exaggeration, and you’re absolutely right, but put yourself in the shoes of five-year-old me, and this would seem an understatement.

The tree stood in the front yard just beside the gate of my grandparents’ house in a lesser-known part of Trivandrum. It stretched up and above the whole house, putting the yard in its gentle shade, with its lowest branches close enough to the ground to climb with ease, and its highest branches at perfect mango-picking levels from the roof of the house. It housed more species of critters, animals, and birds than I have seen in my collective years of city life and bore more fruit each summer than any family could manage to eat alone.

The house itself was one-storied with too many rooms to count and ambiguous purposes for each of them. You would enter into what I suppose is the living room, which served the purpose of housing the short-term guests who came in for a quick chat and tea and were not important enough to invite inside for lunch. This room also served as the designated newspaper-reading cum Facebook-scrolling place for my grandfather, where he’d spend most of his day watching the front gate through the windows for the intruders who he was sure were waiting for him to slip up.

To the left of the living room was the “office room,” which apparently used to be where my great-grandfather used to work from, and has hence been demoted to a room of old documents and toys, which doubles as my bedroom when there are too many people in the house.

The living room leads to a corridor, on each side of which is a bedroom: the left one for when me or my aunts come to visit with their families, and the right one is what my grandparents use. My grandparents’ bedroom has a hazy mirror with a dressing table, a computer table which I’m sceptical has ever seen a computer, and a puja room attached, which my grandma religiously sits and prays in every evening, forcing me to join her whenever I’m present.

The corridor has a little downwards step, which I have tripped on too many times to recall, leading to the dining room, which has a reclining sofa alternatively used by my grandma and grandpa to watch TV for soap operas and evening news, respectively. Beside the TV is a huge dining table and a kitchen with a wood-fired stove and packed pantry as big as a New York City apartment.

Not to forget, there is also a bedroom to the left of the dining room where my grandpa sleeps when he needs some alone time, a man cave of sorts I suppose, and a little beyond that is the laundry room, which I’m told used to be a study for my aunt, till toddler me broke down the door while she was preparing for her bank test.

Lastly, between the ceiling and the clay-tiled roof is an attic I have never been to, partly because it houses a delightful family of mongoose who ensure the property is free of any snakes. I’ve been told half my old toys are up there, and half are inside the well outside in the backyard, as I seemingly had a habit of disposing of toys in there, presumably in hopes of getting newer and better ones.

I feel like I’ve steered off the topic of the mango tree for a bit, but it seemed important to provide a good idea of the whole layout. One of my many complaints with the lazy making of the English language is that it doesn’t have unique words for fruiting trees; for example, a tree that grows mangoes is simply called a mango tree. In Malayalam, a mango is called a “manga,” and a mango tree is called a “maav”; this kind of distinction provides the tree itself a character of its own besides the fact that it bears fruit, which I quite like.

I feel more attachment to this maav than I have with most people, not because I spent a lot of time in and around it, but perhaps it symbolises my hometown for me, and for most of my family too, I think. I’ve seen old black-and-white pictures of my grandma, distant aunts and uncles, my mom, all playing on the same old branches, somehow united across time and space by this piece of wood. In my most recent visit, a little tire was tied to a branch for my little nieces to swing on.

Well, you knew there was a sad part coming, which is probably why I chose to write this in the first place. The old house isn’t there anymore; my aunt decided to renovate it into a two-floored, modern-looking box with lights that turn on from your phone and a ceiling that doesn't leak every monsoon. The line of coconuts in the front yard is replaced by a much more fashionable little garden, and the backyard doesn’t have the abundance of jackfruits and bananas it did before. The little stones in the driveway have been replaced with tiles that don’t blister your feet, and the old well has been covered up along with the toys in it.

The municipal commission decided that the best use of their limited resources would be to widen the small little road with negligible traffic that runs in front of the house. And in doing so, all houses on the road must push back their front walls a couple of feet to accommodate the road. My great-grandfather must not have been a man of great foresight, for he did not take this into account when planting the mango tree, because according to the current road plans, the tree comes onto the road and thus must be chopped down.

The old facade and gate were broken down a couple of weeks ago; a new wall was made. The tree is now out on the road, and the tree-cutting crew should be here any day. It’s quite an old tree, but it gave just as many mangoes this year as I remember it ever giving, but perhaps its time had come, and no amount of mangoes can save you from that. Pity, though; I never did enjoy the store-bought mangoes very much. Goodbye, little maav.