THE GUAVA TREE

“Turn wheresoe’er I may,

  By night or day,

 The things which I have seen I now can see no more.”- William Wordsworth

I remember (echoes from Thomas Hood) the little guava tree that grew on one side, or rather one corner of the house, between the lawn and the extreme end of the bungalow. It stood just outside the window of the guest room. This was the earliest house I remember growing up in- 11, Sunset Avenue, Chittaranjan . Yes, of the Locomotives Works fame. Beyond the pebbled driveway and the front gate was the last street in the colony and beyond the road just open fields. The street, lined by the tall devdaru trees(Indian Mast trees), was the kind you read about in books- quiet, peaceful, no traffic, at the most a few tribal women passing by or a couple of cyclists. If you walked across those fields, which we often did to catch tiny fish with “gamchhas” which served as miniature nets in the many little ponds and streams sprinkled all over, you could see at a distance where Bengal merged into Bihar. As the name suggests this street had the most glorious view of the sunset every evening. With one master stroke the sky in front would change from blue or grey into myriad hues!

This tree stood all alone, separated from its brethren who were all on the other end of the bungalow in a little orchard of ten or twelve guava trees. This one was a little different, not very big and bore the most awesome guavas I have ever tasted in my life…small, light green outside, soft and strawberry pink inside, almost seedless and oh so very sweet! Its other cousins bore very big, round guavas, may be they were pulpier, bigger and juicier but, in my honest opinion, came nowhere close to this one.  All around the lawn grew beds of season flowers… petunias, pansies, asters, chrysanthemums, carnations, phlox, antirrhinums, dahlias, gerberas, zinnias and of course my father’s pets, the roses. There were so many of them- Black Prince, Montezuma, Papa Meilland, Peace, the Floribundas … maroon that almost verged on black, orange, amber, cream, white, pink. They were the loves of his life! He knew how to grow them, care for them, knew everyone of them by name. The pains he took to get all his plants, seeds, books and other garden accessories from Suttons! He may not have promised us rose gardens but he sure gave us one! The guava tree stood right on the edge of this lawn in one corner between our home and Gulistan.

About five or six feet from the ground the tree branched into a neat Y and for a six or seven year old this nook between the two arms provided the perfect seat for a recliner. There I would spend many a lazy afternoon biting into a semi-ripe guava or playing a game in my own little fantasy land. Sometimes I was the princess imprisoned up there in the tower letting my hair down (usually a towel), sometimes the sailor in a ship who on sighting a strip of land was crying out ‘Ahoy’! Yes, those afternoons belonged to me… “that was when I ruled the world….” The garden, the fruit orchard, the courtyard behind the L-shaped bungalow (which had been converted into a badminton court), the long verandah, the hencoops, the raised ‘plateau’ behind the house where the vegetables grew, the outhouses where most of my companions lived (they would have to change roles from the Prince to the ship mates depending upon the scene being enacted), all belonged to me.

Then came the season for the guava jam … cutting, peeling, stirring and straining till all the bottles, jars, cans in the house were filled with this mouth-watering, divinely sweet, translucent reddish jam. There was so much of excitement and activity in the house for a few days, almost like a picnic. My Aunt, who once visited us around this time, kept telling my mother to hurry up with the stirring and bring down the huge vessel from the fire before one of the kids, who had gathered there and were taking turns in peering into it, fell inside!

Then there were the guava eating competition we kids had amongst ourselves. Once I had fourteen of them one afternoon and at night had to be rushed to the nearest hospital, which was in Asansol, with a severe tummy ache and lot of vomiting. Anyway, soon the doctors realized, after wriggling the truth out of me, that it was not a case of appendicitis, as the local physician had suspected, but behind all the rumbling, tumbling, growling were undigested seeds of the fourteen guavas which had been consumed with so much of enthusiasm and relish not too long ago. On my way to the hospital in the ambulance everyone had been very sympathetic. However, the same cannot be said about the return journey by car. The verbal lashing I got from one of the neighbourhood Aunties, who had volunteered to accompany us to the hospital, is best left unsaid!!The humiliation was so severe that I still fear to swallow guava seeds to this day!!

The night before Saraswati  Puja, my father kept vigil over his paradise along with his Man Friday, Bhola, whom I have already introduced in my earlier blog. My father had no problems if someone asked him for some flowers. In fact, he would allow the Santhal women, who went to work singing and dancing, to enter the gates and pick flowers, fruits, twigs or dry leaves since they always took permission and never trespassed. But he had a major problem with the local boys who came from the neighbouring areas to steal flowers at night for the next morning’s puja. And he knew his garden flaunted the most prized roses, dahlias and chrysanthemums. On one such night we were woken up to a lot of commotion outside. Chor! Chor! Yes, they usually chose to strike just before daybreak! Anticipating a lot of action, we all gathered on the verandah in the wee hours of the morning of one Saraswati Puja…the eastern sky was already resplendent in all shades of pink and coral. The focus was my favourite haunt- the little guava tree. There was a thin skeletal figure in rags sliding down the trunk of the tree.  As luck would have it, it all ended in a big anti-climax. He was just a poor beggar who had chosen the protection of our garage that night to protect himself from the cold. He had been doing that for a week or so. He was so thin and frail and insignificant that no one had noticed him earlier. That fateful night, unable to resist the temptation of those guavas hanging from the trees, he had chosen to pick a few and find his way out before the break of dawn. Unfortunately, he did not know that it was the night of my father’s annual vigil. Out fell a dozen of those guavas from his tattered loin cloth. Anyway, as was expected, my father let him scoot with his loot and we were ordered back to bed. The fellow was lucky he had no taste for flowers, especially roses!!

I can just go on and on…woh kagaz ki kashti woh barish ka pani …The guava tree stood witness to all my escapades, my fantasies, my tears, my joys and sorrows. Under it I would shed big tears as I waited for my Baba to return from office to report to him how my mom that afternoon had banged my head against the table and even show the lump on my forehead as proof. My otherwise mild father could be very stern with people who believed in corporal punishment!! It was my retreat in bad times, my safe haven when I needed to escape. From sailing little boats in puddles formed during the rains under its branches, idling on a makeshift swing hung from one of its branches or simply enjoying a picnic with my playmates cooking khichdi on a toy stove under its shade.

As with everything in this world, we have to let go and what remains with us is just the memory. As the years rolled by, we moved on to bigger and bigger cities and smaller and smaller apartments. From my seventeenth floor apartment windows I still see the sunrise, the sunset, the rain, the storm, the gulmohar trees in full bloom but as if on a canvas or a photograph…I can see them all but I cannot touch, feel or smell anything . My little guava tree is gone forever.

DS