A Memoir of Trees
Life Around Gulmohars, Bauhinias and Mahoganys
When I was growing up in Rajajinagar, an orthodox neighbourhood in Bangalore that was home to Tamil Iyers and Lingayats and every shade of vegetarian in-between, our family lived in a small one-bedroom flat on the first floor of a greenish-blue building. It overlooked a crossroad junction and in the evenings we would often stand in the long, narrow balcony to catch a bit of breeze and watch passers-by returning from work. In summer, we could survey the entire stretch of the fifth main road with its string of Gulmohars and marvel at its resplendent, fiery canopy in bloom. It was amusing to me that some of the tree branches let themselves into balconies and people didn’t bother to get rid of them. It was a good time to invade the terraces and pluck as many bright-green Gulmohar buds as our pockets could hold. We chose the ones that were large, almost ready to bloom, and then carefully separating each of the sepals adorned them as nails extensions. A few of us upturned our eyelids for additional effect and went chasing unsuspecting, and mostly younger kids on the street to scare them to a shriek. In no time the prank caught on like wildfire and every kid was soon found doing it. It no longer felt exclusive and we looked for something more interesting and more ‘important’ to do.
The landlords of our house who lived downstairs were a well respected and devote Lingayat couple. Shivamma Aunty, always seen with large vibhooti gashes on her forehead every morning, needed flowers for her daily pooje and had made sure she needn’t go very far for it. A Hibiscus shrub with flowers as large as an open palm flourished right within our compound. So did a fragrant Jasmine climber that had arched its way up to the terrace. Its vine appeared as wrinkled and old as the building itself and was perpetually infested with black, bristly caterpillars that kept me away from it. I had however taken to the Hibiscus ever since a friend had let me in on how to carefully dismember the calyx and suck the sticky nectar out. It was an acquired taste, yes, but I soon learnt to like it — I had only to make sure that a few flowers were left untouched for Shivamma’s rituals the next morning.
As one climbed down the red-oxide stairs (or slid down the banister) of our house and entered the street they would first encounter a Bauhinia tree (Basavanapada). We left our bicycles chained to its trunk. With a small horizontal, waist-level gash on its bark we marked our stumps for an evening game of cricket. In spring we plucked out the tender, light-green leaves of Bauhinia, placed it over the left hand shaped as if holding an imaginary cone, and slammed on it with the other hand to create a loud snapping sound!
My elder brother Lokesh, in spite of all the sibling rivalry between us, surprisingly taught me a good thing or two. He let me in on the location of a Peacock Flower tree (Ceasalpinia pulcherrima), on 6th Main Road, whose tender seeds were deemed edible. Together we brought down supple branches of the tree with their beautiful red-orange flowers, and stripped the pods open to munch on the peas. Among other edible things he showed me that the incongruously coloured white and yellow petal of the Gulmohar (the ‘standard’ petal), was worth consuming. I remember that it tasted sour and made my face scrunch. The stamens of the flower came of use as weapons in a miniature game of combat. We interlocked the anthers and tugged on it until one of them fell off. Nobody played fair; they weren’t supposed to.
Lokesh took me on his black Avon bicycle (I sat on the crossbar) to teach me swimming at the public pool at Sadashivanagar. The lessons were nothing short of disaster since it became clear that he derived sadistic pleasure by watching me flap helplessly, having convinced me to get in from the 15 ft end of the pool. I survived to tell the tale, and mom would never let me go near the pool again. However on the way back from the pool, brother used to stop by a Cannonball Tree on 17th Cross Malleshwaram and I was totally fascinated by its flowers — the Nagalingam Pushpam shaped like a thousand headed serpent arching over a lingam — sort of a miniature version of the mythological spectacle. I nestled two of them delicately between my palms and brought them home for mom who quickly consigned them to the Pooja room.
Back in the early 90s, residential buildings were modest and rarely rose above the second floor. And most of them had an open terrace. I spent a lot of time on ours, after school, wading in the overhead tank when the water level was knee-deep or less. A frond or two of neighbour Nagaratnamma’s coconut tree always hung over our terrace. I used to pull out the leaflets and fashion wristwatches and snakes with long whiskers out of the blades. Nagaratnamma was in love with the pair of coconut trees in her backyard. Every evening she diligently roped out stainless-steel pots of water from the well (where I often launched the fishes that were caught at Sankey Tank) and watered them for at least an hour. Once in a few months, the friendly coconut reaper Krishnappa was called in to bring down the ripe ones and we witnessed the spectacle of his dexterity from our balconies, in awe. We secretly hoped we would be given a few nuts when the exercise was over, but that never happened.
Going anywhere near a Neerukai Mara (African Tulip Tree) was best avoided when we wore white. On certain Saturdays after school, I used to journey down to my friend Mallikarjuna’s house at Geleyara Balaga in Nandini Layout, which in those days seemed like the end of the city. Somewhere along the way, near the GD Naidu Hall, my classmates often engaged in a duel under a Neerukai Mara, spraying each other liquid jets from the buds gathered. It seemed like a whole lot of fun until we noticed stains on our shirts.
Mallikarjuna’s family was genuinely affectionate and was happy to see me every time I visited them. Their house was modest, occupied a corner of the plot and the rest was a dense garden with plenty of flowering plants. I had spotted plenty of sunbirds and wagtails there and for the first time saw the intricately woven nest of a tailorbird’s. His house was the very last one on a yet-to-be-asphalted street, after which it opened out as a barren, undulating land that extended far and wide. Towards west, a silhouette of a huge Banyan tree stood permanently fixed in the horizon and we fancied visiting it one day just to check how far — and how big — it really was. So after much deliberation and copious amount of lies we embarked on an expedition one Saturday. After many hurdles that included crossing a massive sewer we eventually trekked our way up till the tree. It turned out to be really humongous, encircled by generously large granite katte but we just didn’t have enough time to soak in our conquest. It was getting dark and I had yet to get back home.
Shubhakar was another whose friendship I immensely cherished. He was a year or two older to me, tall and bossy, always brimming with ideas and had the last word when decisions were to be made. On his orders we went collecting pods of the Raintree on the 80 ft. Road (now Dr.Rajkumar Road) that weren’t yet crushed under the wheels of passing traffic. Later on his terrace we gathered to deseed and beat them into a pulp, greasing our palms with castor oil to prevent the mess from sticking. I still remember the acrid smell that our hands would reek of for at least a week afterwards. Once the pulp was of a desirable consistency we would shape it into balls and left them out in the sun to dry. A few days later we had new ‘cork’ balls to play cricket with!
Within our school compound, sharing the space with the Gulmohars was the ‘helicopter tree’, a Mahogany. The seeds spiralled down from the skies and sometimes interrupted prayer sessions in the morning causing a mild riot of giggles. It was a proud moment when some found a big, unruffled specimen and they simply didn’t miss the opportunity to show it off. Climbing trees was a favourite after-lunch activity at school. It was a rite of passage that was immensely savoured and never to be forgotten.
First published in The New Indian Express, 5th February 2015.
