At Home. Kerala.
A Personal Essay
Of the two genealogical branches that created my siblings and me, there is one that is characterised by impatience, restlessness and a raw, roiling anger that burns slowly, but incinerates.
On the flip side, is a compassion and love of all things natural and green. These are the characteristics that have been bequeathed to me, on the paternal side. And my fingers, thanks to the grace of God, are green, like my father’s.
So my father forgets that he is old and incapable of heavy physical work. He forgets that though his spirit is willing, the physique is weak. He hates asking for help, so he tries to do things himself. Lifting up the fifteen-kg water tank cover to see whether there’s water in it, reaching out to his full height and chopping at the banana leaf with the billhook, sweeping up dried leaves into a pile…
The pain hits him, and he collapses. My brother is at home, keeping a stern eye on his progenitor. He strolls out into the farm and sees him lying on the ground…
The next time, he is in his beloved garden-farm again. He decides to light a fire beneath the pile of leaves. But he will not move from there, as the fire burns, because he needs to see in which direction the wind blows, so that he can put out the fire quickly, if necessary. He stands there and breathes in all the smoke. Then he puts out the fire and stumbles home.
This time, when Om, my brother, sees him, he is leaning to one side in the chair he was sitting in. No pulse, no heartbeat, eyes still. Om knows CPR, so he does that, and slowly, agonisingly slowly, a pulse begins. “I thought he had gone,” he told my sister and me, when we went down to Kerala, “ and he shivers with remembered horror. That was a heart attack. A massive one.
But my father is as ornery as they come. He fought back with everything he had, and when my sister and I finally met him, he was weak and frail, but still grinning.
Everyone of these trees and plants he personally planted, or supervised the planting of. The pit in which we put in all the kitchen waste, cover, allow to decompose and use as natural, potent fertiliser, is also his brainchild.
My sister-in-law, a surgeon, comes home from the hospital, and rushes into the garden. She prunes, plants, and persuades the plants to grow. Eggshells and onion skins are carefully buried around rose plant roots. What my father cannot do, she does. Their love for these plants and trees, is fierce and passionate.
Hibiscus and blue-pea flowers go into creating tisanes. Freshly picked curry leaves and green chillies go into food. So do raw papaya, jackfruit and amaranth leaves. A sprig of tulsi leaves and a new-harvested piece of ginger root chewed slowly along with three peppercorns, so that the juice runs down the throat, is an effective cure for any colds, or sore throat.
My father tells me all these as we walk slowly around the garden, he with a stick, I trying to smile through my tears, as I remember how swiftly he once walked.
But in his old rheumy eyes and the grin that lights up his face, is a love and a light that reflects back from the trees and the leaves and the soil they grow on.
And if this is not immortality, what is?
ⓒ 2022 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
