In the sixties, when tough tenancy laws threatened the family’s idyllic life in Kerala, my neighbour came away to Bangalore at the age of twenty two. Cutting his losses? Heeding elders’ advice? What clinched the decision?


One does not know. In memory of his home surrounded by an estate of a garden, he brought the seeds, planted them and raised a jack fruit tree behind his new home.

The tree is now a giant in the backyard; occupying all available space. It is my neighbour’s well loved companion. Come March, spiny fruits hang from the stout branches, the enormous trunk and its base; at least fifty of them in that one tree, growing bigger all the time.

Neighbourhood house and apartment dwellers cast appreciative glances. Broad hints and direct requests for at least one fruit are put in by scores of us. This tree’s fruits are special in flavour and taste. Milkmen, plumbers, carpenters, meter readers, every regular visitor to the neighbourhood has a claim on the yield.

Past sixty now, my neighbour’s digestion is not what it used to be. The cool climes of Bangalore, so different from hot and humid Kerala has taken its toll.

Back in Kerala, he could eat a whole fruit in a day, besides tucking in the cooked seeds in assorted preparations like “avial”. The taste of the unripe “Chakka”, cooked as a vegetable with generous sprinkling of grated coconut and dollaps of coconut oil still lingers in memory. Today eating more than two slivers of the fruit is inviting trouble.
All year long, he slaves over his lovely tree, raking the mountains of fallen leaves and disposing them off; pruning the wayward branches, bringing down the ripe fruits before they became over ripe and distributing them.

So far, he has guarded the tree from predatory glances of the timber merchant and the real estate shark. After all it is his last link to his native land.