The tree of love

It is always a disturbing sight to see our city, after the main festivals, littered with heaps of severed stumps of tender Plantain plants and withered flowers used liberally for decorating the places of worship. One cannot help wondering whether it is really essential to raze down so many tender plants, depriving them of their right to yield fruits and leaves in the course of their normal life, just for ornamental purposes, soon reducing them to mere stinking garbage.

I have been fortunate enough to acquire a good number of friends from various regions of India in the course of my long service in the steel industry. Among them, my thoughts always rivet on my good old Bengali chum, Chandan Das, whenever I happen to see atrocity perpetrated on nature’s greenery like the one mentioned above. Like most Bengalis who are, generally, highly sentimental and sensitive to finer aspects of life, I found Das one notch above others I knew in this respect. Over half a century ago, when we were living in the same sector of our Steel Township, Das had brought a highbred Gulmohar sapling from his hometown Calcutta which he carefully planted in the vast vacant field right in front of his quarters.

Undeterred by the snide remarks of several young colleagues of our sector, who didn’t miss a chance to take pot-shots at him for doing something which was meant to be done by the township department, Das ardently nurtured the plant, as if it were his own off-spring, by erecting a protective fencing around the plant and unfailingly watering it. The Das couple, incidentally, did not have off-spring of their own while their peers in the locality were progressively blessed with additions to their families.

With the passage of time, the residents of this sector moved over to different sectors with bigger housing quarters commensurate with their ranks following promotions. Das, however, chose to remain in the same house, despite his fast elevation to higher positions - simply because he didn’t want to be away from the Gulmohar tree, his inseparable companion, which had grown into a gigantic one by then, splashing the premises with all the splendour of its abundant bright-coloured flowers and harbouring birds of several species.

It was a common, though unusual, sight to see Das relaxing in his easy chair under this tree, engrossed in reading a book on hot summer evenings, totally oblivious to his surroundings.

Both Das and I retired from service almost at the same time over three decades ago. Although we have settled down in different cities we are in regular touch with each other, sharing the vicissitudes of our lives during which he invariably mentions his tree about which he manages to get regular information. Last week I received a call from him from Kolkata telling me that he would be visiting Bhilai next week to greet his tree on its 50th birthday! I couldn’t miss the sublime joy in his voice when he said it.

As I wished him well, a voice within me spoke: “Love, indeed, is a many-splendoured thing!”