When I think of trees, the thing that comes to mind first is when I was in third-fourth standard. The lifestyle was—go to school, come back for lunch around one-thirty, have lunch, do your studies till about four o’clock and then go out to play for two hours. My mother was very strict. We had to be back home by six. Then wash your hands, sit for some studies … brushing up … eight o’clock dinner and off to sleep. And of course, since we are talking about memories, we must understand that there was no technology. There was just one main road where the bus would ply to Margao once in one-and-a-half or two hours. 

Now there was this particular household in our neighbourhood, which had a lot of children. We used to go to their house to play because we used to get a lot of company. In order to play a game, you require members, and they had the most number of family members! So, me and my brother would go there to play. Similarly some two other guys would come from some other house. In their house they had a lot of plants and different kinds of trees. One of the trees was this mango tree with a peculiar shape: it rose up two-and-a-half metres and then there was a big horizontal branch, which again went up vertically and there was a lot of foliage. So, that horizontal branch was our target. We used to climb up to that branch and sit there and swing our legs and chat and eat groundnuts and crack jokes. I have forgotten the jokes but I remember the branch. Sometimes we used to tie ropes from the branch and swing. So, that is the first tree I remember. A few years back, the household divided the land and the tree came in between so they had to cut it. It’s gone now.

The next tree I recall is when I was about eight or nine years old. During those times there existed a pond in our village which was like a small reservoir, a water-harvesting water body that was about a hundred metres from our house. After the rains the pond would be full. There was no washing machine or bai in our house; my mother used to do all the household work. Many ladies would go to the pond to wash clothes, because at home they would have to pull the water from the well, fill the bucket, and they could do away with all that exercise. Once or twice a week my mother used to go to the pond with a bucket full of clothes. I used to hang around with her on these trips. She would plonk her bucket next to the pond and do her washing. I would sit around, pick up stones and throw them into the pond. Now, right at the edge of the pond there was a tree and it had big roots which were a little exposed. Once I went and sat on those roots. I was wearing a chaddhi, that typical thing with vertical stripes. After some time, I got an an unbearable itch in my, you know, private parts. I couldn’t bear it. I started jumping and crying. My mother came running and asked me what happened. I told her it is itching here and here and here. She immediately told me to get up from there. She rushed home with me and asked my grandmother what to do, who said dip it in milk. So, you know, I got the milk treatment for my you know what. Finally, I felt better after three-four hours. Then my mother told me that the tree on which I was sitting was a Beboy, a particular kind of tree that grows quite tall and which some people are allergic to. From that time, I tell you, I never even hovered near that tree!

Another tree that I remember is a banyan tree that was part of our neighbourhood. It had quite a large canopy. It had those long hanging roots. We used to jump on those roots and we would take long swings from them, jumping from root to root like monkeys. And we used to fall down also, but the tree had soft mud under it.

Then I remember a particular cashew tree. See, there was a reservoir in our village. It was maybe ten metres in diameter. Right on the edge of it there was this particular cashew tree that grew in a slanting way and its foliage and branches just covered the pond. One day, when it was cashew season, four-five of us spotted cashew fruit ripe for plucking on this tree. So now we had to get them. I said, I’ll go. Everyone said, you might fall down. I said no-no-no-no, don’t worry. So, I went up, climbed along a horizontal branch. Now the fruit, usually grow right on the thinnest branch. I couldn’t get at the fruit and I had to catch some leaves and bend the branch slowly. I did that slowly, getting the fruit closer and closer. As I was doing that, I got the fruit in one hand, holding the leaves in the other hand, and I fell down straight … dubuk! … straight into the pond. I had a leaf in one hand and the fruit in the other. I got a big scolding and a beating from my mother.

I am very attached to my mother, you know, although I don’t speak to her much or interact with her much in my later age. But when I was a child, I used to be very attached because I used to see her working hard. I wanted to make her happy. I never used to leave any opportunity to bring a smile to her face. This particular flower, vonvdan, is very fragrant and I knew she liked it very much. There were three-four trees with these flowers in our neighbourhood. But, again, a particular tree will have flowers with a better fragrance, another will have flowers that look better. When they are taaza, the whole thing looks very beautiful. I used to go sometimes, early in the morning when all the flowers had fallen on the ground. These are big trees with thick trunks. So, early in the morning it would be all white under the tree. Whenever there was no school … Saturday or Sunday…I would pick up the fresh flowers and make a garland to give to my mother. First, I would take a palm leaf and split it into a thin fibre and then pass the flowers through that…tik-tik-tik…and then tie it up and the garland would be ready.

What happened is, one fine day, I got up early in the morning and took a small steel utensil to get the flowers. I must have been ten years old. I went to the tree and crouched and slowly, as I am picking up the flowers, I see something about five inches thick. It was the curve of a snake’s coil. There were lots of dried leaves and flowers all around and I was crouching and busy picking up the best flowers. That was the time I understood the meaning of the phrase ‘fear gave me wings’ … zzzup!  I was gone! It seemed the snake was sleeping under the leaves in the cold morning and it did not hear me because I was treading softly so that I don’t damage the flowers.

Those are the trees I remember.