There’s a tree in my backyard, a mango tree, that goes back to the memory of another tree in Kerala. I didn’t realise why I was so attached to the tree till it fell. 

There was a storm in 2021, a cyclone actually, in March or April, and a lot of trees were uprooted. The mango tree in our backyard in Dona Paula fell. It was an old tree and it spanned the entire length of the garden. And what mangoes it gave! I grew up in Lucknow, and I had lots of mangoes, but this tree was the famous Goan  mankurad variety and whoever ate its mangoes said it was undeniably nothing like they’d ever eaten. Of course, it would fruit every alternate year, but even in a year when it didn’t go ‘full capacity’ it would give us about five hundred mangoes. Good years meant two-thousand mangoes, or so.

There’s something about the way these mango trees are, the way they sprawl; it’s like a full city, or a whole structure of its own, like a house. I was very fond of this tree, but I didn’t realise how much till it got ripped out. And I saw it happen right in front of my eyes. It was midday when it happened. It just broke my heart to see it go. It was a visceral feeling. Now, you do feel sad when trees fall and things happen to them, but this was different. I could feel it right through my body. A wrenching like no other. It’s something that went right to the pit of my being. And then we were looking at the devastation for a couple of days. I would even get up at nights and look at it. I felt a very strong, clear-cut and definite communication from the tree. It said clearly, ‘It’s not my time to leave you as yet. I need to be here with you.’ 

I had no idea what to do with such a huge tree that’s been ripped out, so we started asking friends and people. We put it on Facebook. A whole lot of people had different solutions and the consensus was that if we were attempting to replant it then we would have to prune the tree to nearly less than half of its canopy. Then we called the fire department. That was probably the busiest time for them, but they came and they pruned it in half, and we had a lot of wood. And even that wood, it was very clear that it was not to go as firewood for some reason. We got a crane to lift the tree. We had, meanwhile, dug the earth and gotten all the stuff that was needed to help it survive the replanting. We painted the roots with some chemical that an agriculturist friend had told us to do. Once it was replanted, there was a sense of relief, but it was more than that. My husband, Jack, and I felt restored once she was there. We felt that things are as they should be. And then there were all these branches of different sizes all over the place. I went about sorting them.

Around this time, there was a furore about the three linear projects through the Mollem forests. I was part of a residency called Mandalas for Mollem. As part of that residency, we were thinking of creating spirit dolls. These are medicine dolls that bring about a certain feeling, some would call them voodoo dolls, some would call them guardian spirits…different things across different cultures, but the whole thing is that there is a spirit doll which has healing properties. 

I went about making things with the remains of the tree as part of my residency. Again, I got very clear instructions from…I don’t know what, it was just a very organic thing. I just picked up one branch, and then with the help of Bhakto, my partner in the garden, we started tying them together. I wanted to make seven matrikas, or guardian goddesses. Each of these matrikas formed themselves from those branches. There was an immediate, very electric presence that I could feel from them. Then I started adorning them with different things, weaving something on one, using mother-of-pearl oyster shells on another. Even in this process, I felt a sisterhood. I was also going through an emotional crisis at that point of time. The strength that I got from their presence, there is no other word to describe it other than a sisterhood.

I’m a single child, and it almost felt like she had given me sisters to take me through this patch, which was very, very difficult. Then the matrikas started living with us. They were in the house, in the living room and the bedroom. Here, there, they were all over the house. And they’re big, wide-limbed, human size figures! 

And then a new thing started. I would wake up around 3 am every day and work on them. If anyone was watching, it would spook them out, because I’d go stand next to a matrika and feel what she had to say. It was like how you go to your mother and put your head on her—I don’t know what to do next kind of thing. So, I’d do that. Go stand near her. And then I would start working. The whole porch was turned into a studio. Somehow, I felt a lot of feminine energy and sisterhood.

Later, I wanted to have a consecration ritual for them. I did the ritual with some friends in Donna Paula, under a big banyan tree. I was strongly asked to call two friends Gautam Nima and Pushpanjali Sharma to be part of that ritual. There was this part in our ritual in which Pushpanjali pours water. Normally you would expect water to spread amorphously, but on this particular occasion it formed an inverted triangle. That gave us goosebumps. That was a moment when we felt her presence. She was part of this ritual.

Interestingly, we happen to have in Kerala, in front of my ancestral home, another sprawling mango tree. My house in Kerala is 200 years old and this tree is probably thereabouts, or possibly older. It’s called the muthassi maav, which means grandmother mango tree. A spectacular tree that sprawls all over. It’s got so much growing on it and under it and around it. For me that, more than my house, always felt like home. You know when something lights up inside you when you see it. And it struck me that this tree in Goa looked very much like that tree. For me, the tree was an anchor in this place that I’d come to.

Another tree to recall is one that I had gone to with my friend Priyal. She took me to this banyan tree which is gorgeous, and I can see why so many people go there. It’s a really large banyan tree in Arambol. Its canopy nearly touches the ground. You go inside and it’ like you’re in a cave. 

We had parked at a distance, maybe a kilometre or more, and we were just walking towards the tree. And from about half a kilometre away, I could start feeling its presence. It started at my core. It was a very strong pulse, a magnetic pull that I could feel. What’s this, I wondered. I’ve never experienced something like this. And then we enter and go inside. It’s just another world inside the canopy.  And the feeling that was there, it went from the core, to the solar plexus, to the heart to the throat and to the top of the head. It did the entire range!

We spent about an hour under the tree. I was moving around under the roots and the canopy, but most of the time I was just standing, still wondering what was happening. Just astonished at what was happening.

And as I walked into the base of the tree, it was a very strong message that that my body would be given to this tree. I came back and told my husband and the kids that I have to take you to the tree because that’s where either you bury me or put my remains.

So again, a very, very strong message that just came. And it’s like a knowing, it’s not something you’re hearing, it’s a knowing that this is where you need to end.

Miriam Koshy has been a curator and gallerist for over 14 years in Goa, curating several exhibitions, Art Residencies at Gallery Gitanjali, building it into a central cultural space, offering several art and film courses, workshops and clubs. As a interdisciplinary artist and the Founder of The Earthivist Collective she has been using Art Interventions in the form of installations, performances and films as a means of Community engagement and activation, to bring attention to and protest the Ecological Wounds that are being rampantly inflicted in Goa, India.