When I was eight years old, and my sister thirteen or fourteen, we used to spend our summer holidays in Ranchi, where my dad’s eldest brother was posted. We had three naughty cousins, two girls and a boy, who was the boy of the family, and was teased and bullied mercilessly by the girls.

Those summer holiday memories are tied up with a huge litchi tree. It was just outside the compound of my uncle’s house, next to the hut of the house-help. We were lucky to be at his house during the summers when the litchis were ripe. We would climb up that tree, and often, since I was the smallest, climbing the tree was really tough. The others would push me and somehow get me up the tree. My grandmother was constantly shouting at us because she was afraid that we’d fall, but no one ever fell, we were pretty good at climbing that tree. We would pluck litchis and do these cookouts as well…we had these organised picnics where we had mooli from the garden, and we’d pretend we were cooking a sumptuous meal. We used to take a coconut shell and make food with proper fire. It tasted horrible, but we ate it anyway!

Another tree memory involves the areca nut tree outside my house in Cochin. It’s a very tall tree and very slender. Those days I had a cat called ‘Phunti’. We used to call her Phunti because she had a peak on her head and she looked like Phantom in the comics. Once, when Phunti was really little, she got chased by a dog, or maybe a bigger cat. She managed to climb up that areca tree and for one whole day we couldn’t find her. We reassured ourselves with the thought that, ‘She’s a cat and they go as they please and come as they please. She’ll be back when she’s hungry.’

The next day when my dad was in the garden, he could hear a cat but he couldn’t figure out where the sound was coming from. After much scouting around we saw this really scared Phunti who had perched herself right up in the areca nut tree. We cajoled and pleaded with that cat to come down. And what do you think she did?  She jumped! She jumped and landed unhurt, but she lost her voice. It was a very small meow anyway but she lost her voice out of shock.

The funny thing is, she got chased up a tree again and this time she went up a mango tree. From the mango tree she went to the roof and again we spent time persuading her to come down. Finally, Dad went up on the roof to get her. But she jumped down again. And the second time she jumped, Phunti got back her voice!

Priya Kuriyan is a comic book writer, illustrator and animation filmmaker. She was the recipient of the Big Little Book Award at the Mumbai Literature Festival in 2019.