Mango tree- Short story

Natarajan entered his house when the 8:30 serial in T.V was over and the advertisement for a garment company was going. The colourful products and design were enjoyable even in that old black and white T.V, by lakshmi, ramu, vidya and kamalam amma. The four members were sufficient to fill 75% of the drawing room. Not that the members are too huge, but the drawing room is that small. Ramu rushed to Natarajan, tried to hug him, rested his head against him and shouted “daddy, have you bought me the train toy which I asked you in the market”. There is nothing unusual in the behaviour of ramu as it is quite normal with a six years old kid in any normal family. Lakshmi shouted, “Ramu, wont you keep quiet. Can’t you see your father looking tired? Let him first relax and eat. You disturb him later.” If lakshmi admonishes her only son for his unaberrated behaviour, there can’t be a better reason other than “love for her husband” to fit the situation. Vidya is usually quiet. She is made to speak by Natarajan with his regular question, “vidya, how was the day? What did you do today?” Natarajan is keen that his sister vidya should not be unhappy especially now as she is getting married soon. Mother is the only being who knows only to love you with least or no expectation. Kamalam amma, mother of vidya and natarajan not only loves those two, but loves her daughter-in-law lakshmi also equally. Such small happy family missed one of their senior persons, Mr.Vinayagam, father of natarajan two years back as his heart lost its pumping efficiency. Ultimately his death certificate carried a sentence “death due to ageing”, and doctors after burdening natarajan with five digits in his bill told without expressions, “heart attack”. For natarajan, his wife’s loss of her ten sovereign gold chains mattered nothing in front of his father’s death.

Natarajan is the only earning member of the family. He is brilliant and sincere fellow. One of the mistakes he did in his life was that he scored very good marks in tenth standard. He wanted to become an engineer and as an initial step he joined poly-technique College. He had applied in post-office with his tenth certificate. His high marks won him a clerical post in post-office. Nothing in the world seemed better than a central government job that too at an age of 16. Without any space for second thought everyone was in favour of natarajan joining post-office. Natarajan sometimes thinks that he could have pursued higher studies. The thought was little late by sixteen years after his joining and hence there was no future for his thoughts.

Natarajan is a very lovely man. He usually comes home as soon as his office gets over. By six in the evening he goes for a walk with his son, ramu to the market. The three streets market is the only tourist place in that small village. They usually enter the Khadim Street. The street will be pleasant as most of the families involve themselves in perfume making and incense stick business. Refreshing their nostrils with the fragrance, they cut left and enter Chetty Street, which is dominated, by utensils shop. Copper vessels will be laid in the roads and there will always be an old man polishing some copper vessels. Ramu looks the man with fancy. He thinks that the old man’s method of cleaning those vessels differs from his mother’s method where she uses tamarind and sand to clean vessels of similar kind. The visit to the street formally ends by their gracious presence in ‘murugan tea stall’. It is one of the famous tea stalls over there as it has three benches for its customers. There stands a topless, white bearded old man making samosas, bondas and dhal vadas. Some times he makes banana appam, which is special over there. Ramu enjoys this part of the walk and then parcel some eatables for his mother, granny and aunty too. Mother had told him that this murugan tea stall is very famous that many people come in car just to eat the samosas of the tea stall. Ramu wanted to see someone in car eating it. He has seen some cars occasionally over there but no one eating the samosas of tea stall. He pacified himself that those people might be hiding themselves when they eat. Even granny asks him to hide his eatables when next house anand comes to meet him. The third street of the market is for vegetables and other house hold items. The third street is big and ramu doesn’t visit that often unless his mother takes him deliberately.

Ramu’s evening starts with his playing with his friends in the mango tree in his house’s back-yard. He is never bored with the mango tree. Only natarajan’s arrival from office interrupts ramu and makes him go for a walk with his dad. The mango tree is a magnificent tree with wide spread branches and densely packed green leaves. Even ramu’s grand father didn’t know who planted the tree. In fact no one with ramu in the evening bothered who planted it. Ramu and his friends, satya, rohit, leela, hari and vijay assemble sharply at 4:30 in the evening after their coffee at home even without changing their dress. Each one of them brings some snacks from their home and they climb the lowest branches of the tree. That branch which grew more eastwards was thick and had a comfortable seat for a kid to be seated. And that happened to be the highest point the kids climb. Since ramu is owner of the tree, that high point is reserved for him. There will be high competition for the next positions which is considered better by the kids. Hari was in the next house and he could come soon and occupy the better places of the tree. Hari is very much fond of sweets and others used it as their competitive advantage. Others bribed hari with sweets for getting good positions of the tree. Once settled, each of them exchanges their snacks and starts playing. They climb the tree to some height, pluck some mangoes and eat it with the salt they had brought with. Occasionally when lakshmi comes there, she admonishes them for eating mangoes. Each of them starts talking about their school events later. Since leela was in a girl’s school while others were in the same school she had lot to talk. The topic of the boys varies from who got beatings from head master’s cane to the fun they had in physical education period. Hari showed his palm claiming that he got four beatings from head master for going out of the school campus during class time. The head master is an old man with big mouth, but talks very little. His hands looked short compared to the cane he had which is usually carried by thankaswamy, the great peon of the school.

That day leela was little upset. When asked for the reason, she told that she failed in maths and is afraid of her dad. The boys pitied and discussed in detail the possibilities of her escaping from her dad. Though they found nothing useful, they some how skipped the subject and started playing as usual. This is a good lesson they have learnt without knowing its importance. Yes! The lesson is “the best solution of a problem is to ignore it”. This lesson may be useful for them if anyone of them become a software engineer or a HR manager in the future. Now a days, ramu spent lot of time in the mango tree. At dusk, lakshmi calls him to wash his hands and feet to pray in their tiny pooja room. Natarajan doesn’t come home early like before and so killed the market visit from the schedule of ramu. Ramu hence became more attached to the mango tree. The reason for natarajan’s coming late is because he is a brother of a bride called “vidya”. Two months back, a team of members came in a taxi to see vidya and they confirmed the proposal through Indian post card bearing 25 paise and a tiger symbol in its front side. Everybody was happy with the proposal. The groom is working in a bank as a clerk. He is a graduate. The family was in complete agreement when kamalam amma told that vidya is really lucky for this proposal. Natarajan smiled with pride. It was he who found the guy. Natarajan saw his future brother-in-law reading an English news paper. He used this fact to prove his friends that the groom is in the list of intelligent people of world. Poor natarajan! Had he known the statistics of the circulation of English dailies of the world, he either would have withdrew his statement or would have accepted that the world is dominated by intelligent people. Though natarajan was happy, his face becomes dark when he thinks about the promised gold and dowry for his sister. To make the ends meet he took another part time job as an accountant in the rice-mill nearby. Due to this reason, he comes home late and missed his evening walk with ramu. Both natarajan and ramu missed their evening walk. Since they were left with no option they became accustomed to it very soon.

After supper, natarajan and family came out of the little house and talked for a while under the cool breeze of September outside. The moon looked bright that day and showed natarjan gloomy more clearly. He was tired of two jobs. Ramu was narrating the incidents of the school. He took four mangoes that day and his friends enjoyed it. Ramu was proud to narrate it to his father. Ramu talked later about their games around mango tree. Only then natarajan told that he had decided to sell the tree for vidya’s marriage dowry and next day people will come to cut the tree. Ramu abruptly stopped his tales about mango tree and looked his dad with wonder. For ramu, life without mango tree was not imaginable. He asked his father why they need the tree and started crying. Natarajan couldn’t control ramu and at last succeeded by telling that government had ordered not to have any trees in houses. Trees can only be in the roads and forests. Ramu calmed down as he knew nothing about big words like government. But he was really sad and thought why this government envies their happiness. Ramu thought of several options like hiding the mango tree with all the bed spreads they had and similar other things. He couldn’t convince his dad with his intelligent suggestions. Tired of too much brain work, he fell asleep.

Next morning ramu was not found anywhere in the house. He, usually after brushing comes to his mother and holds her for a cup of coffee. Today he didn’t come. Everyone called ramu’s name and got no answer. At last it was vidya who suggested that he may be near mango tree. When lakshmi hurried there, she not only saw ramu, but his whole mango tree gang in their respective positions. Seeing lakshmi, the kids stopped their discussion as the meeting was convened for a secret discussion. Lakshmi could see all the kids worried. She enquired what happened. They didn’t tell anything. Only hari had the courage to ask “aunty, are you really going to cut our mango tree?” Lakshmi with no expression answered “yes”. Leela started weeping “aunty, we want this tree. If you want to cut some tree I shall show you some tree near our house. They are not as good as this one. And if you are very very particular in cutting this tree for government rule, ask them to cut the upper half. We won’t use that. Spare up to this.” Leela hurried to ramu’s seat in the tree. Lakshmi was called by natarajan for something. Lakshmi while hurrying, dropped a few words, “hey kids, don’t waste your time. Today evening you won’t see this tree”. Her casual words hit the kids to the core. Hari who could bear even a dozen beatings from his headmaster’s cane embraced the tree and started crying. Following leela and hari other friends also started crying.

Now ramu took the senior position, “friends there is no point in crying. If it is a government rule, we can’t do anything. See why we have exams before going to next class. It is a government rule. Can anyone avoid that by crying? So, don’t cry. Let us adjust ourselves. Initially it would be very difficult. We will get used to it soon.” Though ramu preached like his class teacher prema, he couldn’t control his tears when he saw the tree again. The kids kissed the tree ten times. They then brought some eatables and other things like toys, pencil, fruits etc and placed it in front of the mango tree. According to them, it is their thanks giving ceremony towards the retirement of mango tree from their lives. Suddenly satya commented, “Hey don’t you see a face like structure in the centre of the trunk weeping. It is mango tree’s face only.” Everyone agreed that they too see. No one thought how suddenly they could see such face which they didn’t see ever before.

Time waits for none and they had to rush to their schools before first bell. Otherwise they have to kiss their head –master’s cane with their soft palms. Evening came. Ramu hastily came to mango tree. He thought no one will come. But to his surprise all his friends were there around the remains of the tree. It was chopped completely except the roots. There is no huge trunk or branches. The trunk is now shorter than rohit’s study table. The brown bark of the tree is no longer visible. The centre portion of the trunk remained scattered. There is no scent of fresh mangoes; the scent of raw wood was prevalent. The remains were in light cream in colour. The environment was very silent without the rattling of leaves. For the first time ramu and his friends noticed that the back yard is so big and bright. Everyone was silent when leela broke the ice. She told, “When my dad brings mangoes, I shall bury the seed in the same spot and after some years it will become a big tree”. The suggestion was welcomed and hari enthusiastically agreed to water the sapling. The team dispersed soon for other games. Ramu didn’t go out. He just couldn’t digest the loss of mango tree. He thought mango tree would have cried while being chopped. He thought mango tree might have expected some help from ramu. Ramu also felt abashed. He, being the one who utilized the tree to maximum really should have done something to avoid the tragedy happened. Deep in thoughts he felt asleep. As usual after the 8:30 serial, natarajan entered the house. He was happy that day with lot of currencies from the timber shop owner. He asked lakshmi to keep the money in the pooja room for a while. Then he locked the door and counted the money. He was in a cheerful mood because his part-time job rice-mill owner agreed to give the rice for marriage for just 50% of its price along with the gift of 25 kgs raw rice. In this good mood, in fact every one forgot the presence of ramu. Natarajan looked for ramu. He had bought banana appam for ramu. Ramu was tired of feeling for the tree. Natarajan had to spend one complete hour to bring ramu to an agreement. The agreement was that natarajan would buy a mango sapling which will grow big like the original one in just one year so that mango tree will be ready by ramu’s next summer vacation. This made ramu bit comfortable and he became active with new energy. He now felt hungry and started eating banana appam.

Vidya’s marriage took place in a grand manner in a temple nearby. Ramu was given lot of importance by his relatives and he enjoyed the marriage. Ramu became the pet of his new uncle. After the marriage the newly wed couple was sitting in the small drawing room and was preparing to leave. Ramu came to them and shyly gifted them six big ripe mangoes to his uncle and said “this is from my mango tree”. Poor ramu! He didn’t know that after the exchange of white cover which contained ten thousand rupees in the name of dowry; his uncle is the new owner of the mango tree now.

As long as dowry is an unavoidable ceremony in the Indian marriages, lot of ramus have to loose their mango trees!