Nature - My childhood friend

This is not a work of fiction, but it seems so, even to me who is the one who has experienced it all.  My memory of all that is being written here seems to have happened in some other life time, but all of it happened when I was 4 or 5 years old, but still the pictures are so vivid and so real in my mind like I am watching a techni colour HD movie or as if I am still there when I am writing it all down.  I say it is not fiction because of the tremendous  nature’s bounty and beauty and companionship that I experienced at that time  seems so unreal even to me.

Let me start with the morning, yes, so the morning started with me the 5 year old running from bed straight to the verandah and sitting on the steps of the verandah (of my house which was in a small town of Kerala), the steps leading to the courtyard, it looking all clean  with fresh marks of broom which looked like half circles made over and over again on the brown earth. Sitting on the steps I looked straight at my friend who was at the same position where I had left him, across the courtyard, across the vast grove, across the paddy field, parrot green and slowly dancing along the cool breeze , there still farther across the railway line my friend stood, the tree of whose name or origin or scientific or local name I was unaware, for me it was only my friend, ‘the tree monkey’, the whole tree looked like a big monkey in sitting position and staring at my house, infact at me, talking with me , sometimes he swayed along with the strong winds, sometimes during hot , sultry and lonely afternoons when the whole house slept and the whole nature seemed to be dozing off, even the birds were not to be seen he was my only companion who from far away looked at with me with sympathy and love and understood how badly I missed my parents, how lonely I felt and how I longed to sit in that train zooming on the railway track, how it  reminded me every day of my parents, especially my mother.

I remember talking to him from my verandah, telling him if something special was going to happen that day, for example if my grandfather had promised me that he shall be bringing along my favourite muffins in the evening for me, wrapped in brown paper with patches of oil shining on it, or if my uncle would be visiting from Delhi and so my grandma would be preparing that tangy, fiery deep orange coloured fish curry for him and how he would be bringing gifts which my mother would have sent for me from Delhi and how I first smelled the gifts just to see if it carried the fragrance of my mother.

Some days, during the afternoons, when my aunt was off at school and only me and my grandmother were at home, after she would disappear indoors for her afternoon nap, I would talk some to my friend but still feel restless and lonely and then tell him that I am going to take a round of the big coconut grove and talk to my other friends, these other friends were the very very tall ‘wild jack’ tree with its fruits all strewn below it, the tasty fruit and the tastier nut was always a treat for me, I talked to this tree looking up and asking him whether from there he can see my mother sitting far away at Delhi? It never answered my question only stood majestically tall and as if it did not care for anything in this world, only emotion it showed was of pride in its canopy and the tasty fruit which it gave to all who cared to eat. At the far corner of the grove was the pine apple bushes, I was always careful around them because of the thorns but I loved sliding by the side of these bushes on to the paddy field into the watery paddys where the frogs and small fishes  seemed to be competing for space in the water collected by the rains last night, then I again climbed back with great difficulty by the side of the pineapple bushes on to the grove but not before peeping in to see how the beautiful fruit looked, it always looked  so tempting , bursting with fragrance and colour but I could never enjoy the fruit even till date as the moment I have it my tongue gets all itchy. 

Bidding adieu to the pineapple bush I would hover around the well, the antique looking well, which always scared me at night as I thought that there were ghosts lurking around it during night or a thief, who according to me was nothing but a cartoon like character wearing a bikini and the ghost according to me was some green and black circles which moved like wheels. Isn’t it amazing how little children have imagination about everything? The jasmine and hibiscus plants in all its glory talked to each other and were almost making a small gate like structure as their branches seemed to be entangled with each other.  By the time I was at the last leg of my stroll in the grove, the  coconut trees bearing bright orange tender coconuts  would be the host to the wood pecker tapping at it musically at regular intervals, just adjacent to these trees was one lonely coconut tree which once bore so many coconuts, but now stood with no top (I was told  it was hit by lightning), the barren top of this coconut tree was home to a pair of parrots who flocked in and out of their nest and painted a pretty picture of both love and barrenness.

The yellow and mint coloured butterflies played with me, they flew around my head or would sit by the well or on one of the jasmine flower fallen on the brown earth and tease me, making me run behind them or they would sit still till the time I approach them stealthily but they never allowed me to touch them, however much I pleaded with them.  It was usually my grandmothers voice calling me out to come to the courtyard to have my evening tea with my favourite snack, which she always kept in that black pot that I would go back to the house and sit again at the steps and start talking with my ‘Tree monkey friend’ but not before offering him the chai and the snack. 

The frogs and crickets and the cycle bells and the sing song of the evening prayer and the flickering light of lantern, there are so many things I have to tell you, but then it is always the same because as I have shared before also somewhere I am still caught in that timeline and like a time traveler can go back there any time, I have to just sit back and close my eyes and the whole nature’s paradise which I experienced in my native pace in Kerala decades ago just envelops me once more and I am back to my childhood, back to the lap of nature.

P.S: This is being posted under the Indiblogger, Kissan 'Nature's Friends' contest , please see the details here http://www.kissan.in/