The Old Order Changeth....

Some months ago, Mum passed away.  It was hardly an unexpected event: she had been ailing in her winter years with a frail physique and a frailer mind that was lonely and introverted and worried with the premonition that is hard to accept, even in advancing years despite her brave wan smile, gentle countenance and unfailing courtesy.  Time is hard on the Old Order as it changeth, yielding place to the New.

A few days ago, I climbed up onto the roof of Manas, the family home, to check the water level in the overhead tank and the blossoms on a large tree – not easily visible from the ground – were radiant in the mid-day sun.  A couple of decades ago, she had planted a sapling of this fruit – rose apple -- belonging to the Syzygium family of jamuns; there are a number of varieties of this species and cultivars that have spread across Asia yet it remains a fruit that is, in most parts, not commonly available. 

Chambakya or rose apple was her favourite for it kindled memories of childhood summers in the humid warmth of Ernakulam, a little town as it then was, and of her beautiful old home of laterite-and-mud, with its open well filled with fresh water and orchard behind – a ‘paramba’ - of jack, mango, jamun, bananas, coconut and greens .  We all relive our memories in sepia, yet, in her middle age, those memories were everything.…..

For many years, I hardly noticed the tree as it inched its way up to meet sunlight above a growing, verdant canopy in her tasteful garden and, if patience is a virtue, she had it in buckets.  And then one year not so long ago, it blossomed, as trees will do with panache, its delicate flowers jostling with buds and tiny fruits, yet there was none to eat, for they dropped easily.  This was hardly noticed, for Mum was old now, with a failing memory of her favourite fruit and a self-imposed risk-averse food regimen, so there was no feeling of loss when that happened, no dismay at patience unrewarded, no antipathy. 

And every year, the tree has blossomed, even as fruits remain evasive.  And every year, I have climbed up to the roof to watch the bees at frenetic work in the warmth of the summer day with their sonorific buzz and delightful dance – wild Rock Bees, a species that is worthy of as much worship as the Gods in our temples of elegant, if inert and divisive, stone.  In residences around our family home, their hives are burnt, smoked, sprayed and cut, with a thousand little victims lying as inert as that edifice of stone-and-wall yet here, in this little patch, with its trees, Ixora, anthurium and tiny wild flowers, there is a refuge; they are welcome to forage, the food court is open.                  

This year, as I watch them at work, I wonder.  Did Mum plant this tree for herself? Such is legacy.