A Memory...
by Ajay Adhiya on Sunday, October 9, 2011 at 12:58pm
A dear memory was uprooted last week...
It lived in a special place in my imagination as I built my own world within my mind as I grew up..
It was the first personal connection I had with a land an ocean away..
In Dahanu where we lived then, when I was very young, we used to live in a House near the Court..
Across the road, there was a small farm, that stretched for quite a distance on both sides of our place..
It was filled with trees of different kinds, with amba, and chickoo, and sitaphal and figs,and at night it would appear to be a place filled with happy spirits that would run free...
My room was in the front of the house and looked out onto the road, and I could see the farm when I looked through the window..
I would wake up everyday, to see mischevious particles of dust, dancing upon the warm golden rays of the sun filtering in through the half-open window, and as soon as I opened the window, I would see before me a thick treetrunk that looked like an Elephant's Leg, its head full of beautiful leaves, rising above the other trees, and reaching up to the sky,...The trunk was grey, and very stout, and it would be impossible to put your arms around it...
In some seasons, it would have lovely red flowers on it..
It was so different from all the trees around it, and it appeared to be the only one that I had ever seen in the town...
I learnt that it was called "the Chor-amba", and that it came from Africa, where it was called the Boabab...
In that magical time as my imagination took wing in the wonderful carefree days of childhood, it was the first thing I would see when I woke up and the last before I went to bed..
It entered my imagination, and I always thought of it as a very dear Friend, for I would imagine having a hideout inside its thick trunk, with a door that only I knew of, and where in my private moments I would hide ..
In my dreams I would imagine many adventures starting out from there, when I would have a tunnel from inside it, to escape the bad guys,or to reach Africa its home...It was my passport to a world of fun, friends and adventure..
The tree was special, and everytime I saw it, it comforted me, for amidst the ever changing world, it seemed eternal...I never asked how it came to be there, into this foreign soil, or how long it would stay...I always presumed that it was there for me, and would always be there...
It had been there before I came to live there, and it was standing when we left that house four decades ago...
Over the past 45 years, I would look at it everytime I went back to Dahanu, and sometimes wonder at the dreams of a growing boy..
Some came true and some faded away, and some were burnt to ashes...
But that tree of my dreams, my childhood friend, stood firm and resolute, a reaffirmation that one can dream of adventure and foreign lands, and work towards attaining those dreams...
Last week, that dream ended...
I saw that tree, lying on its side, uprooted by an unknown cause..
Like all my dreams it too had reached its fate...
I see it even now in my mind, silhoutted against the rosy glow of dawn, framed by my window, and rimmed with gold by the dancing rays of the sun ...
Its memory shall always stay with me...I shall always think fondly of it..
It was a wonderful time...and I was blessed to have known it as a friend..
