Trees- they have never been in my crush-list.

I spent a considerable part of today in an express train connecting the commercial capital of my state to its administrative counterpart. As always I was jobless on the train and let myself into thinking, dreaming and the other freedoms of joblessness like, eh!... eh! Am I lost??

I had been out of station for four days now and in that time Trivandrum has partially adorned the colours of Christmas. I saw stars everywhere on my journey from the station to home. Along with my luggage was a small cover with fresh bananas – harvested from a few banana trees my father had planted in our land at Ernakulam. People; I just realized that could well be the last banana(s) I would be eating, that my father planted. Though I will have the fortune to enjoy its descendants. My father was a tree-lover and a God-lover.

At his death I had written,

“It is time to start from where he stopped.

I will have to plant for him his trees,
I will have to chant his hymns
And worship his God.”

Trees- they have never been in my crush-list.

But God has somehow managed to creep into my life quite dominantly. Yes the same God who Douglas Adams purports to have vanished promptly in a puff of logic!

I will take solace in the fact that whenever possible my father has planted lasting and ecologically important trees in his land, in his offices’ lands and in and around temples.

And I will take cue from my cousin’s plagiarized (from God knows where) words;

“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us;
What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

Hmm! Whatever I speak or write about somehow offers connection with my dad’s deeds or words. Come on, dude I have to move on Nah?

It’s true my dad put up a fight and lost to kidney failure. But when it’s a kind of war you would end up losing no matter what, there is honour in losing dauntless till the last breath. I move on, I will have to. I have come to terms with death, particularly my father’s. I don’t feel a churning revolution tumble about in my entrails about what has happened. I still have my system and good music. A nice warm cup of tea to wake up to! A bike to aimlessly amble about! And the long reaches of the night to explore without question. Death is now too boring and commonplace to ponder over. Uninteresting to dissect and understand! Dark and stark unlike man’s enlivening white concrete and hue-full paints!

Lakshmi was talking about the supernatural. We shared quite a few interesting stories about magic and magicians, ghosts, spirits and deities. But as always talking to a lawyer (or a law student) became extremely one-sided. But wasn’t I saying I am going to keep my ears open for longer and my mouth generally shut.