An Old Man And The Tree
(To read this story in Marathi Click Here.)
Life ends but stories remain.
And so do some bonds…
An old man across the lane died yesterday. He used to live in an old house, in front of which, stood an even older banyan tree. He did not possess much but had countless minutes and endless hours with him. His days used to turn into nights at the speed of a snail; very different from that of us millennials, whose days and nights merge into one, inside our air-conditioned, LED lighted office rooms. Well, that doesn't mean that the old man had nothing to do. In fact, he had a lot of chores organized throughout the day, most of them conducted under the big old banyan tree. The tree seemed to shelter him more than his house. Every morning as I drove to work, I would see him sitting under the banyan tree, with a newspaper in one hand and a pipe in the other. On my return, he would still be there, but with different objects to adorn his wrinkled hands; sometimes it would be a cigarette butt, sometimes a bisoni (a hand fan made of dried palm leaves) or a cup of tea, and at times, toys too - this was when his grandchildren came visiting.
I started taking a peculiar interest in him and his activities - the things he did, when I drove past him between home and work. I even enjoyed playing a mental guessing game as to what object I might see him holding, the next time I caught a glance. One thing I never saw him doing was talk; he smiled, chewed his paan, smoked his cigarettes, and ferreted around the tree doing this and that, but, never talked. I came to know about him from my mother-in-law, who would say, “Kanko came to pick up some wood today.” “Kanko asked me for 10 rupees to buy a cigarette while I was returning from the mahila samittee meeting.” Sometimes she would also speak about how Kanko once had a beautiful wife who died during child birth; how badly he was down with TB a few years back; sometimes about the whereabouts of his four sons, three of whom had settled far away. It seemed that he was taken care of by the youngest one, who was yet to marry and stayed back, earning a meagre living out of a dilapidated stationary shop around the corner.
Kanko didn't ask for much, he seemed perfectly happy with a few rounds of tea and two or three cigarettes each day. A shave or a trim were activities too superfluous for him. He allowed his body and hair, his dhoti and shirt to soak in the weather, the dust and the heat throughout the year. I found a strange perfection in those looks; it reverberated with the oldness in him - his body, his life, his memories, his smiles and his regrets. But most of all with that old banyan tree that stood by him like his armour, his companion and hope. Just a few weeks back, when the summer was at its peak and the sun was mercilessly drenching the lesser souls on earth in their own sweat, our old man had decided to free himself from his already measly clothing; to afford himself some respite from the heat. Bare and brown-bodied with just a piece of khaki loincloth around his waist, as he sat under the cool shade of the tree, I felt how effortlessly the old man merged with the older tree. They appeared one and the same for a brief moment and I had to blink my eyes to shake off the apparition. I never knew what went through his mind, what words he spoke, or what would quicken his heart or dilate his pupils. I wondered if his body ever reacted and responded to anything - in this way too, he was so similar to the tree. Yesterday, as I returned from work and glanced that way, I saw no more of him but instead some other neighbours, my mother-in-law too, around the tree. She told me that old Kanko had passed away that afternoon under the tree.
No one was shedding any tears or saying words of remorse. There was an easy acceptance of the law of nature - the old had to die and make way for new lives. Kanko had lived a long life, between his birth and that afternoon under the banyan tree. My heart began pacing with an unknown rhythm - a mixture of disbelief and regret maybe; regret at not having heard his voice ever, at not knowing earlier that he had a magnificent name - Shri Kankeshwar Rahang, born on the 16th day of the Bhado month, of year 1346, of the Assamese calendar - that’s how people of that age remembered their timelines. I stood still, within the busy crowd that was planning and preparing the to-do-list for the pale youngest son of the now late Mr Rahang. My gaze slowly rested upon the banyan tree and grief filled my heart for the first time. The banyan tree looked so incomplete without the old man around it. As if he was the life and soul of the tree. I thought to myself, "I wish there was a way by which we could choose to make our bodies disappear after our deaths." For old Mr. Rahang, when his time came, I would have loved to see him bid goodbye aloud to us and enter the old banyan tree, bare bodied in his loin cloth, his limbs merging with its branches and roots, and his parched brown skin with the bark of the tree. I wanted to see the old man and the old tree unite forever. For, together, they looked like the perfect picture of living and ageing. As I steered my car this morning along the lane, I glanced again, towards the old man’s habitat, looked at the banyan tree and smiled to myself - the old man was gone but the tree shall remain as the tombstone of old Mr. Rahang forever.