The mango tree

Opposite my little cottage looms an old mango tree. It must be older than all the inhabitants in the village, yet it stands majestically, imposing in its dimensions, solid as a mountain swathed in monsoon green.

The mango tree is one of the reasons I settled on this particular plot. I see it all the time, framed by the wall-sized window of my tiny living room. At night, sitting on the hard window seat, looking up every now and then from my book, I gaze at the dark splendour of it against the starry night. I see it from my dining table while I eat and from my bedroom window when I lie down to sleep. The picture it provides is never constant.

These days the mango tree is afresh with tiny new leaves that are not quite green yet, and there is something very tender and young about the old tree. Something even a little sad, as though it can't help grieving a little for the loss of its leaves. But soon, I know, the young leaves will have grown full and vibrantly green, and the tree itself will recover from the loss. Is it so different, after all, with us humans? We shed old leaves as we grow older – old memories, old loves, old friendships. We give up houses and cities and continents, and their passing away is made bearable only by the close gathering of new leaves. Yet every loss through the years will be marked by a wrinkle, a grey hair, a pain that doesn't quite go away. But the mango tree remains serene through every storm, its age a secret: written in its hidden grains of wood.

Yet if only those grains of wood were scarred, like human souls, by every experience of the tree. And if only we could learn to read the grains, to decipher the secret tree script, what mysteries might be revealed to us. But, ironically, it is left to us humans to cut down the tree and convert the wood into paper on which poets and historians will leave their ponderous scribblings. Words and yet more words, while the tree itself remains wisely silent.

This summer the mango tree was thick with mangoes.And all day the boys in the neighbourhood were trying to climb the tree and plunder its luscious fruit. As a child I used to climb my grandfather's mango tree to pluck fruit or simply to sit in the crook of a branch. But this is the great-grandfather of all mango trees, and it doesn't yield itself up so easily. I watched the boys struggle to climb it and then struggle to reach for the fruit. They looked small and lost in the gigantic tree. Mothers and fathers came out to help, to shout encouragement. They came with sticks and stones, as if to force the tree to yield its bounty. Much fruit was eventually harvested, and every family made mango pickle. The mango tree can be generous with its fruit because, fittingly, it belongs to no one. It remains free on its protected green patch, standing proudly over the village.

Once spring is here, I know the little singing bird that wakes me up will sit high up on its tallest branch and burst into song. In the monsoons the fattest and brightest fireflies will flutter about in its leafy branches, looking like stars fallen down from the heavens. Kites will get stuck in it, purple and blue and red kites with trailing tails. And then again the leaves will fall. The tree will look mournful for a while and then recover its serenity as many of us never do. One day i I will be gone,but the mango tree will still be here, rooted to this spot, spreading its branches up to the sky.