"So you think money grows on trees, do you?"
"No. I think you said chocolate grows on
trees."
"Yes, they do."
"Then buy me one."
"What?!"
"A chocolate tree.
I want to be able to pick chocolate from it and devour
it as I please. You said you cannot buy me chocolate every day because we don't
have money. Then you buy me a tree."
I danced around my mother in a wheatish pink frock as I
tried to reason out with her, the sheer possibility of growing a cocoa tree in
our yard. She, whose face had gone the colour of my frock due to the anger she
bore at my chocolate obsession, looked at me as if she couldn’t believe she had
given birth to this stubborn, unbending little person.
I was obstinate. While I could understand with a BIG
heart that we did not have that kind of money to buy me chocolate every day,
what I failed to understand is why they were being uncharacteristically strict
about getting me a plant that would produce chocolate. I had heard all about it
in school and couldn’t wait to perceive the wondrous sight of chocolates
dropping onto our yard instead of the boring pink guavas. I automatically smacked
my lips as simultaneously received a smack on my head from my mother for day
dreaming in front of a Math problem.
Nothing had obsessed me to this extent before
chocolate came into my life. It was almost like a sweet brown human who was a
friend to this bespectacled nerd who had not yet won an actual human friend in
school. And as any other child whose sensitivity flapped at her sleeves as she
jumped and frolicked her way through her quiet and lonely childhood, she was
determined.
“If you do not have the money to buy me chocolate
every day, then get me a tree.” I said flatly at the dinner table.
Dad looked up in between his food inhalation,
absolutely clueless. My brother hardly heard or cared. My mother turned her
eyes wide as if preparing them to come out of her sockets, and pursed her lips.
Bewildered now, dad decided to turn his head in my mother’s direction for help.
In between her tightly clenched teeth, Amma said, “Your daughter wants to grow
chocolate in her own tree because we won’t have to buy it every day for her.” Dad
waited for her to complete or add any details to the same but none surfaced as
Amma had gone back to her food with unnecessary force. So he cleared his
throat, while attempting to clear his head as the thought, ‘You were right,
your daughter is actually crazy,’ kept flashing across it.
“Uhm. Don’t you think it will be difficult to manage a
tree on your own, Kunja?” he asked, tone resembling melted butter on a
pre-heated pan.
“It’s okay. I’ll grow it. Rema miss says, you just
need to water it and talk to it,” “My Science teacher,” I added as an answer to
his confused look. “Also, it’s good for the environment, Acha. All those
perfumes that you use? We’ll all die soon because of that. The ozone layer is going
to be replenished by our tree,” the six-year-old me chanted. Dad remembered a
little too well how his little one was such a pain as he put on his morning deodorant.
She would stand in the corner and stare at him accusingly muttering something
some layer, atmosphere, the Earth and finally, death. Hence, he was not very
eager to open that book. He looked as if he really wanted someone to jump in
and save him from the situation. Perceiving the space outside through our
window and warily watching the barely standing guava tree, he gave a non-committal
jerk. “Of course. Trees are good for the planet. I’ll ask around, okay? Let’s
see.” I nodded and pledged to wait patiently, as he ‘asked around.’
My wait grew long just as a magician’s ribbon-out-of-a-hat
trick. A month or two passed as I took all my patience and good-will and put it
safely into the box with my desire to have my very own chocolate tree. A few
weeks later, I saw my friendly faced neighbour and his wife, digging up the mud
in their yard, with a little sapling by their side. Curiously, I doubled back
waiting for their usual, “Hi Mole!” I received it shortly after my act was made
quite obvious. To my delight, upon asking them they told me it was a cocoa
plant. My heart couldn’t contain the excitement that my face did, in a widening
and muscle crunching smile that spread across my face as I heard it. His wife
was a round and kind-faced lady who gestured at the grandmother who was sitting
on the porch. Their aging mother who had wrinkles in her face and twinkles in
her eyes alike, said encouragingly, “Your mother told us how you’ve been
waiting for a cocoa tree. Don’t worry, you can have chocolate from this tree too,
just as yours.”
I skipped to my house, singing loudly and waking my
disgruntled grandfather who had fallen peacefully asleep over his daily paper.
The amiable neighbours told me that it will take at least
two to five years for a cocoa tree to bloom. Though I couldn’t figure the
extent to which my tiny little heart could take the ever-prolonging wait, I decided
to wishfully long for it, till the tree decided to drop a chocolate seed onto
the ground.
However, the time span of two years only left one
thing, unchanged. My desire to have my very own chocolate tree. The neighbour
and his wife shifted to the States six months later to the tree-planting day, not
before making me promise that I’d water and talk to the plant, watching it
grow. But shortly after that, when I was walking back home after school, the
grandmother who used to lovingly observe me talking to the plant, had the same
peaceful smile as she lay shrouded in white cloth with a lamp near her head and
a hoard of weeping humans around. She was carried away and along with her, the
cordiality among her sons who suddenly decided to end their ties with each
other by dividing up the land. A lifetime spent together, a childhood that
bloomed as they played around while their parents watched, was not spared in
the family feud that ensued. So, what chance did a poor tree stand against three
fully grown men determined to fight?
My mother tried to slam the windows shut glancing worriedly
at me as I stared wordlessly from the top of my textbook at the electric axe
that cut down the cocoa plant, at the middle of its growth phase, just a couple
of more years from blooming. I hadn’t abstained from when I had waited for the
tree to rain chocolate. I used to have it whenever I got it but not without reminiscing
the time when I would have it from my very own tree which would not only give
me my favourite brown friend but also save the world from being a desert. The
sadness that spread in me as I traipsed around with my unfulfilled wish, was
similar to the one that you feel momentarily when you see a sick puppy and
which visited you at intervals whenever your thoughts decided to take a difficult
walk. A few days later to my Cocoa-Cut-Down-Day, I heard my father arguing with
my grandfather about cutting down the guava tree in our yard due to constricted
space, so that he could plant a cocoa tree for me. The image of the cruel axe
was still fresh in my mind; hence I told my father with a thoroughly dejected
but calm demeanour that I’d wait until our yard is free to grow the tree. My eight-year-old
face reflected disappointment like foam washed over the seashore as each wave
hit the land.
As years sped by and life smiled at me in different
ways, the ten-fourteen-sixteen-year-old me gazed at the strong guava tree stand
suddenly tall and unwilling to yield its space to the next in line. It did not
seem to believe in the concept of successors, I would say. When I was eighteen,
I left home for studies, declaring defeat before the guava tree and wondering
if growing a cocoa plant is one of the impossible tasks on the planet.
As I watched the guava tree being cut down, ten years
later as part of my uncle’s renovation plans for the house, and the space for
my cocoa tree being cemented and designed in varied aesthetic patterns, I wondered
where all the unfulfilled desires go. Would they bloom in a different universe,
away from our eyes, swerving tantalisingly out of our reach? In my head, my
cocoa tree bloomed beautifully, showering my light pink frock with chocolate
seeds as I swirled around it.
I am thirty-one now and I smile, rather grimace at this hardly possible wish, I want to fulfil, someday when I get a land and a house of my own. It just seems to simply get away from my fingertips every time, I believed I got near. I still wait around to find a space for my cocoa tree, I still wait to honour the dream of a six-year-old girl who wore flowers in her hair and smiled with chocolate teeth...
