Tree of Life

There is ‘this’ mango tree by the bank of small river near my native town. Every summer I go, there would be nothing much to waste your time elsewhere and so I would stroll around the river bank each evening, sometimes, mornings too. There are many more mango trees by the river bank, something like a mangrove but for no apparent reason, ‘this’ one had caught my fascination. Perhaps there was something beautiful about it or maybe it was just because it was on the side by which I walked …it could even have been the little rock that offered a resting spot from where the tree made quite an impression with those arms spread out, reaching to the sky...every summer I was particularly taken in by its bountifulness. As a project manager, I would even amuse myself...what would the % of growth YoY in its yield, its productivity...random thoughts...but last season, I was in for a surprise.

After a normal spring in full bloom, there were just four small mangoes to be spotted. Four mangoes! Would you believe it?!...it is easy to cite the vagaries of nature or weather playing foul etc…but from a impressive showing YoY (say, in the excess of 200), I could just manage to spot only four...what made me wonder still, was, how these four alone could have made it…what possible reason?!...while the other 196 just didn’t happen…Surprisingly, the other trees seem to have put on a better show...I still couldn’t figure out how the four stuck out...no, there wasn’t a even pattern to it...Two of the mangoes were in fact shielded from view but the other two were bare!...While two were low lying, the other two quite high and inaccessible.

As days went by, my curiosity grew...I began to watch over ‘my’ four mangoes...I even named them. Amrut, Butter, Minnu and Chottu. I reckoned the lowest and bare one (Chottu) to be the first to fall prey...I even resisted a temptation to eat it green (with salt & chilly)...Yet, it was the shielded one on top (Amrut) that the ants spotted…they build their camp around it...Again,I couldn’t get it. Butter (the other shielded one on top) was spared by the ant community for reasons only the ants knew...Butter was on the right next branch...very much accessible but spared by the community... Well, as the mangoes grew bigger, I became tense...I was not sure whether I should start protecting them…wrap them up in plastic bags?!...but if I did so, would it attract attention…Is this mango tree owned by someone after all...my fears grew... Then one day, the top-most shielded one(Butter)…the one, I thought, no one would spot easily, caught the fancy of a crow...maybe because it was the first one to ripe but why didn’t it pick Minnu or Chottu?...Bad luck?...I will never know.

Another week and the one the ants worked on my poor Amrut and it fell...poisoned?....He had hardly ripened even...only Minnu and the low-hanging Chottu were left now... A few days later, an early morn, I was doing my regular rounds, when I spotted some children playing hide and seek...and there was this one kid who had climbed my tree to hide himself...and while he hid...to kill time...he idly he plucked my Minnu! and took a bite...dissatisfied, he threw her into the river...my heart sank...how could he?!

Now only the Chottu remained...I was determined to save it...save it for Me...savour it when it ripens to the fullest and as a gratitude, grow its seed…so I got it wrapped up in a protective plastic cover and let it be...every alternate day I would unwrap and check...until one day I decided , the time have come…plucked it, took it home and covered it in a basket so that it turns orange...and it did...after a sumptuous lunch, as a natural dessert, I sliced Chottu open...betrayed by worms...not a single slice.

First, reflect on these...

(*) What do you make of this story?...Is there a moral somewhere?...Or should it always have to be some sentimental family saga about some mother and her children to have a ‘moral’?

(*) Or let’s take each instance and dissect...why were there only four mangoes this season?...Why did each perish so differently?

(*) Oh! why was ‘God’ unkind to all ‘my’ four mangoes? Why was ‘God’ unkind to the Mother Tree? or better still, from my own perspective...why was God not kind to Me (my Chottu...the one I thought I protected and owned...turned out to be rotten)?

(*) Or well...is this just ‘much ado about nothing'...something that happens every odd summer? maybe, the neighbouring ugly tree last year had only two mangoes but I never noticed.

(*) In fact, what makes you even think that you can come up with an answer to any of the countless possibilities I can conjure up?

Now, reflect again and at another level perhaps...

(*) Are these ‘events’, that I just laid out, one by one... 'Events’ that seems continuous, as a story…Were they actually continuous or were they in fact just 'random'?

(*) Is there really something called ‘Causality’ between these individual Events? (i.e. One that causes another. One event, that is the ‘reason’ for another)

(*) Or does it make it any easier on you to blame it on a greater reality...‘Divine intervention'...‘God’ or whatever?

Or...Is there really something called 'Life'...let alone its significance...