Epitaph Written By A Blithering Nut For Itself

Epitaph Written By A Blithering Nut For Itself

Yes. It was yester evening. A lanky old man called on the household and they discussed under my sharp shade about felling me and decided to do it the very next day morning - a day before Tamilnadu assembly election. No sooner I heard their decision to do away with me , began my agony.

I thought of late Mr NS who in his sixties had brought my brethren and me as kernels - here - in a pick-up van. We four siblings were planted here. Over decades, several men, women and children of the household took good care of us by regular watering and occasional enriching the soil beneath us with salt.

Two of us were planted northeast overlooking the vast verdant paddy fields and other two planted on south side along the perimeter of the building site.

We slowly and steadily outgrown the height of the terrace and the household women too could lay hand on our top from terrace and pull the coconuts. The household’s relatives’ sons and daughters besides playing shuttle and aeroplane-hopping, studied engineering, management, finance and Java beans, Boolean algebra and other esoteric sciences including Carnatic music practise under shade of our fronds.

The young enthusiastic romantic couple of the home enjoyed simultaneously the sight of full moon and its halo – a ring of bright light that heralds possible rain next day. They delighted watching my fronds’ moving shadow cast by the full moon from cloudless sky, waving at them caused by the prevailing cool breeze and its sharp moving shadow.

Scurry of squirrels in their dray on my trunk, enjoyed playing and leaping across in multiple trajectories over my fronds and adjacent trees; households delighted watching them running defying gravity at near 20 kmph vertically downwards and abruptly halts over my trunk surveying all 360 degrees around.

When I was all of sixteen, household’s son’s family returned enriched from far off land and turned the simple hovel “Chez Nous” into a palatial mansion. In the meanwhile, my siblings and I had grown robust, majestic, and tall about 30 feet from ground.

The gross happiness quotient to household seemed dipping and negative emotions ran high. Men and women of the household started splitting their head with vastu professionals. I was in for a shock. As a sequel to week-end survey by a lady- vastu-expert, household decided to go ahead with deletion from and addition to the “Chez Nous” and hastened up departure of my brothers at south east to heavens. Soon watering and nourishing at my foot came to a halt.

A decade later, it was a day during north-east monsoon. Around one pm the sky that was azure till noon, turned overcast. Nimbus clouds moving at macabre speed collided repeatedly with each other intermittently producing eerie thunder and lightning. One of their collisions was so huge, that it produced a vertical lightning streak across the black-sky followed by deafening thunder.

That lightning-thunder struck my head and so in a jiffy, I became frondless - headless. Passerby and neighbours thanked me from bottom of their heart for bearing the brunt; they felt that - but for me in place, that piercing thunder would have damaged their buildings and belongings. But as ill-luck would have it, that was the moment, I began wilting and withering. Soon I dried up from top to down. Multi-hued macaws -parrots- made huge holes along my trunk which turned into their dwelling; and soon I heard constant chatter of their fledglings.

With headless top, I was reminiscing! Cows and bulls grazed below around me and relaxed under the shade of my thick green long fronds and for hours on end they calmly lazily chewed the cud. As I dropped my dried-up fronds, it disappeared soon to turn into thatched roofing and brooms. Whenever I shed many matured coconuts and dried-up fronds on the ground, strangers picked it up with glee.

Few hours from now, I would have gone into handable pieces, loaded into a pick-up van without pall-bearer. As the jostling van with me proceeds, none of the household would follow me. But from afar, I would watch them shed saline and or crocodile-tears, whose parched throat in the past often tasted and wetted sweet juice of my nuts.