I Had A Little Nut Tree...

All night, the rains spat. At about 3 a.m there was a crashing noise and part of the roof above my room caved in. There was a torrent of rain water, broken tiles and branches. When we ventured out in the morning to survey the damage, no one could believe what they saw. The Nutmeg tree, the pride of the estate, had fallen. Every one's face fell with it. After all, it had stood its ground for over half a century, weathered as many monsoons and several bad tempered storms in between.The invincible, deathless tree lay partially uprooted, leaning heavily against the back wall of the summer house.

My grandmother first showed me old, sepia tinted, moth chewn photos of the Nutmeg tree when I was six years old. She was about eighteen in it, thin as a lotus reed and was standing with an equally young and strapping grandfather. Next to them, reaching up to their thigh, was a nutmeg sapling. My great grandfather had planted it in her honour a week after she came to the estate as a new bride.A beautiful daughter-in-law's arrival needed to be marked with something that equalled her in worthiness .The nutmeg tree was thus a permanent fixture from her days as a young adult and so it was understandable, the fondness with which Grandmother regarded it. Although she never said it, she knew with a sense of unmistakable pride, that it stood for her beauty and the prosperity that her arrival had brought to Grandfather's family.

I often thought the tree had some distinctive rock star qualities. It had the bed head look and was wild and unfettered in its own way. It was a sight to behold when the storms struck. The tree head banged, thrashing its several arms on the clay tiles of the roof of the summer house. It looked scarily like a doped out rock star whacking his guitar on the roof. Sometimes, in the twilight, I imagined the tree to have the silhouette of a rocker from the 70s. On hot , still summer nights when the leaves were dry, dusty and motionless, the tree could have been the outline of a Hendrix with a distinct Afro. On wet damp monsoon evenings with its massive foliage hanging heavy and limp, its bark glistening like snake leather pants, the tree could have been Morrison. No one could deny that the tree had marked personality.

The summer house stood at the far end of the courtyard to one side of the huge iron gates that framed the long walk to the ancestral home. The tree spread itself above it. The summer house had a very shady past. Smelly, rather.It had originally been a cowshed for over thirty years. This was when grandmother had her own mini farm comprising of seven cows, a chicken coop and a sprawling vegetable garden. Then grandmother grew old and the cows got too rowdy for her to handle. One of them kicked her while she was milking it and she broke her hip. Grandmother retired. The cows were sold and the chickens were curried one by one depending on the frequency of guests at the estate. Grandmother decided that she couldn't tend to the vegetable garden either so she threw several handfuls of balsam seeds into the patch and within two weeks, there were pink and purple blossoms choking out the tomato and beans.

Grandmother then decided to convert the cowshed into a little house. She got the masons to wall the shed, put clay tiles on the roof and mosaic on the floors. The cow house was reborn as a summer house and soon lost all traces of its previous associations. With time, it started looking to the manor born. So the nutmeg tree gracing the front yard near the gate along with the fancy new summer house, stood for all that was magnificent about the estate.

The old watchman had been at the ancestral home from the time he was a young man. He believed that the nutmeg tree had supernatural powers. He said that great grandfather had planted the tree after getting the sapling blessed by a tantric. It was more than just a symbol of prosperity; it played the role of a protector of the household. The reason it had been planted at the front gate was so that spirits could not get past it. If anyone cast an evil eye on any member of the house, the tree would make sure that it was negated. There was a funny anecdote about the coconut thief who prowled in the neighbourhood at night. One night, he decided to steal nuts at our farm. He managed to drug the watchman and waited till the old man fell asleep. He then climbed the coconut palm next to the nutmeg tree and chopped quite a number of coconuts off.

No one really knows what happened after that. People were awoken by horrific cries. When they rushed outside, they found the thief suspended by the back of his shirt from one of the branches in the upper reaches of the nutmeg tree. He was completely disoriented and looked like he had been lifted up and hung on a peg. When he was taken down and asked what had happened, he replied incoherently that he had lost his balance and fallen into the foliage of the nutmeg tree. However, the old watchman had a different interpretation. He said that when he came to, he saw the tree put out several of its branches and wrap themselves around the thief and pin him down!

The watchman said that the thief went insane after that. He ended up in an asylum where he continuously rambled about his strange experience in the tree and would run for cover if he ever saw anything that looked remotely like a nutmeg. Grandfather seriously doubted this version and attributed the yarn to whatever anesthetic the thief had administered to the watchman. Besides, soon after the incident, he saw someone who looked very uncannily like the thief, grinning most cheerfully from the bottom corner of the local newspaper,looking perfectly compos mentis. He had apparently moved to a different locality and had been operating there with considerable success before he was nabbed. Not by any nutmeg tree this time, but the neighbourhood gurkha. However, our tree was still the hero having caught the thief red handed while on our property.

Kerala summers are a hot, sticky affair. The nutmeg tree was so lush and so expansive, at least fifteen people could have sat comfortably in its shade at high noon. Not even a ray of even the most intrusive bit of sun could reach the ground. I have spent eight summers at the ancestral home, each of them them two years apart. Whenever I came to the estate, things would be different. For one, I grew up from toddler to young adult. New trees were planted, old ones were cut. But the permanent sight was the Nutmeg tree. I have spent several afternoons propped up against it with a book.The watchman was usually superstitious about people sitting under trees in the afternoon hours. He would shoo us away from the tamarind tree if we sat under it.

"Spirits" he would caution, his face taking on an alarmed expression. "There are wandering souls caught in limbo between the worlds of the living and the dead. You don't want them considering your body for residence! Then it will be very bad. We'll have to get the trantri to beat the devils out of you then."

But somehow, he had no issues with us relaxing under the nutmeg tree. This was our arch protector, the pride and power of the estate and the ancestral home. It had seen grandfather and grandmother as young newly weds, their children and the children that they had. The tree was a living member of the family.




The tree leaned like a colossal giant against the back part of the house. Several of its branches had pierced through the tiling of the roof.

"I think it will be okay once it is put back on its feet". Grandfather flashed a torch into the huge cavity that had been gouged by the part of the tree that had been uprooted. It was broad day light by now and the sun was glaring through the clear skies but my grandfather wanted to be sure by torch light. Whether tonsils or trees, torch light was in his opinion, the best way to examine any problem. " We just need to get a few workers to ease it back into upright position. No damage done. The root is intact".

We were visiting for the holidays and had spent the night at the summer house the previous night after a party.
"This... this looks bad. It must have been one hell of a monstrous gale to do this kind of damage. Let's get the farmhands right away". My father rushed back into the house to make phone calls. My mother and I stood watching the tree in disbelief. I sniffed.

" I wouldn't worry too much!". Grandfather put an arm around my shoulders and hugged me. " We have put coconut trees back on their feet again after they got pulled up in storms like toothpicks. Our nutmeg tree is far mightier than that!". Somehow I didn't believe this magic realist attempt to reassure me.

Nobody had breakfast till the farmhands arrived. The watchman kept pouring water over the exposed roots as if cleaning a wound. Grandmother kept stroking the branches.

The farmhands got to work at once. One of them made a makeshift pulley throwing a rope over the tree in a loop and pulling it behind a sturdy mango tree that stood close to it. They heaved and sighed and the tree rose a few feet. Then it crashed again into the roof of the house bringing down part of the wall with it.

Grandmother shrieked " What are you people doing? I don't want the branches to be more torn up than they already are. Careful!". I had never seen her that upset before.

All morning the workers sweated, trying to hoist the tree. By afternoon they gave up. The tree was still slanted against the roof and had not budged an inch. Father paid them generously for their efforts though. In a desperate attempt to keep the tree alive, the farm hands shovelled mounds of earth over the exposed roots and told us that we should be prepared for the eventuality that the tree would grow "sideways" from now on. It might not stand upright but it would certainly thrive in a "lateral" position. As incredibly stupid as it seems now, it sounded like a reassuring option at the time. We just wanted the tree alive and were willing to overlook the direction of growth.

For two days, we kept shovelling mounds of earth over the roots in an attempt to cover them. No one was bothered about the house. Then grandmother had a bad feeling that the leaves were not looking too good. " I think we need to get the tree back on its feet again as soon as possible" she said.

A group of gypsies were passing through the neighbourhood and had heard from people about the giant nutmeg tree that had fallen on the estate and the desperate family that was trying to resurrect it. Their leader landed up and said that they would lift it for us- for a handsome sum. Grandfather did not think twice. " By all means" he said.

The Gypsies could make out the misery on our faces. They proceeded to go about it most scientifically. The leader drew up a detailed plan of what was to be done and instructed his people like an experienced foreman. Finally they ended up applying the very same tactics as the farmhands had two days before. There were some twenty of them and they hoisted the tree up. The leader proclaimed that the tap root was perfectly fine and that the tree would thrive as before without a doubt. Never before in our lives had we collectively hoped that this would be true.

For the next one week, it became an obsession to check the tree out first thing in the morning to see how it was faring. Did it look healthy, did it look like it was doing ok? For the first few days, we felt that all was as before. Then Grandmother found an unusually high number of dried shed leaves at the bottom of the tree. The branches started looked crusty and it was apparent to even a fool that all was not well with the tree. It started looking emaciated and grey. Within two days, the abnormal leaf shedding became too obvious to brush aside. The tree was slowly beginning to look skeletal as it became progressively bare. The nutmegs had begun to wither and shrivel.

Nobody wanted to accept what was apparent. We sat in the front porch of the ancestral home sipping hot coffee looking straight down the walk where the nutmeg tree stood at the iron gates. No one uttered a word.

" I think we should spare it the ignominy of wasting away like this", Grandmother finally took a call." I'll send for the wood chopper ". A collective gasp rent the air.

" Cut down the tree? It has been here forever! What will this place be without it". Grandfather was horrified.

" Oh For God's sake! There is nothing that can be done now. I think that it died the day of the storm. None of us wanted to accept it. It has been long gone". Grandmother sighed unhappily and quickly went inside. She was the iron lady of the house, not one to show her emotions in front of people.

So the tree was cut on a hot Tuesday afternoon. It came down branch by branch and Grandmother stood bravely through all of it. Every time a branch was chopped, she would bend over tenderly and pick all the shrivelling nutmegs off it. This was the last harvest and she removed the fruits respectfully as though she was removing armor off a dead warrior.

The view from the house suddenly looked alien and bare. All that was left to remind us of the tree was a gigantic cavity where it had been. The cutters loaded all the wood into a huge cart. The watchman opened the heavy iron gates and the cart left the estate.

A fierce patch of sunlight that had eluded the earth all this time, shone down on the spot where the massive tree had stood for more than fifty years.