Tree #7: a picture!

Here's a lovely pic of a little chikku tree planted for me in Bombay, by my friend Jill and her three girls (yes, they're triplets)!
If there is an art to scanning, I do not know it. After trying several times to crop all the white space around this picture, I gave up in frustration.

Tree #6: an update

Alas. The poor thing did not make it. Well, we tried ..

Tree #7: a chikku tree, Bombay

I'm not too sure if that's spelt right! This is a wonderful fruit tree - little leathery brown domes that you split open, and scoop out a grainy sweet pulp .. tastes delicious! And makes for mind-blowing milkshakes, too. Some people call this fruit 'sapota' and I think the origin is Mexican.

Got a nice cheery SMS this morning from my friend Jill in Bombay, informing me that this tree has been planted for me in her garden. Jill is one of my oldest and dearest and truest friends, right from the age of eleven. I had just run away from boarding school the night before, and she had got blamed for a prank that some other girls did - and so we both had visits to the principal's office that morning, which is how we met each other and ended up becoming Best Friends. More than thirty years later, we still are. I could write a book about our friendship (and I probably should!) and all the magical fun we've had through school and beyond.

And another tree for our planet - joy! I wonder who will be next on my list!

Tree #6: an Ashoka tree, Bangalore

Six down, 36 to go. Where are all those promised trees? Last year on my birthday, I asked my friends to plant trees for me in their gardens. I wanted 42, and in just two months I shall be 43, so I guess I'll be wanting one more if I haven't met my goal by then!

This tree is courtesy of an unknown donor, who planted it most unwisely in something akin to a window box at our office building. Mr. Arasu, our gardening genius/doctor/magician, brought it over and planted it in front of our house. So far, so good. You could say it's in foster care. It's surviving, but will have to undergo another uprooting to a more suitable spot when we can find one. It currently stays alive but not wonderfully, under the shade of a frangipani tree. It needs its own space, and the sun. Ashoka trees grow tall and straight like pillars (Ashoka pillars? Perhaps that's how they got their name), and it may not be able to do that from where it is.

And now I think it is time for me to some reminder emails to all those potential tree-planters out there. Of course, anyone reading this is welcome to join the club - just plant a tree for me, and send me a picture of it once a year.

P.S. The other gentleman in the picture, seemingly wilting against the gate, is the security guard at the building next door. That's not our gate, by the way. Ours is old and rusty, and once was white.

Tree #5: A frangipani tree in Bangalore, India

My friend Priya the artist has planted me a frangipani tree. She tells me that it will have beautiful pink and yellow flowers and promises me more pictures when it does. But for starters, here is its baby-pic.

Tree #4: A neem tree in Udupi, India

This tree is Zinan's! She's Ashraf and Zeenat's daughter (see previous "Plant Me A Tree" post). I'm quite excited about this tree because neem trees are supposed to be very healing - not just in their byproducts - but in their very presence. They heal the air around them. What a lovely thought.

Zinan is 11 years old now. She's a very talented artist (it's in the Tonse genes, honestly!) and I'm going to ask her if she'll draw or paint the tree for me, instead of the usual photo. She misses her brother, I know. Although he was older, I'd often think of them as twins, they were so close to each other. There must be a big empty space in her life now. I'm glad she planted a neem tree, I hope it sends some healing air her way. Breathe deep, sweetie.

Tree #3: A nutmeg tree in Udupi, India

People, you're supposed to TELL me when you plant the trees. I don't actually have psychic vibes and telephathic connections with them. (Well, not yet).

Anyway I'm happy to report, thanks to my bhabhi Zeenat's casual mention yesterday that they'd planted two trees for me a while back in Udupi - that I now require just .. oh .. 38 more .. sigh.

Zeenat is my dear cousin Ashraf Bhai's wife, and they are down here for a holiday with their daughter Zinan (Tree #4 is her contribution by the way). Zeenat is also Mehran's mother. Some of you may remember that sweet bright and unbelievably cheerful little boy who was here in Bangalore with us two years ago for his cancer treatment. He passed away last October.

Tree #2: A cherry tree in Bangalore, India

I should have posted this a few days ago, but have been down with the 'flu.

My friend Sukanya's DAUGHTER is really responsible for the planting of this tree. Apparently Anahita is an avid bird-lover and amateur bird-watcher, and wanted this particular tree to attract the sunbirds. Wise and wonderful child, we need more of your kind on this planet!

And who is Sukanya, you might ask? Especially you of the good old days .. and oh, there have been many different types of good old days in Nazu's life. Sukanya is a friend of the good not-so-old days, we bumped into each other some years ago at a workshop for NGOs (not that I or Askios are NGOs .. we are more of an NGO-groupie and we tag along wherever the NGOs go, and try to be useful). Anyway, Sukanya and I bumped into each other and became friends, and now we continue to bump into each other every so often at one workshop or another.

Shameful, really, because we live in the same city. But now that our friendship has been so beautifully and symbolically rooted, I must pack my water-bottle and make the long trek to wherever it is she lives (I only know that it is very very far away from my part of town) so that I can meet fellow bird-lover Anahita and take a nice picture of us all under our tree!

A tree poem from Puerto Vallarta.

David and Liz Garlick are longtime friends of my parents, from way back when (the 1960s I suppose) in the days of Awali, Bahrain. I must have met them as a baby, but I'm not sure. But they've been one of my life's "traditions" because every year they would send us a long Christmas letter, with photographs and stories of their family (and they still do!)

So as a little girl and then a teenager and then an adult, I would always look forward to their letter. It is a bit magical to get that letter every year, to see how their children grew, where they went, what they did, their highs and lows, their joys and griefs, their gifts and their losses.

Eventually, I too starting writing back to them, and now thanks to email, manage to keep in touch more than once annually. When I wrote to them about my PlantMeATree dream, they wrote back to assure me that there would soon be a fruit tree growing for me at their home in Canada.

David - who is a poet and sends me some of his beautiful writing from time to time - also sent me this poem that he had written during one of his many travels:

A TREE.

A tree on a hill.
Not on the crest, just on the side.
There are many other trees
higher up, lower down.
I will never be a huge tree;
just a tree!
A breeze wafts, my leaves flutter.
A wind blows, my branches move
and my leaves speak.
A gale blasts and my twigs fall,
my leaves are rent.
The rain slants!
It is wet, it cleans
but I do not understand this.
I do not care anyway.
It happens!
I am a tree.
Nothing more.
Only small plants are less.
I do not think.
I do not care.
It does not matter;
for I am just a tree.

David Garlick.
Puerto Vallarta, Feb. 2001.

How the Tree-thing all started.

I remember very little of my childhood, which is a pity, because alongside the bad, I've missed out on the good. Much of my life, I've pretended to remember, nodding and laughing at stories I've put together from other people's anecdotes or old photographs. So I don't really remember the planting of the first tree. It was a magnolia of some sort, I think. The ones with those big waxy white flowers that smell so heavenly. In Urdu, it's called 'franjipani'. My father planted it just inside the gate of House 429 in Awali, Bahrain. It doesn't matter that I don't remember the planting of it, though, because over the years, every time we drove down to Awali, we would pass our old house, and seeing the tree that Daddy planted was a significant part of every drive. I'm sure I have a picture of it somewhere. I hope it is still growing. It must be around 40 years old now, just a bit younger than I am.

My father was a planter of trees. And so, every house that we've lived in, that had a patch of earth, would be home not just to us, but to the trees my father would plant and leave behind as a legacy. In Gufool, in the 80s, it was two 'gulmohars' (Flame of The Forest), one of which was still as glorious as ever the last time i saw it. In Adliya in the 90s, it was a lemon tree in the backyard and more gulmohars flanking the front gate.

At our first Indian home, the Awali township's namesake here in Bangalore, the trees have gone, replaced by a rather glossy commercial building that I'd ask you to please not begrudge - that building makes it possible for me to work full time on Askios (my voluntary job on CSA awareness). And now, at the new family home 'Dilmun', there are many new trees - a custard apple tree that's already borne two seasons of fruit, the 'kari-pattha' tree whose leaves I meet at lunch most days, a remarkable drumstick tree that has seen thousands of sticks distributed over the years to friends and neighbours - and that brings delightful little brown and yellow bee-eaters twittering to its flowers, a lime tree that gave up the ghosts just this year - and of course its heir Tree #1, the new lime tree planted a few days ago.

I've inherited my father's eyes and feet. His ability to make a great tomato jam. His artistic skills. His way with birds. And his tree-planting tendencies. Back in Abu Ghazaal in 2000, I turned a rubbishy old back yard into a fertile little garden and have left behind 6 ficuses growing in a row there, as well as a citrus tree and bougainvillea in the plots around the sides of my house. I often wonder how they grow (and would love it if a Bahrain-based friend who knows where I lived, could pop in and check on them for me!)

Barren spinster I may be, but I'm going to leave behind a hell of a lot of trees!

A tree story from Hungary.

A friend of mine wrote to me today after receiving my PlantMeATree email. Peter and his wife Ildi are good friends of mine from my days in advertising. Peter worked with me, and they were also my neighbours, living just down the road in Abu Ghazaal. Many warm memories of the times we spent together -exotic sweet spring rolls made with jackfruit and jam, wandering through the Isa Town souq chasing birds, tearfully translating Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham to an equally tearful listener (that was Ildi not Peter!), agonising over brochure amendments and the suits that brought them to us, my first taste of rosehips, discovering Hungarian music and oh-so-long words. And those of you who have seen my "poet" picture (the one where I'm fleeing the ocean with a tablecloth for a cape) may be interested toknow that it was Ildi who captured that moment on film.

Well, in today's email, Peter wrote the following and I thought it was too lovely not to add to this blog. Peter, I hope you don't mind me quotingyou here!

"it's a strange coincidence with your wish as a birthday present and witha tree in our garden. perhaps you remember that we discussed particularly the different kinds of fruits. once i listed all the trees and bushes in our garden. there was one tree i couldn't name in english. looking up in the dictionary it gave me the word: naseberry-tree. since then i've treated our loved tree as naseberry and it always reminded me of you. we noticed that its name sounds like nazu. apparently the dictionary was incorrect it is a medlar tree as i got to know recently. naseberry is a tropical fruit no matter how similar it is to a medlar. however this plant will remain to be a nazu tree."

So there already is a Nazu tree?! A pre-42 Nazu tree! And Peter and Ildi have assured me that come spring, they will be planting another specially for me. It will be a poplar that promises to grow tall. One day I shall sit under it with my friends and a big plate of hot jackfruit rolls ..