Skip to main content

The pampered peepal

 Published in The Hindu Open Page

The pampered peepal

Left unequipped for the tough realities out there

THOMAS PAUL


August 05, 2018 12:10 am | Updated March 15, 2020 04:55 pm IST ... There was this peepal sapling, about six inches tall with a couple of leaves and two ...  August 05, 2018 12:10 am | Updated March 15, 2020 04:55 pm IST

There was this peepal sapling, about six inches tall with a couple of leaves and two exposed roots, dangling by the side of a compound wall, struggling for a foothold on the vertical, smooth, hard surface. I could see it didn’t have a future there. I wondered how this seed might have flown in and athletically lodged itself in the inch-wide crevice on the side of a wall, and taken root there. There must have been its companion seeds dropping a few inches away and landing on fertile soil, but they didn’t take root. Peepal trees are like that. They have to come up the hard way, clinging to the side of a rock or wall, and ignore potentially better life offered a yard away on flat soil. Like people, some of us, some of the time.

So this sapling, so unmindful of its future, seemed happy there, on the wall face. It was never going to be the huge shade-giving tree that would give refuge to the tired traveller, be the backdrop for a temple, have women wrapping threads around it and hoping to conceive, or have the village panchayat seated around it dispensing justice. The current location was hopeless. This sapling needed a better future. So, I pulled the sapling out gingerly, with minimum root damage, and hurried home with it.

I placed the sapling in a pot in my balcony and watered it. After an initial week of wilting due to the transplantation, tiny leaves sprouted and eventually I had a sapling with six leaves, all shiny green. I worried then that the balcony of a flat was no place for a future monster peepal tree, and the idea struck me — bonsai, a whole tree in miniature. Thanking the Japanese, I snipped off new shoots of leaves and watched to see if its trunk grew.

Two years later, the potted peepal, regularly pruned, still looked scraggy and didn’t look anything like a bonsai, but it gave me something to do every day, watering the pot, snipping off sprouting leaves, staring at the sapling, and willing it to grow.

Unfortunately, a random Google search yielded the counsel that peepal should not be grown within the perimeter of the house. Vibration and magnetic field, it said. Bad luck and stuff. The clincher was the hint of evil spirits, at which we panicked. So, much against my will, I had to take the peepal out of the house. I didn’t want to be blamed for every leaking tap, dropped crockery or mishap.

I found a place for my peepal in the vast vacant lot in my neighbourhood on the route of my morning walk. Dug a hole there and transplanted it right amongst other wild-growing shrubbery. I stamped out the surrounding foliage so they would not compete with my peepal for nourishment. It was summer, and the area looked a bit parched. So I took to carrying a bottle of water each morning during my walk and stopping by to empty the bottle over the erstwhile bonsai, now free to grow to its true magnificence.

The thing is, while the hardy shrubbery all around seemed to thrive, my transplanted peepal right in their midst seemed to wilt, suffering perhaps firom introduction to new soil. I was partial to watering only the peepal with the limited bottle water supply every day, while feeling mildly guilty that I couldn’t water the whole acreage of plants around.

It’s been another year gone, and the peepal hasn’t put up a good show, despite my pampering and nannying. Maybe that is precisely the problem — my plant is expecting preferential treatment. So I’ve stopped the watering and clearing of space around the peepal. Let the thing strike out more roots, compete with other plants: I was done with the spoon-feeding. Now it’s been a couple of months more and I check in with the peepal from afar, on my walk. Nothing to report, sorry to say. The bonsai mentality has taken hold, is my conclusion. Just as it happens with some people.

sagitex@gmail.com

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/the-pampered-peepal/article24603502.ece

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chaos at the level crossing

  Published in The Hindu Open Page Chaos at the level crossing  PREMIUM     It’s a stampede in slow motion, requiring nothing less than God’s help June 25, 2023 12:56 am | Updated 12:56 am IST THOMAS PAUL As the gateman raises the boom barrier, there is a veritiable stampede. | D riving across a railway level crossing during peak hours cures your low blood pressure. For instance, you are the first at a closed level crossing on a narrow two-lane road. More vehicles arrive and queue up behind you on the left lane. The right lane remains free to allow vehicles from the opposite side to come through when the crossing opens. So far, so good. A minute passes. The queue behind you is getting longer. Then the inevitable happens. An impatient cab driver (is there any other kind?) arriving last, ignores the mile-long queue in front of him, takes the right lane, and draws abreast of your car. He is in the wrong lane, but his look says, “So what?” He is swiftly...
Post a Comment
Read more

The paan puzzle

  Published in The Hindu Open Page The paan puzzle Many addicts may chew outdoors, but when it comes to spitting, they prefer indoors. THOMAS PAUL November 21, 2021 01:30 am | Updated 01:30 am IST Paan  -chewers are people of few words. When the mouth is full of paan, the words don’t come easily; it’s either chew or speak. Unlike chewed gum which can be discreetly discarded, chewed paan, when expelled, marks territory forever. Perverse  paan  -chewers may chew outdoors, but when it comes to spitting, they prefer indoors. In a homing instinct, they will locate a tall building, avoid the lift, huff up the staircase and squirt their mouthful in a stairway landing, precisely in the corner. Freshly white-washed walls are open invitations for them to splatter them red. One jugaad solution to this problem has been to install glazed tiles with pictures of deities. This is not foolproof, and only shifts the spitting a few metres from the nearest picture. We sneer at...
Post a Comment
Read more

The queue conundrum

  Published in The Hindu Open Page The queue conundrum Scientific queue management hasn’t caught on everywhere. The jostling continues THOMAS PAUL   May 01, 2022 12:38 am | Updated 12:38 am IST 01-May-2022  ...  A single counter will have at least three strands of  queues  developing in front of it, each strand competing to access the  window  of the counter ... The movie  Kaalia  (1981) featured a queue-despising Amitabh Bachchan declaring famously that queues began from wherever he stood. That shook our faith in the queue system a bit. While many of us endure queues like martyrs, the smart ones bypass them. Some clog it perversely. Bypassing the queue Confused as we usually are by movies-inspired fake pride, we suspect that standing behind somebody in a queue amounts to a lowering of status. So we level the field by stepping to the left or right. This causes a corresponding zigzagging behind us, and soon the queue ...
Post a Comment
Read more