Samvarta Bandyopadhyay

It was so many years ago that the sketches in my mind are all made up with shades of gray for all those missing colours. We all grew up in a factory estate nestled among the decaying suburbs of Kolkata. Dunlop Estate as we so lovingly called was so different from its surroundings that it’s hard to fathom. I know all of us who grew up there have branched out in different places around the world, but what remains to us so vivid is the pride with which we associate our childhood with “Dunlop Estate”.

I was born in Dunlop Hospital. So I was destined somehow to have Dunlop Hospital as my place of birth embedded in my life story. But this story is not my life story, and nor is it about Dunlop, the name, Dunlop the factory, or Dunlop the estate. Its about a boy and a small tree opposite the fire station.

My father worked as a mid level manager in the factory and he had been allocated a staff quarter, very near to the Factory’s main entrance. He said he preferred it due to its proximity to his work place. But with a pro there was a con, having the ever alert “Fire Station” opposite the road from our flat, with its 9 am sirens, and rushing fire engines. Even an ambulance was housed in the station for the needy. The quarter was also witness to the violent worker agitations staged in front of the factory gate every year. But all these have faded away into oblivion in my memory. What remains still; is the crystal view of a tree standing against the backdrop of dark clouds, yards away from our flat, and just opposite the fire station, across the road from it. The time: late afternoon, summer. Kal Baishakhi clouds hung low in the sky. Dark, and still. Rain and thunder was now minutes away.

Nothing could stop me from running out from our house, into the lawn and then clamour onto the tree. It wasn’t a hard one to climb, and I do not know the name or kind of the tree. It wasn’t very tall, for a nine-year old boy to climb, and it was the ideal amongst the long row of trees standing on each side of the road in front of the Fire Station.

As I climbed onto the lower branches of the tree, the first gushes of the Kal Baishakhi winds started to beat down on us. The tree though small seemed to be the perfect place to find shelter. The branches, now swerving, seemed an absolute embrace of love and security. Irony as it is, the mind of a child can play its own act as it wishes.

I used to so much love this time and this tree that it made me do away with all the woes of the day. As the storm got intense, and the rains started, the little leaves tried their best to keep me dry, and the branches made sure that I didn’t fall off. There used to be some curious firemen acting as spoil sports, as they yanked at me to get back home, but nothing was compared to my mother calling at the top of her voice “Come back..” against the roaring storm. I had no choice but to head home, looking back sadly at my friend who was now alone; moving violently, trying every bit to save its branches from crashing down. Alas it had no one to save now apart from itself.

The tree was always my place of comfort. I used to lighten my heart often talking to it and myself at the same time. It seemed to me it listened. It understood. The sigh of its leaves left a mark in my mind that it felt my sorrows. The bristling leaves shared the moments of some funny episodes. It spoke through silence as I lay on one of its branches.

It was a friendship which was never shared or talked about. It was between us. Somehow between the entities like a fire station saving the whole community and the walled homes where we all lived there used to be a friend ever beckoning with open arms, as its branches. It tried and might have saved me from all those violent summer storms, but never got a chance.  

Many years have passed since I moved from Dunlop Estate, then from Kolkata and eventually India. The memory of this tree still stays on in my mind. There has never been any other to climb onto, feeling those gushes of wind or splutters of rain drops as two little hands cling onto its branches.