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In our Qrs C1-97 at KGP, there was this Banaresi guava tree. I don't know which of my predecessors planted it but within a couple of years of our shifting there it started yielding sumptuous fruit. By then its branches covered our roof and kitchen yard but there were no stairs to go up. Come July-August with their torrential rains, we would see a couple of dozen fruit ripening by every dawn and there would be squirrels, parrots and sundry other birds of song devouring them. It was a symphony of sight and sound but there was a catch. The squirrels and birds would only peck and nibble leaving half-eaten fruit dropping on the roof and the floor. And these generated such rich perfume that turned into an unbearable stink enveloping our entire house and us and we got allergic to it and wished the tree would perish...a harsh wish but only those who had gone through it can understand.
But it didn't...rather. By then my son grew into a toddler and to amuse him I would go up the roof with a long hooked stick heaving myself up the kitchen yard cistern, then the moss-covered parapet, and then the roof-wall risking my life and limb and pluck the ripe fruit so they fall down into the waiting hands of my son down below in a catching practice...he loved the routine and undertook the subsequent task of distributing the yield among his friends near and far. But it was a grueling task.
Come 1989 (?) there was this terrific cyclone whose eye passed right over our Qrs at midnight and we watched our guava tree shiver, tremble, break and finally cut down root and branch. Next morning we had mixed feelings seeing the giant laid low, but celebrated the event silently thinking that we were finally cleansed of its super-rich guava perfume....after a couple of decades, the other day my son bought a can of Tropicana juice and lovingly fetched a glass filled to the brim while I was blogging; and from a distance I could smell it and recalled the past and asked him: "It is guava juice, no?" and told him brusquely: "Take it away!". He then brought lichi juice and I drained it in a gulp.
Returning to our guava cornucopia, we discovered that within a few months of the cyclonic devastation, a young sapling of the mother that took root by the kitchen drain looked up and grew into a giant within the next two years; and my son and myself were back to our Foundation Day routine. But of course there was no question of our cutting it down since despite our early morning harvest, the tree was again host to squirrels and birds....
And one of those squirrels saved my life, rather:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/09/snakes-iit.html
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As a rule I love short and simple words...although to mimic Hemingway, I too know a few 'ten-dollar' words ;-)
Were Jeeves to say:
"Should the contingency arise that my present employer's social imbecility escalates into matrimony, it would be incumbent on my part to relinquish my position however congenial it otherwise is,"
and Bertie explains:
"He means he would damn well quit if I got married,"
I would rather go with Berite than Jeeves in my blogs.
But there is this word: 'cornucopia' that I often find irreplaceable. I met this word in my college text and it at once charmed me. Our Teacher (a grumpy soul) said it meant: 'horn of plenty' and let it go at that. I looked up its etymology: apparently, the infant Zeus had to be hidden from his devouring father Cronus. And when left in a cave on Mount Ida, the goat Amalthea fed him with such nutritious milk that he grew very strong and while playing with his foster mother he broke one of her horns. And that horn took over the task of feeding him then on and became a symbol of unending nourishment:
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In our Qrs C1-97 at KGP, there was this Banaresi guava tree. I don't know which of my predecessors planted it but within a couple of years of our shifting there it started yielding sumptuous fruit. By then its branches covered our roof and kitchen yard but there were no stairs to go up. Come July-August with their torrential rains, we would see a couple of dozen fruit ripening by every dawn and there would be squirrels, parrots and sundry other birds of song devouring them. It was a symphony of sight and sound but there was a catch. The squirrels and birds would only peck and nibble leaving half-eaten fruit dropping on the roof and the floor. And these generated such rich perfume that turned into an unbearable stink enveloping our entire house and us and we got allergic to it and wished the tree would perish...a harsh wish but only those who had gone through it can understand.
But it didn't...rather. By then my son grew into a toddler and to amuse him I would go up the roof with a long hooked stick heaving myself up the kitchen yard cistern, then the moss-covered parapet, and then the roof-wall risking my life and limb and pluck the ripe fruit so they fall down into the waiting hands of my son down below in a catching practice...he loved the routine and undertook the subsequent task of distributing the yield among his friends near and far. But it was a grueling task.
Come 1989 (?) there was this terrific cyclone whose eye passed right over our Qrs at midnight and we watched our guava tree shiver, tremble, break and finally cut down root and branch. Next morning we had mixed feelings seeing the giant laid low, but celebrated the event silently thinking that we were finally cleansed of its super-rich guava perfume....after a couple of decades, the other day my son bought a can of Tropicana juice and lovingly fetched a glass filled to the brim while I was blogging; and from a distance I could smell it and recalled the past and asked him: "It is guava juice, no?" and told him brusquely: "Take it away!". He then brought lichi juice and I drained it in a gulp.
Returning to our guava cornucopia, we discovered that within a few months of the cyclonic devastation, a young sapling of the mother that took root by the kitchen drain looked up and grew into a giant within the next two years; and my son and myself were back to our Foundation Day routine. But of course there was no question of our cutting it down since despite our early morning harvest, the tree was again host to squirrels and birds....
And one of those squirrels saved my life, rather:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/09/snakes-iit.html
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