The Grand Old Tree

Sometimes its silly, but most of the times we are very much attached to our surroundings, we will be forced to live in places which we never like, but the nostalgic memories from within us gives us a refreshed feeling, or more precisely a moment of joy.There will be numerous things around us which knowingly or unknowingly gets attached with us, we will never understand its value until its gone.

Kannur, Yes that's my native place, people from Kerala will surely know the importance of Kannur for its political history, a place rich in culture and heritage. But this blog is not about Kannur, rather its about my small house located in Kannur near Valapattanam, an old house, a house which is older than my mother. My grandmother build this house after a long hard struggle, she always shared the troubles she had faced financially and mentally to construct this small yet strong house. I always used to wonder about her will power, she was a rock solid women inside and still maintained a kind posture. Circumstance changes a person completely, that must be the thing with her. But no, this blog is also not about my grandmother, My grandmother requires more then just a reference here and there. This blog is about a grand old jack fruit tree. Yes, even jackfruit trees can inspire you to write blogs, I am not sure how old that tree is, but I am sure that it has fed a lot of generations.

The house in which I grew was not the most financially stable house, we had our own share of troubles to make our ends meet. But I have no right to complain about my past, as all of those who took care of me has given me more than I deserved. Our house was a delightful place, we are all attached to that place where we grow up, no matter how the conditions are, we will  never be able to forget the tiny memories associated with it. There were a lot of trees in my backyard, but a jackfruit tree which stood in the front of my house was something special. As a kid I never liked the taste, smell or even the look of jackfruits, I found it very ugly and fat, we even mock people calling them "chakka" (the malayalam name of jack fruit). And I was not fond of that tree, It was always full of ants which when bites, Oh my god... the pain is more then what i could explain, and when jackfruits start to fall from tree, GROSS it was a big sticky and stingy mess, moreover it caused a serious problem while playing badminton, once the shuttle cock get stuck in one of its branches and we had to stop our play. 

 

                                                                                                                                                              

But others in the house was very much in love for this tree which i never understood, everyone except me like to eat ripe jack fruits like crazy, my mother, brother , aunt, uncle even my neighbours came running for it. But I never found it as something special. Now I wish I had eaten it  a lot those days, my grand mother used to make jack fruit jam which I am very much fond of these days. But I always kept a blind eye towards everything which had a jack in it, foolish me. 

The history as I said earlier associated with that tree and my family is deep rooted, my mother has told me many stories of how they have survived for days only eating the jackfruits. They trust this tree, they keep believing that this tree will provide them with food, which sounds foolish, but it is the truth. All my relatives living in different places always made sure that they eat this fruit whenever they came to my house, Obviously they came during their vacation but still they had that super craze to have some of it. People like me are those 'proud of nothing' type, we always find problems, issues with each and everything around us, and desire for something which we never had, I liked almost all the other fruits and simply ignored the one which is in front of me.

My grand mother died and the complete scenario changed, I was in college during that time and my brother was working in Mumbai. My mother was alone there so we moved into Vallikav Kollam, near my college, I surely missed my native but little did I know that I was going to miss that stupid tree, you get the irony right. Sometimes its like that, you simply dont require any real reason to miss something. Now I have started eating jackfruits from here in vallikav, and i really regret my decision of not eating that till now, All these years when we had plenty of ripe fleshy and juicy fruits, I ignored it and craved for something which was not there for the taking, Now after leaving that place and most probably for a very long period, I have developed a deep desire to eat that fruit.

I have learned an important lesson from this, that one should be able to find content with whatever he is having, I might not be able to implement this completely, but I will certainly remember this lesson whenever I turn greedy for something which I dont have. That tree certainly have some connection with our family, generations after generations it keeps on attaching the missing links of the family together and teaching us some important life lessons. Most of us keep trying to become someone or something which we are not, and shy away from the reality, but nature will keep on providing us with enough examples to look into, it must be our duty to understand it before too late.