Our papaya tree did yield two fruits at last. We had saved
the seeds from a very tasty fruit given to us by a friend and had sown them.
Resident ants of our garden loved the taste of the seeds and they finished most
of the seeds. Out of the few seedlings that came up, three grew up. I planted
them at three different places around the house. One died due to stagnation of
water around the roots. Monkeys ate one sapling when it was about two feet high
and very tender. I managed to save the third one and it grew at its own pace.
It was nearly eight feet high and was flowering during last rains. One morning
after a very windy and rainy night I found the tree lying flat on the ground.
Since the roots were intact, I lifted it up and supported it with whatever was
handy. Sticks, bricks and used car tyres to name a few. It survived the monsoon
and another onslaught of monkeys and the flowers turned into tiny raw fruits. We
eagerly waited for them to grow in size but one after the other they ripened and
rotted overnight while they were still very small. To our relief, this
phenomenon stopped on its own and some of the fruits grew in size. But they remained
green even after they were quite large. I was observing them every day and when
I detected (or imagined?) a very faint yellow shade in two of them I plucked those
two in an attempt to prevent them from rotting on the tree and kept them
separately hoping that they would ripen naturally. Nothing happened for three days
and I was expecting them to dry up. To our great surprise they had silently turned
to a beautiful orange- yellow on the
fourth morning reminding me of Mankutimma’s ‘Phala maaguvandu tuttoori
daniyilla’ (Trumpets are not blown when the fruit ripens).
I was sure that the fruits would taste as good as they
appear and they did. But better was the taste of success in nurturing the plant
and getting the fruits in hand. We had
just finished the one that was cut and was about to go for the next when a friend
of mine came along carrying some fresh vegetables he had grown in his field. He
had been bringing us vegetables this season and we had nothing to offer him in
return. The papaya came in handy. He accepted our home grown papaya with pleasure.
Its feels nice to nurture a plant and get the fruit in hand but feels even
better to offer the fruit to someone we like. “haNNu hanchi tinnu, hoovu koTTu
muDi” goes the saying (share your fruits and flowers).
I have written about our chikoo, guava and plantains earlier
and this papaya is probably the last, at least for the time being. We do have
another two trees in our compound, the mango and the coconuts. Considering the
rate at which the mango is growing, only the progeny beyond my great grandson/daughter
may have some chance of tasting the fruit. One coconut tree has just started with
the first flower and I do not know how long it takes for the flowers to turn
into coconuts. People who are in the know about plants and trees (or think they
know the plants and trees) say that the first flower of a coconut tree never
turns into coconuts and they also say that I have made a mistake planting the
mango and coconut next to each other. I believe both of them are highly ‘individualistic’
trees and will never thrive in the company of the other.
When my wife hears such observations about my mistakes, she whole
heartedly approves their view adding that this house has as many mistakes as
the number of bricks used in its construction. She also says that if I can make a list of all my mistakes
and put them on the blog, at least the blog, (on which I waste such a lot of
time) would be useful for someone who intends planning his/her own house!
That apart, talking about the trees, I read somewhere that after we leave the house in which we grow up and set up a house of our own we
tend to recreate the atmosphere of the one in which we lived as children. I do
not know if it is so but when we found ourselves with some space around this
house in which we could plant some fruit trees, the first tree that I thought
of planting was the guava tree. Was it because the memory of the guava tree
which was in front of our house in Bangalore and on which we have spent a
considerable part of our childhood never fades away?
I would like to write about this guava tree and few others
which were around our house in Bangalore. We have enjoyed their presence and
they have many pleasant memories associated with them. But it would get really
long. So, I will take my brother’s example of writing in pieces and save them
for the next bit if and when I can make it. In the hope of continuing about our
fruit trees I have named this ‘Fruit Trees - 1’.
