A Tree at our window.

Photograph : Vishnu Mathur ©

A Tree At Our Window.

Rain is lashing at my window pane. The trees are swaying vigorously in the wind. Many rains ago in one such storm a tree got uprooted right in front of our window. A nice thickly wooded tree which covered the entire window pane. It protected us from the harsh summer heat and gave us  a view from our window so to say. Many birds traversed through the day and nested during the night only to wake up early morning without an alarm so to say.

The falling of the tree was a loss. It made our window bare and we lost our view. We were also exposed to the peeping windows of the building next to us. A towering one on top of it. The tree was cut in to pieces and towed away and the ground was cleared leaving a huge gap between a nice row of trees. A vacuum . Nobody seem to mind except us. When the rains eased up that year I gathered all the kids of the society building and ventured on a tree planting champagne. I made each one of them plant one tree and asked them to take care of it. Finally I made the youngest child plant a tree in the gap which was created by the falling of the tree we loved. But the gap remained .The tree sapling  was very small. Much much below the level of our third floor window. So we had to wait.

Many many years. Meanwhile the saplings were taken care and watered regularly some times by the children who planted them, the gardener of the society or sometimes by me when the small trees were ignored. Slowly the trees grew up along with the children who planted them. Meanwhile the gap between the trees remained and we continued to face the reflected heat from the window panes of the opposite building. Often we forced to pull our curtains when we really did not want to depriving us of the nice view we had from our window. But we had to wait while the tree grew up slowly and steadily. We kept a close watch hoping it will grow up fast and cover our window once again like before. Giving us the green cover we missed all those years.

Days, months and years have passed since then. It did not happen with a bang but one day the top branch of the tree came up to our eye level of our third floor window. I remember that day and we kind of celebrated that day. Once again we had view from the window we liked. Once again there were the swaying branches of the tree in front of us. Once again there were birds chirping in the morning in front of our window Once again we could look out of our window without somebody looking at us. Our patient  wait bore fruits. Perhaps thirty years, we did not mind. It was worth the wait.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Vishnu Mathur

                                                                                                                                                             October 29, 2015

                                                                                                                                                                     Mumbai.