One day, when Rakesh was six, he walked home from the Mussoorie bazaar eating
cherries. They were a little sweet, a little sour; small, bright red cherries, which
had come all the way from the Kashmir Valley.
Here in the Himalayan foothills where Rakesh lived, there were not many fruit trees.
The soil was stony, and the dry cold winds stunted the growth of most plants. But on the
more sheltered slopes there were forests of oak and deodar.
Rakesh lived with his grandfather on the outskirts of Mussoorie, just where the
forest began. His father and mother lived in a small village fifty miles away, where they
grew maize and rice and barley in narrow terraced fields on the lower slopes of the
mountain. But there were no schools in the village, and Rakesh’s parents were keen that
he should go to school. As soon as he was of school-going age, they sent him to stay
with his grandfather in Mussoorie.
He had a little cottage outside the town.
Rakesh was on his way home from school when he bought the cherries. He paid fifty
paise for the bunch. It took him about half-an-hour to walk home, and by the time he
reached the cottage there were only three cherries left.
‘Have a cherry, Grandfather,’ he said, as soon as he saw his grandfather in the
garden.
Grandfather took one cherry and Rakesh promptly ate the other two. He kept the last
seed in his mouth for some time, rolling it round and round on his tongue until all the
tang had gone. Then he placed the seed on the palm of his hand and studied it.
‘Are cherry seeds lucky?’ asked Rakesh.
‘Of course.’
‘Then I’ll keep it.’
‘Nothing is lucky if you put it away. If you want luck, you must put it to some use.’
‘What can I do with a seed?’
‘Plant it.’
So Rakesh found a small space and began to dig up a flowerbed.
‘Hey, not there,’ said Grandfather, ‘I’ve sown mustard in that bed. Plant it in that
shady corner, where it won’t be disturbed.’
Rakesh went to a corner of the garden where the earth was soft and yielding. He did
not have to dig. He pressed the seed into the soil with his thumb and it went right in.
Then he had his lunch, and ran off to play cricket with his friends, and forgot all
about the cherry seed.
When it was winter in the hills, a cold wind blew down from the snows and went whoo-whoo-whoo in the deodar trees, and the garden was dry and bare. In the evenings
Grandfather and Rakesh sat over a charcoal fire, and Grandfather told Rakesh stories –
stories about people who turned into animals, and ghosts who lived in trees, and beans
that jumped and stones that wept – and in turn Rakesh would read to him from the
newspaper, Grandfather’s eyesight being rather weak. Rakesh found the newspaper
very dull – especially after the stories – but Grandfather wanted all the news…
They knew it was spring when the wild duck flew north again, to Siberia. Early in
the morning, when he got up to chop wood and light a fire, Rakesh saw the V–shaped
formation streaming northward, the calls of the birds carrying clearly through the thin
mountain air.
One morning in the garden he bent to pick up what he thought was a small twig and
found to his surprise that it was well rooted. He stared at it for a moment, then ran to
fetch Grandfather, calling, ‘Dada, come and look, the cherry tree has come up!’
‘What cherry tree?’ asked Grandfather, who had forgotten about it. ‘The seed we
planted last year – look, it’s come up!’
Rakesh went down on his haunches, while Grandfather bent almost double and
peered down at the tiny tree. It was about four inches high.
‘Yes, it’s a cherry tree,’ said Grandfather. ‘You should water it now and then.’
Rakesh ran indoors and came back with a bucket of water.
‘Don’t drown it!’ said Grandfather.
Rakesh gave it a sprinkling and circled it with pebbles.
‘What are the pebbles for?’ asked Grandfather.
‘For privacy,’ said Rakesh.
He looked at the tree every morning but it did not seem to be growing very fast, so
he stopped looking at it except quickly, out of the corner of his eye. And, after a week
or two, when he allowed himself to look at it properly, he found that it had grown – at
least an inch!
That year the monsoon rains came early and Rakesh plodded to and from school in
raincoat and chappals. Ferns sprang from the trunks of trees, strange-looking lilies
came up in the long grass, and even when it wasn’t raining the trees dripped and mist
came curling up the valley. The cherry tree grew quickly in this season.
It was about two feet high when a goat entered the garden and ate all the leaves.
Only the main stem and two thin branches remained.
‘Never mind,’ said Grandfather, seeing that Rakesh was upset. ‘It will grow again,
cherry trees are tough.’
Towards the end of the rainy season new leaves appeared on the tree. Then a woman
cutting grass scrambled down the hillside, her scythe swishing through the heavy
monsoon foliage. She did not try to avoid the tree: one sweep, and the cherry tree was
cut in two.
When Grandfather saw what had happened, he went after the woman and scolded her; but the damage could not be repaired.
‘Maybe it will die now,’ said Rakesh.
‘Maybe,’ said Grandfather.
But the cherry tree had no intention of dying.
By the time summer came round again, it had sent out several new shoots with tender
green leaves. Rakesh had grown taller too. He was eight now, a sturdy boy with curly
black hair and deep black eyes. ‘Blackberry eyes,’ Grandfather called them.
That monsoon Rakesh went home to his village, to help his father and mother with
the planting and ploughing and sowing. He was thinner but stronger when he came back
to Grandfather’s house at the end of the rains to find that the cherry tree had grown
another foot. It was now up to his chest.
Even when there was rain, Rakesh would sometimes water the tree. He wanted it to
know that he was there.
One day he found a bright green praying-mantis perched on a branch, peering at him
with bulging eyes. Rakesh let it remain there; it was the cherry tree’s first visitor.
The next visitor was a hairy caterpillar, who started making a meal of the leaves.
Rakesh removed it quickly and dropped it on a heap of dry leaves.
Come back when you’re a butterfly,’ he said.
Winter came early. The cherry tree bent low with the weight of snow. Field-mice
sought shelter in the roof of the cottage. The road from the valley was blocked, and for
several days there was no newspaper, and this made Grandfather quite grumpy. His
stories began to have unhappy endings.
In February it was Rakesh’s birthday. He was nine – and the tree was four, but
almost as tall as Rakesh.
One morning, when the sun came out, Grandfather came into the garden to ‘let some
warmth get into my bones,’ as he put it. He stopped in front of the cherry tree, stared at
it for a few moments, and then called out, ‘Rakesh! Come and look! Come quickly
before it falls!’
Rakesh and Grandfather gazed at the tree as though it had performed a miracle.
There was a pale pink blossom at the end of a branch.
The following year there were more blossoms. And suddenly the tree was taller than
Rakesh, even though it was less than half his age. And then it was taller than
Grandfather, who was older than some of the oak trees.
But Rakesh had grown too. He could run and jump and climb trees as well as most
boys, and he read a lot of books, although he still liked listening to Grandfather’s tales.
In the cherry tree, bees came to feed on the nectar in the blossoms, and tiny birds
pecked at the blossoms and broke them off. But the tree kept blossoming right through
the spring, and there were always more blossoms than birds.
That summer there were small cherries on the tree. Rakesh tasted one and spat it out.
‘It’s too sour,’ he said. ‘They’ll be better next year,’ said Grandfather.
But the birds liked them – especially the bigger birds, such as the bulbuls and scarlet
minivets – and they flitted in and out of the foliage, feasting on the cherries.
On a warm sunny afternoon, when even the bees looked sleepy, Rakesh was looking
for Grandfather without finding him in any of his favourite places around the house.
Then he looked out of the bedroom window and saw Grandfather reclining on a cane
chair under the cherry tree.
‘There’s just the right amount of shade here,’ said Grandfather. ‘And I like looking at
the leaves.’
‘They’re pretty leaves,’ said Rakesh. ‘And they are always ready to dance, if there’s
a breeze.’
After Grandfather had come indoors, Rakesh went into the garden and lay down on
the grass beneath the tree. He gazed up through the leaves at the great blue sky; and
turning on his side, he could see the mountains striding away into the clouds. He was
still lying beneath the tree when the evening shadows crept across the garden.
Grandfather came back and sat down beside Rakesh, and they waited in silence until
the stars came out and the nightjar began to call. In the forest below, the crickets and
cicadas began tuning up; and suddenly the trees were full of the sound of insects.
‘There are so many trees in the forest,’ said Rakesh. ‘What’s so special about this
tree? Why do we like it so much?’
‘We planted it ourselves,’ said Grandfather. That’s why it’s special.’
‘Just one small seed,’ said Rakesh, and he touched the smooth bark of the tree that he
had grown. He ran his hand along the trunk of the tree and put his finger to the tip of a
leaf. ‘I wonder,’ he whispered. ‘Is this what it feels to be God?’
