Pratap Reddy

The Lime Tree

It was only a coarse brown envelope from home, but it fetched a smile of pleasure in me. I had been feeling low, facing an uncertain future as an international student studying in Toronto. The latest changes to immigration laws had made returning to India a real possibility.

I knew what the package would contain: a copy of my sister’s first book of poetry. She was in her early twenties like me, but was already being noticed as an animal activist and a writer. I was flipping through the slim volume when a poem’s title made me stop. I started to read:

A tree so beautiful
Like nothing on this earth
It could’ve only been transplanted
From some celestial arbour

 Even as I was reading, memories jostled their way into my mind…

You can see the tree when you round the last corner on the way to Grandma’s house. The tree grows in her neighbour’s lot. But we aren’t looking: I’m busy with a game on my phone; my sister Mithuna has her head turned away, gazing at the hillside to our right; and Auntie’s in the middle of her customary joust with the taxi driver about the steep fare from the railway station.

Auntie is Daddy’s second or third cousin. For the last two years, she’s been chaperoning us on holidays as our parents are tied up with their fledgling consultancy business. The taxi comes to a stop in front of Grandma’s house. The driver toots pom, pom, pom-pom-pom! As we step out, Auntie emits a loud gasp. Thinking Auntie’s being strangled by the irate driver, I turn my head with interest. But Auntie’s staring in the direction of our neighbour’s compound. Then I, too, notice the object that has triggered her amazement.

Resplendent in a garment verdant
Bedeck’d with fruit that shine
In the clear morning light –
Like jewels rarely seen

 It’s the same lime tree that had looked so emaciated last year that it made Mithuna joke that it was suffering from scurvy.

Grandma comes to the front door, beaming. Close on her heels is the new maidservant Nirmala, also beaming, presumably catching the contagion from my grandma, though she has never seen us before. Grandma hugs Mithuna and me, enveloping us with the smells of old age and the day’s cooking. I’m surprised to notice how much she seems to have shrunk. I remember her as a strong, tall woman. But then I’ve put on nearly a foot since we last saw her.

“Smile, child,” she says to my sister. Mithuna had been difficult throughout the journey—sometimes overexcited, sometimes morose, but always managing to annoy Auntie. And Grandma says to me: “How tall you’ve grown!”

I avoid my sister’s eye. We’re twins; I’m older by a few minutes, but we look so different from each other that nobody would take us for siblings even. We’re fifteen years of age. I’m fair-skinned, tall, and strong for my age. On my cheeks, there’s already a shadowy presence of facial hair. I love sports, and play soccer and tennis. I’m good at studies, too, especially math.

My sister’s small-built, almost scrawny, and looks more like a child than a teenager. She’s coffee-bean brown, taking after my father. In a colour-conscious country like India, her dark complexion is deplored by aunts and grand-aunts who see a dim future for her in the marriage market. While my twin’s no great shakes when it comes to schoolwork, she reads a lot and occasionally writes poetry.

Grandma’s house is not large—it has three or four rooms, apart from a kitchen and bathroom. It’s surrounded by tall, leafy trees, and the old tiled roof is apt to leak when it rains hard. It’s dark inside—memories and secrets lurk in its nooks and corners.

I’m the first to go to the bathroom, a small box of a room with cement floor and only one tap. For hot water, you’ve got to dip into a large urn, which is heated by burning firewood in an opening on the outer wall.

When all of us have bathed, we sit down cross-legged on mats in the kitchen for lunch. It’s uncomfortable, but how delicious the simple meal was—piping hot, and made from fresh ground spices, and vegetables picked the same morning from the back garden.

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