50 Toughest Questions of Life by Deepak Ramola

Author:Deepak Ramola [Ramola, Deepak]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353059927
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2020-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

27

When was the last time you wished for something to last forever?

When we were young, my mother would take my sister and me to the woods and give us an hour or so to roam freely in the bewildering beauty of nature and familiarize ourselves with the wonder of the forest. On most days, the task assigned to us was to name as many trees as possible. Both my sister and I, with that powerful challenge, would investigate and name tree after tree. We would scan the short ones, the tall ones, the ones birds agreed to lease a house on, the fruit-bearing ones, the barren and parched ones, the ones that looked like they had been awaiting a monsoon for eternity, and the scarily deformed ones. The only rule was that we had to choose the same set of trees and arrive at a common agreement of naming one. As kids, agreeing to one name was the hard part. We would soon turn into mini lawyers, negotiating the validation of an opinion and being thrashed inadvertently by the facts of the other. The conversation would then take shape and morph us into poets searching for metaphors to substantiate our recommendations.

A few hours later, my mother would show up to witness our process. We would then take her for a meet and greet with the trees we had befriended. This act alone was the most nerve-racking one, buzzing with excitement. As if not only our mother but even the forest was curious to hear about our creative conclusions.

Both of us would take turns to introduce her to the trees. We had to, of course, tell her the name but also why we had decided to name it that. What characteristics did we take into consideration, what features caught our eye, which decision did we have to debate among other things to find a common solution?

My mother would patiently listen as we tried to enlighten her with the logic and reasoning of our little brains. The names we gave the trees were a representation of many things: people we loved, those we didn’t, people who intimidated us with their size and presence, names we had heard in fictional stories, those that coloured our memories, those from television shows, and other mumbo-jumbo phantasmagorical ones.

And although the whole exercise was about trees in a forest, it certainly did reveal a lot about us. Yup! My mother should have been a psychology professor. The seeds of observation, perception, compassion, peacebuilding, conflict resolution and presentation for us were sown in those very walks.

There are many days I wish this game of my childhood could stretch itself over a lifetime. But I suppose adulthood is the interest you pay on the loan of childhood that life lends you.

There is another incident I am mustering up the courage to share with you. It was amusing and silly, and one whose embarrassment I hope doesn’t last a lifetime.

It is a middle-class viewpoint, I guess, that you believe the best dishes are made and the most delicious snacks laid out only when guests visit.

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