Beneath the Simolu Tree by Sarmistha Pritam

Author:Sarmistha Pritam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S India
Published: 2024-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Paridhi was now in class nine. She was not too bright a student, but her uncle had high hopes for her. He thought that even if she did not do exemplarily in the Matric exam, she at least would get a first division. Paridhi often felt like bowing down in gratitude to her uncle. If not for him, she would not have come this far. Growing up under his protective guardianship, she still yearned for a father who could be different from the one she had. When she thought of it, she choked with wistfulness. She often dreamt of a little girl unsteadily learning to walk. Her soft feet, like two newly sprung shoots, were about to lose balance and then a strong finger caught her in time. Whose finger should it have been?

Sometimes in her dream, Paridhi saw herself trying to walk to the main gate through the muddy courtyard. Somebody warned from behind, “Be careful! It’s very slippery.”

Should it not have been her father’s voice?

Even in her dream, Paridhi became tired…walking…walking. But somebody gave her his shoulder to rest her head on. Should it not have been her father’s?

She hankered for the reassuring voice of a father figure telling her, “Why are you worried my little Ma-joni? See, I am here!”

Perhaps people do not get all the things they want in life. Many dreams remain just that—dreams. By the time she was an adolescent, Paridhi had come to understand this. A tall girl with a slightly round figure and an attractive face dominated by a pair of big eyes that reflected the sad stories of harsh reality. This is how Paridhi looked now. She cried inwardly but did not allow herself to turn disillusioned. In her own way, she tried to turn those hard stories into something else with a poetic brush stroke. The more that hard times tried to snatch colour away from her, the more adamant she became about adding it back to her life.

There was a wooden box her mother had given her that had originally belonged to her great grandmother. Now it was filled with hundreds of red sandalwood seeds. In a plastic box she kept the seeds of bhatkhila tree, tokou palm, yellow nahar flowers and latumoni, the seeds of the creeper that goldsmiths used as weights. Many of them she found around her surroundings. She enjoyed collecting them. She painted on the hard seeds of the nahar and tokou trees and stored them in a glass jar. She dried pumpkin seeds and after painting them, glued them on a paper in the fashion of beautiful flowers. The latumoni seeds were so pretty—as if someone had tenderly painted them in two shades of red and black. When they emerged from under their dry sheaths, they filled her heart with instant happiness.

Paridhi was also very fond of the red sandalwood seeds. She looked on enchanted when sunlight brightened them even more. Some of her friends ate them too, but she could not. When she took them in her palms, the slippery seeds poured out like raindrops.

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