scpotpourri

“Get down; you’ll fall”
“We’ll get someone else to pluck them”
“Your parents will shout at me”

That was my gran yelling at me up on the guava tree.

I loved guavas growing up. I still do. Guava tree in our home was a constant when I was growing up. In my younger years – in primary school – it was a small tree. Every afternoon when my gran took her nap, I was on the tree picking fruit.

When we moved to another home, the tree was big and the fruit delicious. Every afternoon, when I was back from school, I’d run straight into the backyard and climb up the tree, with my uniform still on. My gran would implore me to come down. My shoes would slip, she would say. My maid, from the ground, would point to where the ripe fruit were. In season, I would have a decent haul everyday.

This continued into the next house too. If anything, the garden was bigger, and there were other fruit trees too. The guava tree was my favorite. I was in high school now. With the perfunctory “be careful”, my gran would watch me up on the trees. I would then move onto the terrace.

My gran loved gardening and she loved me more. She taught me the ropes, along with my dad.  We’d get our hands dirty; we’d enjoy being in the garden if only to water the plants. We had a lawn (difficult to grow in the heat of those days), rose and jasmine bushes and a pretty impressive kitchen garden with the fruit trees.

My gran loved guavas too. She ate ‘jamun’ fruit too. Right there, freshly picked, without even washing them. They were easy on her teeth or the lack of them.

As abiding as the gran of my childhood and part of my adolescence,  so also was the guava tree in my backyard. There was the promise of fruit and the joy of climbing, watched over by my gran.