SAP-RELATED TREES AND CLINKING

When you think of prisons, rosewood doors do not exist. They exist as the entrance to the Maharaja’s private quarters. The door that keeps me in at this particular hour is rosewood, and is an unwound tornado of pinks and oranges and sandals, but I humbly acknowledge that I have not been anyone’s Maharaja so far.

               The rosewood door has just now shut and locked. I assume it must have been standing for at least 25 years or so, because there is green moss in its crevices and the hinges seemingly have been replaced many times. While I have nothing else to do, other than be the cause of the clinking that the cuffs around me produce, my boredom has finally urged me to let go of my realistic thought process and initiate conversation with this magnificent board of royalty, and learn its history.

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                 I have tried. First pleasantly, then persuasively, but finally it has led to only awkward silence in this gloomy makeshift cell; So much for being the host, really. Hence, in this humid room, I have decided to take on the task of imagining up the rosewood’s history myself. Many years ago, my grand mam would set tea cups of hot caffeine and frothiness on a similar polished rosewood tea table, which I had derived, had come from trees that had been purely cut from the pecking of generations of the silver-bellied woodpecker family.

                 My palms are dusty as I press them against the sides of my head – the cuffs do their clinking.

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                The great Rosewood door that stands as the only barricade between me and freedom, came from three teak plants from the three corners of the world (There were never four corners. Those rumors are from the fanatics who are obsessed with even numbers.) Three tree-slayers with rain-gray eyes and strong backs unknown to the other man (of course), fell the living wood for their day’s wages at 3:44 a.m. one morning – their axe blades strike at the bark at the same tic and withdraw with a great heave, at the same toc.

                It matters that it is these trees that are felled because they all germinated from the smallest Nilambur teak tree that exists in the entirety of that forest. For the children to be unified after death was the will of the small teak mother after all.

                Now if you pause to look at the appearance of these death-destined plants, you notice –

                There are faint footsteps outside and a whole great deal of shuffling and tumbling and mumbling – I must say, this makeshift prison is not being treated like one. my cuffs are clinking in agreement and I try to ignore it.

                 You notice that – I have forgotten what there is to notice. Excuse me, for a moment.

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                 If you pause to look at these sap-related trees, you notice that in the first teak, where it is being cut during winter, that, it wears a coat of fire-tasted red leaves on one half of its body, (which is the contrast of its neighbors) while the other half is bare (as it should be, in winter.)

                  The second tree lives, where fall is mid-way - but, our tree rebels by sporting scarves of chlorophyll-green while another half is a shawl of red. This color contrast exists as if God himself had drawn a perfect geometrical divider.

                  This cross-dressing applies to the third tree as well, where it happened to be summer at the time. While one side was normal the other, was winter-bare.

                  Outside, keys have started clinking also, in harmony with the occasional rhythm of my cuff chains. Feet and shoes are irritating.

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                  If you put the trees together, there is great coordination in color and seasons and what-not. I won’t be put through the arduous effort of describing how they sync; my brain is already tolerating clinking.

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                  The great Rosewood is now slightly ajar. Someone has entered with a plate of food (we shall call it food, because it can’t really fit into any other category, either). Someone is crouching, very similar to the position I am in. Someone looks at me – and I look back. He has disrupted the atmosphere. The plate of food is sliding (and screeching) towards me, but stops mid-way. The Rosewood door swings back to its glory.

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                   The door has been watching me with great interest, for the past hour, as I try to use my numb toe to reach and maneuver the plate towards me. My dusty hands meet with the food and then my mouth. Chains are clinking in great tantrums. Feet are now stationed outside, and the thin row of light that was below the door before, is now cut in half. Which is very disturbing.

                   As I consume dry morsels, I try to recollect my narration.

                   My brain is making efforts to drive out the realistic though processing that re-entered when the door opened. So here is my jumbled up recollection:

There were three trees. They are teak. And were made into rosewood. And they had a mum, but I’ve forgotten her race. Seasons. Wood cutters. The wood cutters have a nice name – tree slayers. And they slew three trees. Teak.

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                     It is dark now. I know because my cell has a small window. Throughout the hours, I mixed up the seasons and still cannot remember the small mother’s race. But I have decided give the description of how the trees would look beside each other – like a Venn diagram of two circles, green and red tangentially in contact with each other and two semi-circles of stark naked branches at the sides.

                    By the will of their small mother teak, the cross-dressed plants came together and were forged. Here stands before me, in cold pride, the sap-related teaks – now rosewood, as a legacy of the smallest teak in some forest and from time to time give the chills of an ancient spirit (a self-centered one).

                     The rosewood looks at me despairingly now, pities me, I think. I often despair at me too, because stories of myth and subtle magic do not apply to humans who are born with a disgusting realistic thought process. But one thing is true, apart from talks of real things: The spirit of three sap-relatives rule over the human in clinking chains.