THE CURTAIN FALL OF A BENEVOLENCE (ഒരു പരോപകാരത്തിന്റെ പരൃവസാനം)

As a part of the landscaping, I transplanted the seedling of a mango tree in front of my house, situated in a small plot of ten cents in the city of Trivandrum. My love towards the famous poem," Mampazham", of Sri Vyloppilli Sreedhara Menon, is also an inspiring factor to choose a mango tree to be in my house front. The seedling was nurtured very well and it grew faster than the usual growth of a mango tree. I gazed and gazed every day the transformation of the budding fresh dark tender leaves to light violet, light green, and then to dark green, fluttering in the breeze freely blowing in our house front from the Arabian sea, rippling a few miles away from my house beneath the western horizon.

My meticulous observation of its growth was a horticultural therapy for my mind. It rejoiced me for three years like this and the little lovely tree was adorned with flowering inflorescence on the third year. The sweet nectar of the flowers invited insects and butterflies. They had their sports in merriment and did not last long as the tender mangoes appeared. I enjoyed the same ecstacy as my first offspring was born and shown to me in 1978. All tender living beings have an infantile cuteness. These young ones also did not lack it. Many were there in clusters. They were growing and struggling for survival as Charles Darwin says, "The fittest will survive". Thus there was a struggle for existence. Tearfully I watched the dropouts and the survived ones for the day. Many cute little ones dropped from their siblings. There was no remedy for nature's mischief. The most fortunate three mangoes reached puberty and then matured. I did not pluck them for an unnatural attempt to convert them fruits. I waited for their natural metamorphosis to the world's tastiest fruit. That evolution was completed and my La Bella offered me her maiden three sweet mango fruits for the first time.

Three years passed gloriously, with the young mother mango tree-bearing galaxy of fruits glittering amidst emerald leaves. Fortune's wheel turned and destiny had its foul play. The flowering season of the sixth year was disastrous. Envious invisible enemies frowned looking at the flourished flowering mango tree. They webbed conspiracy to destroy the fruits. They knew that I would not let them plunge into my tree. So they charged an invisible ambush. They assaulted the tender little mangoes within the flower itself like a child abuse, liable for a POCSO charge. But these devils are invisible and the retaliating chemical weapons are pathogenic to human beings. Smoking and hanging chemicals on branches proved ineffective. My innocent humble tree kept on growing to become a huge mango tree. It perceived the futility of enlarging in size. It started misbehaving as if charged with a strong resentment for preventing its natural benefaction.

The trunk and twigs of that big tree started swinging horrifyingly in the western wind damaging street lines. Once pampering western breeze turned to be a devastating hurricane. Her roots trespassed into sanitary outlets creating blockades. The tree was ringing its own death knell. Being a member of an elite organization, "Friends of Trees", and also due to my unbroken link with an erstwhile beneficiary of my La Bella, it was my last choice to guillotine her. But the pressure of circumstances compelled me to give consent, with an expectation that her body could be sacrificed for some poor man's pyre. Her fate was decided by God and her beneficiary in funeral rite also was decided. The death knell of both benefactor and beneficiary rang simultaneously. My blossom friend was in flames for the salvation of a poor human being.