I have been seeing the little orchard ever since I was born. My grandfather left it for us along with a few bighas of land, a house and shares of some ponds. Though it’s common in our side of the world to inherit property, the orchard had a special emotion attached to it. Fenced with bamboo twigs, it was like a sacred place for us.

Located at the edge of Bamun pukur, our family pond, it was a banana orchard. Banana trees occupied a major portion of it. All other plants were insignificant. Although there were workers at our house, it was my father’s passion to nurture the banana plants himself. Before every monsoon, he would put baskets of sludge from the pond to strengthen their roots. He preferred moonlit summer evenings for this task. He used to take a full glass of strong tea — Paanchan - as my mother would call it, to beat his fatigue. I was 7 or 8 years and used to carry the tea kettle and his branded glass from home to the site. I observed how carefully he nourished each plant. The position of the moon over the sterile palm tree acted as his clock to return home at the end of the session. I assisted him in bringing his implements back home.
The orchard was an obsession for both the father and son. During monsoon, I slept at night hearing heavenly sound of rainfall, woke up at dawn and ran to the orchard to count how many young plants had arrived. Father was baffled seeing footmarks of a child there. He took those to be of a wayward child on his attempt to vandalise. I used to keep quiet for the fear of getting scolded for opening the door so early in the day, putting the security of the house at risk.
I used to keep a close watch on each plant right from its sprouting to finally delivering the cluster of bananas.Neighbours queued up at our house on Thursdays to ask sacred banana leaves for Lakshmi puja at their houses.
I thought, “They worship to please the Goddess of wealth but the leaves are the product of my father’s hard labour!” It pinched me. So I visited neighbours’ houses to see whether Goddess lakshmi really blessed them with wealth. I saw their granaries stay the same size and returned home satisfied.
I asked mother, “They worship Goddess Lakshmi every Thursday but I find no addition to their wealth?” She smiled, “Result of worship is never instant, my son!”
We used to have bananas in abundance and sometimes my mother would take away some from the clusters hung inside our house to distribute among our neighbours. And if my father got a whiff of it, he would shout at her. How could she distribute the fruits of his hard labour for free?
Father used to sell excess bananas in our village’s bi-weekly market on Wednesdays and Sundays. On Sundays, I accompanied him and sold the bananas for four Annas a dozen while he sat at a tea stall and boasted about his achievements of producing the best bananas around.
There was drought for a continuous few years. Crops dried up. Our family faced bad times because of which father had to sell some land. Banana became our support system at the time of crisis. We sold more bananas than the members of the family ate.
I finished primary education and went to my Mama’s place to study in the high school. I often dreamt of the orchard. I would see the tender banana plants with newly grown leaves, dancing to the mild breeze and the tilting trees with clusters of bananas resting on bamboo props. Once, in my dream, I was quarrelling with a customer for bargaining the price of fruits produced with my father’s hard labour.
The orchard slowly faded away from my memory with the passage of time.
I passed Higher Secondary and didn’t return home. I went to Durgapur in search of fortune. At first I worked as an industrial labourer, then as a painter, electrician-helper, chowkidar etc. Two years passed. Then one day, like a light at the end of the tunnel, I saw an advertisement in newspaper for joining the Indian Air Force. I applied and got selected. I went to Bangalore for training for a year.
My siblings had grown up by the time I decided to visit home. I loved them immensely. One of them, Mantu, boasted in front of his friends, “Barda is coming home and bananas will come by then. He won’t allow father to sell those. We will enjoy the ripe bananas. Even father has no say on him. He sends him Money Order!”
I returned home on completion of training. Mantu thought rightly. I didn’t allow father to sell bananas. Those used to be hung at our house in the same way but only to be eaten by my siblings. Sometimes father would express his desire to sell some but he couldn’t do so as it was against my will.
Bananas grew in our orchard till my father was alive. After his demise, they slowly vanished and are now totally extinct.

My brothers cut the palm tree as it was sterile. My mother got a small temple constructed in the name of my father in his orchard of passion.

I sometimes wonder if his soul visits the orchard. The moon continues to repeat its appearance, the orchard still remains there, the neighbours also remain more or less the same and I am still living in this fascinating world.

All of us miss something. The moon misses the palm tree, the orchard misses the bananas, neighbours miss the banana leaves and I miss my father.

- By B Kanjilal

Source: indiatimes.com