The Blossoming Gulmohar Tree

DISCLAIMER

This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this Story are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and unintentional.

They met under a Gulmohar Tree, fell in love under the Gulmohar Tree, spent romantic moments under the Gulmohar Tree, proposed under the Gulmohar Tree, and exchanged vows of love and loyalty under the Gulmohar Tree.

In other words, their love, the love of Manasi and Dev, started and blossomed, under the Gulmohar Tree. 

Which was in a garden opposite their College.

Those were the days of College.

Of fun and excitement, of exploration of the Self and the World, of books and babes, of mini-skirts and flashy goggles, of bikes and spikes, of experimental haircuts and obsession overdressing.

Those were the days of College! The days of fun and excitement! The days of infinite probabilities!

During their college days, when they used to spend endless hours under the Gulmohar tree, planning and dreaming of their life together as a couple, what made them think that their life would be extraordinary, or different from the others?

Was it the cool shade of the Gulmohar Tree, the innocence of ignorance, the vigor of youth, or the call of the idealism?

Today, Dev and Manasi, in their mid-forties, were just thankful that they could support a family including in-laws.

Under the Gulmohar tree, which blossomed with bright orange flowers, they vouched that their love would also blossom and grow strong like the Gulmohar Tree.

 "Babies!" muttered Manasi dreamily, when she was lying on Dev's lap one cool summer afternoon, looking at the flowering tree and the blossoming new flowers. New babies!

"Babies!" said Dev dreamily, understanding that Manasi wanted a life full of babies. Their love had developed to such a stage now that both understood each other perfectly without words.

Both even visualized and dreamt of the same future, without ever knowing the other's dreams.

'A messy home full of kids' was their concept of a 'happy home' and both had instinctively agreed without as much as speaking a word, that their married life will be full of 'babies' and 'more babies'.

Under the Gulmohar Tree, they spent their time like it was the most natural thing in the World- without a care in the world, without hurry or worry.

Time would go slow for both Manasi and Dev under the Gulmohar Tree.

Relativity!

'Didn't Einstein explain that time is relative?'

It surely was for Dev and Manasi, under the Gulmohar Tree.

They wanted the magic that they experienced under the Gulmohar Tree to last forever in their lives, so both decided to plant a Gulmohar Tree, a symbol of their love and passion in their backyard, expecting their love and life to blossom like the blossoming Gulmohar Tree. Instinctively, they had known that their love would also blossom in synchronization with the blossoming of the Gulmohar tree and they would bear babies just as the Gulmohar Tree bore new flowers.

So when Dev and Manasi, looked at the blossoming orange Gulmohar Tree, they should have been happy, their hearts should have been soothed and thrilled.

But, it was just the opposite!

The blossoming Gulmohar Tree reminded the couple of their failure, not success.

The blossoming Gulmohar Tree reminded the couple of their defeat, their infertility.

For they were still without babies even after 10 years of marriage.

And the blossoming orange flowers on the Gulmohar Tree started reminding them of their unfulfilled wishes, unrealized desires, and unborn babies.

So whenever the Gulmohar Tree started blossoming with new bunches of orange flowers, giving birth to the 'new babies', Manasi would feel ashamed and incomplete and felt as if destiny and fate had cheated her in her life, and she could not muster the courage to look at the new flowers, the 'new babies'.

Like a barren woman is reminded of her inadequacies every time she sees a pregnant woman, Manasi could hardly look at the Gulmohar Tree, overflowing with a new crop of delicate flowers.

Dev understood Manasi's mental trauma so he hardly opened the backyard door which gave a beautiful view of a flowering and flourishing Gulmohar Tree!

'Out of sight is out of mind'! It is said.

But it is not always true.

Though the blossoming Gulmohar Tree was out of their sight, their urge to bear babies was definitely not out of their minds.

So they tried everything that they could do or were advised to do or forced to do, be it religious or superstitious, or medical.

For unending years! Without any success!

Until it happened!

Manasi fainted!

Under the Gulmohar Tree!

Where she was sweeping the old cast dried flowers and leaves with a broom and had suddenly mustered the courage to look up at the blossom, at the new flowers, at the 'new babies'.

Dev and Manasi felt that it was the sheer physical exhaustion of sweeping the large garden that Manasi had fainted.

But her doctor said otherwise!

'Manasi was pregnant!'

After years of waiting and watching and trying and pinning and hoping and praying! 

Manasi was finally pregnant!

Both considered it to be a twist of fate, a miracle of nature!

It was the turning point in their lives, an answered prayer, and a blossoming dream.

Whose first indication, they got under the Gulmohar Tree, where Mansi had fainted!

To say that they were 'overjoyed'- would be an understatement.

They felt that the entire World was rejoicing in their happiness- the Gulmohar tree was blooming, neighbors and strangers were suddenly smiling at them, family and friends were sharing their love and knowledge about pregnancy and raising kids. 

How they had waited for this day!

How they had visualized what they would do once they get the 'good news'!

Manasi was sure that she would cry tears of happiness and relief and Dev was sure that he would pick up Manasi and run with her around the house, screaming with joy.

But in reality, they did nothing of this sort!

In fact, Manasi just sat down heavily, weighed down by the gravity of the news, or the 'good news' in this case. While Dev did not even dare touch the pregnant Manasi, pregnant with their precious baby, forget lifting her and running with her around the house, screaming with joy.

The next few months went faster than they had imagined!

'Didn't Einstein explain that time is relative?'

How they had planned what they would do in these months of 'expectancy'!

But in reality, they did nothing of that sort!

Manasi just carefully observed what she ate and did and Dev just carefully observed her growing belly with fascination and pride.

Despite their thorough preparedness about what to do and what to expect during the pregnancy, they felt that they were miserably unprepared for this 'unplanned pregnancy'.

Yes, though this pregnancy was dreamt of millions of times before, nothing had prepared them for the ups and downs of emotions and surge of feelings during these priceless nine months.

So though it was planned and expected and prayed for, this pregnancy was fast becoming a typical 'unplanned pregnancy'.

Dev and Manasi had been so much emotionally together during their long and unending 'infertility phase'- that both had started thinking and feeling the same thing.

So Dev was also experiencing a nauseating feeling all three months and had also braced himself for the unbearable pain of childbirth.

So it was difficult to believe that only Manasi was pregnant!

Dev was also showing all symptoms of pregnancies, including mood swings!

But only Mansi's water broke, for Dev did not have any in his stomach!

And had to rush her to the doctor where a star room and star treatment awaited her and her baby, which Dev had booked in advance.

When the baby was born, it was a dark night and Mansi was still under the influence of anesthesia, so only Dev was there to hold the baby girl!

As he looked at his baby girl, he could not help and stop the tears that were flooding his eyes and his vision had blurred.

Five days later, Dev took Mansi and a baby girl back home, where they were traditionally welcomed by their parents and in-laws and a common college friend Karan.

For the next few months, the World consisted of just the newborn baby and the new mother.

So thought Dev.

Who used to look at his wife nursing the baby or cradling the baby to sleep.

From a distance.

When Mansi used to change the diapers or feed the tiny life, she just couldn't stop herself from gazing at her baby for long hours together.

While Dev looked at her from a distance.

Again time passed too soon for Manasi.

'Didn't Einstein explain that time is relative!'

The baby was named 'Trisha' in an elaborate and expensive celebration where at-least 200 people were invited to share their joy and bless the baby.

Mansi was glowing and smiling brightly while Dev was busy accepting everyone's congratulations and gifts!

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Mansi would gaze for long tender moments at her firstborn, analyzing her tiny features like tiny nose, small lips, and pretty brown eyes not to mention the curly soft hair and her brown skin which was in contrast to Mansi's and Dev's fair skin.

"She has your nose" Mansi had finally announced one fine day to Dev after a long study of Trisha's nose. To which, Dev had smiled.

Manasi was lost in thought for a long time and could not decipher how the baby had managed to get brown eyes despite both the parents and grandparents having black eyes.

"Does anyone in your family have brown eyes?" Manasi had questioned Dev after a long silence.

"No!" Dev answered abruptly, without so much as glancing at Trisha's eyes for examination and evaluation.

Mansi was looking at him.

These days-Dev was looking distraught, distant – from her and Trisha.

"No brown colored eyes in my family" Dev answered slowly, realizing that he had been too abrupt and feeling both sorry and worried for Mansi. "But brown skin was quite common in my family. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were brown, not fair" Dev revealed to the relieved Manasi.

'So Dev had at least noticed Trisha's skin color' Manasi thought carefully. 

Because other than that he had made no comments on any of Trisha's features and had also never tried to find any resemblance between any of Trisha's features and features of Trisha's parents or grandparents.

'This is the favorite pastime of women, I think' was Manasi's simple reasoning for she being a lady was forever trying to find a resemblance between Trisha and Dev and herself.

"Chin! I think she has your chin, long and thoughtful. Not the nose." Manasi said jubilantly to Dev another day with the authority of an archaeologist who was exploring and had finally found something concrete. With evidence.

"Trisha's nose has started looking like my father's nose now" Manasi announced to Dev, after six months when Trisha had just started crawling.

Dev looked up from his laptop and looked at the crawling, babbling Trisha and looked at her nose.

"Her fingers are long and slender like mine" announced Manasi finally.

Finally, finally………….. she had found some resemblance between herself and her baby, whom she loved more than life itself.

"I bet she is going to be a master piano player, with fingers like that!" Mansi said dreamily to which Dev smiled absent-mindedly from his laptop. Manasi who always felt that she would have been a reputed Piano artist today if she had access to Piano classes in her childhood determined that she was going to give her daughter everything that she could not get- like foreign trips, branded clothes, even Piano lessons.

Since Mansi had now become a 'stay-at-home' mother, she and Trisha had become the World to her, with Dev being a side dish. An after-thought! Dev also did not seem to mind that Mansi was giving him less time and attention. Mansi was so much into Trisha's life that Dev hardly got Trisha to himself.

Dev was busy working harder and longer than ever, to give a better life to his wife and Trisha, now that Mansi was no longer earning. For months, he would be traveling so frequently that Trisha started looking at him as a stranger whenever he used to be home and crying and not going anywhere near Dev. Dev also started feeling like a guest in his own house. Since his house was so full of Mansi and Trisha only, Dev started feeling and behaving like a guest. And started becoming more distant from Trisha.

Mansi was also to blame for the distance. For she had metamorphosed into an 'overprotective mother' who felt no one, not even Dev can handle Trisha properly. Which was right in a sense, because Dev hardly held Trisha or played with Trisha.

'Is he disappointed with me and Trisha? Did he want a son?' Mansi asked herself many times when she felt that there was no connection, no bond between father and daughter.

Dev was returning home one day from the office and was caught up in very bad traffic. It was a typical Monday morning traffic and Dev's mood was also worsening with the increasing traffic!

As he drove his SUV at tortoise speed, since all the vehicles were now lined up bumper-to-bumper his attention was disturbed by the knocking on his shut window of the car.

A group of beggar girls and boys, around the same age as Trisha who was now 5, were knocking on the window of his car, trying to get his attention.

Though they looked like beggars, their eyes did not look hungry.

'So are they beggars or merely dressed up as beggars by their parents who are using them to earn an extra buck?'. Dev thought looking in disgust at the beggar-children.

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"Why do people give birth to so many babies if they cannot support them financially?" Mansi had asked Dev with contempt once when they were traveling home with Trisha after attending a birthday party of Trisha's classmate.

And she had looked in anger at the beggar kids who must be of the same age as Trisha, all the while caressing with love her daughter Trisha, who was asleep on her lap.

Dev had also looked with loathing at the filthy beggar kids and rolled his window shut.

Manasi was surprised.

Before Trisha was born, Dev used to have pity for these beggar kids and would end up giving them cash, despite Manasi's scolding.

Manasi did not believe in giving cash to beggar kids.

"They should be given food like biscuits if they are really hungry, but never money" Manasi had told her husband infinite times.

After Trisha's birth, Dev changed dramatically and stopped giving any money to the beggar kids. Dev had looked at the beggar kids with unconcealed contempt and disgust instead of the usual pity and sympathy which he used to be full of before Trisha's birth.

Yes! Dev was a changed man after Trisha's birth.

Yes! One could classify Dev and Mansi's life into two parts- one before Trisha's birth and one after Trisha's birth, since both husband and wife- were so different in these two parts.

'I am sure that he is saving for his daughter Trisha and like a typical father cannot love anyone else but his own daughter' Manasi reasoned to herself and calmed down.

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Dev looked at the beggar kids with unconcealed contempt and shooed them away. The kids being truly professional and experienced were looking at him with unmasked hatred and pent-up anger before going away and turning their attention to another car, another driver.

When Dev shooed them away, only a single beggar girl out of the gang did not give up and continued knocking at Dev's car window.

It was then that Dev saw her properly, this beggar girl, who was like Trisha.

'Was like Trisha?' Dev asked himself.

'Yes. She was the same height, almost the same age, with the same…………same…eyes. Brown eyes.' Dev was now looking at her closely, very closely.

'She even has the same brown skin color………….and the same curly hair' Dev almost gulped since his throat had gone completely dry.

'What a resemblance!' Dev said to himself, half-surprised, half-stunned.

Dev remembered his wife had spent years searching for resemblances between Trisha and Dev and Manasi but still could not be absolutely certain that Trisha looked like her or Dev.

And here was a girl, slightly taller and perhaps older than Trisha, with the exact same features as Trisha!

What a resemblance! What a twist of fate!

Dev was too stunned to react and kept on gazing at her for long moments until the honking of impatient cars behind him told him that the traffic signal had changed to 'green'.

As Dev started his car and started going away, without giving any money to the beggar girl, the beggar girl, an adamant and a determined one, stuck out her tongue at him and abused him for not giving her money!

Throughout the day, Dev was a troubled man and an irritated man. He just could not get the beggar girl who shared a remarkable resemblance to Trisha, out of his mind.

'A girl so similar to Trisha!' Dev was reasoning to himself, trying to think as logically as possible.

'Why! It could have even been Trisha ……..could even have been Trisha' Dev was saying to himself throughout the day.

So much was the resemblance with Trisha, that even Dev's eyes had fooled him! 

So throughout the day, Dev was a troubled man and an irritated man.

And even Boss did not have the nerve to ask him the status of his last week's meeting with the important client from Japan.

Boss left Dev alone.

With his thoughts. With his anger. With his frustration.

It was in the same mood, that he drove back home, by the same route.

But now, he was a changed man.

For now, Dev was searching for the beggar girl instead of the beggar girl searching for him.

Oh! The twists of fate!

He couldn't help but stop at the traffic signal ('The beggar's spot' really, where a wide variety of beggars, young, old, very small, almost babies, some crippled, some perfectly healthy, some always grumbling, some always smiling, were to be found, come summer, come rain, come winter).

The longing to find the beggar girl and see her again was too irresistible!

After a long time, he spotted her with a baby in her arms, again begging at another car window. When the driver shouted at her and the policemen blew their whistles to warn her, she ran away with her younger sibling to what had to be her home, a temporary shanty built hastily near the highway, which was full of at least half-a-dozen children of all ages, from 6 months old to 15 years old.

The beggar girl was laughing at the thought that she had not feared even the policemen today, as she entered the shanty and placed her baby sibling on the wet floor of her open shanty.

Dev was observing her minutely as if studying a topic for an important examination.

And when the traffic signal changed to green, he had no choice but to drive away, all the while thinking the same thought…..'A girl so similar to Trisha!' Dev was reasoning to himself, trying to think as logically as possible.

'Why! It could have even been Trisha ……..could have even been Trisha' Dev was saying to himself as he reached home late at night.

Trisha was already asleep. And it was almost 11 p.m. by which Dev finished his dinner and went to his bedroom to sleep.

Manasi was as soundly asleep as Trisha.

Dev looked at the sleeping Trisha and looked at the features of the sleeping Trisha.

'Yes! It could have been Trisha, alright!' was all that he could say to himself since he noticed that there was indeed a remarkable resemblance between the filthy beggar girl and Trisha. And if you make the beggar girl wear Trisha's clothes, she would look exactly similar to Trisha but only an elder version of her.

This similarity was weighing too heavily on Dev, for he could not sleep the entire night as memories of another dark night, the night when his daughter was born, clouded his mind.

It was a dark night and it was raining heavily that day. Mansi was in the labor room undergoing a cesarean operation, while Dev paced the hospital corridor with the typical impatience and excitement of a 'first-time-father-to-be'.

After what seemed eons for Dev, Dr. Batra came out of the labor room with a baby girl.

Dev and Manasi's most cherished, most wanted daughter!

"Mansi's B.P. is alarmingly high." Dr. Batra said gravely the minute he stepped out of the labor room.

"It is a still-born baby!" Dr. Batra said as he handed the baby girl to the over-eager father.

'Still-born!' Dev did not understand the meaning of the medical term at first, though he was a well-read science double graduate.

'Still-born……………………..' Dev suddenly realized the meaning of the medical term and what it meant to him and Manasi and his family. "Stillborn…………….means the baby is not…..not alive?" Dev asked Dr. Batra.

Dr. Batra nodded his head slowly.

"I am sorry, but your baby was born 'still-born'." Dr. Batra cleared the air and cleared himself of any negligence and went off to operate on another emergency patient.

Dev was left holding his daughter……

His still-born daughter who was fair-skinned, with features exactly matching Mansi's except for the hair which was brown and straight like Dev's.

When the baby was born, it was a dark night and Mansi was still under the influence of anesthesia, so only Dev was there to hold the baby girl!

As he looked at his baby girl, he could not help and stop the tears that were flooding his eyes and his vision had blurred.

Five days later, Dev took Mansi and an abandoned baby girl adopted in a hurry and secrecy from a reputed Orphanage back home, where they were traditionally welcomed by their parents and in-laws and a common college friend Karan.

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Tonight, when Dev looked at Trisha, he was absolutely sure that Trisha was born in and abandoned by the beggar family and that the beggar girl was indeed Trisha's elder sister, her sibling.

Dev had hated the very sight of beggars all his life...…

And when he realized that he had brought home a girl who could have one day become a beggar-girl just like her older sister had she not been abandoned by her family outside the Orphanage and had he not gotten her from that Orphanage that night, a feeling of deep disgust filled his heart.

He knew that the Orphanage as a rule never gave out the names of the birth parents and he had never expected much from Trisha anyway, but he had to adopt Trisha to soothe Manasi, who could have otherwise died of shock and grief had he not placed a baby in her arms.

He had never given much thought to Trisha's origin anyway, but to think that he had incidentally brought home a beggar-girl was too repulsive for him to digest.

He looked at Trisha with unmasked hatred and anger, and could not believe that he could hate a small girl so much in his life.

Trisha!

Mansi and Dev's baby!

Ha!!!

Dev almost laughed at the irony of it all, all the while remembering his real daughter, the fair-skinned baby with features exactly matching Mansi's except for the hair, which was brown and straight like his.

Slapped by a cruel fate, he felt sudden suffocation and opened the backdoor where the Gulmohar tree stood witness to Dev and Mansi's life and love, a testimony to their unfulfilled dream of 'babies'.

The Gulmohar tree, which was forever blossoming and blooming with new pretty orange flowers, 'new babies'.

While his real baby was long dead!

And a girl adopted from a beggar family was sleeping soundly near Mansi, who was blissfully unaware of her real 'still-born' baby.

Burdened by his dark secret and in a moment of deep frustration, the tormented Dev who could neither tell Mansi the truth nor take out his anger on Trisha, took hold of a big spade and angrily started cutting down the Gulmohar Tree……… a symbol of love, a symbol of fertility, a symbol of blooming babies…………….tears of anguish streaming down his cheeks, his vision getting blurred.

Once more.