“Get down from that tree NOW. Don’t you have to study? As it is you don’t help around the house. Why can't you be a regular good girl like your cousins? Going dark in the sun, who will marry you?”, Mother’s regular grumbles. Radha climbs down reluctantly.
The Jamun tree is a sanctuary for Radha, a delight that is secret to her.
She offers an explanation to her mother, “But Ma, I was studying”.
Mother takes one look at the scrunched-up books and retorts, “Whoever studies on the tree? You need to study on the study table, on the mahogany table but you choose to be a monkey. Whoever saw an educated monkey?”.
Walking every day to the bus stop, Radha looks at the Jamun tree, waiting for the fruit to come. Every afternoon on the way back home she looked up again to check if it had borne fruit. With the monsoon arriving the tree is laden with fruit, home to insects and birds, and Radha’s resting place. The family boasts about the amazing qualities of this blackberry, ' the java plum is very beneficial for diabetics, it is sour and helps control body sugar. The bark has astringent properties ……’
Perched atop a branch, with a book, Radha is in a dream daze as her cousins come calling for the berries. They shake the tree, Radha jumps down. They gather around and sit around sucking the juicy blackberries. They race back to the house in competition showing off their blue-black stained mouths.
“Typhoid, the tests show it is Typhoid”, tells the doctor.
The entire household is instructed on the precautions to be taken. And Radha must be given the blackberry. The recovery happens.
The routine of spending time perched on the Jamun tree is lost as life progresses, but the practice of gazing up at it remains.
School to college life is demanding with exams, entrances, friendships, and heartbreaks.
Then comes Radha’s marriage. A turning moment when it is strange to understand if she is happy at entering a new period or worried about leaving the known domain. Radha steals a long look at the jamun tree, it bids her Bye, and the branches seem to dance to the marriage songs. One evening Radha steps out quietly and climbs up the tree. Getting down she feels surprisingly energized.
On every visit to her parental household, her gaze turns automatically to the tree. The tree withers over the years, shriveled it is still home to insects and birds though the fruit has lessened. She wonders if the bluebirds are the same who gave her company.
The fruitwala calls, " Madamji, best Jamun from Bali, imported hai, not very expensive for you, take the whole box". Radha sniffs the glistening purple beauties, but they never smell or taste the same. She does not buy.
Tree climbing becomes an essential skill for large limb dexterity, so she is told.
‘Aha’, Radha revels that her years of climbing were not wasted as a ruffian as she was described then, but rather have become essential for growing up children.
The berry has become so popular that it has a gin named after it ‘Jamun’ as Himalayan Juniper berries are used for this. A fancy alcohol ‘Jamuntini’ is launched. So much glamour for the humble berry makes Radha happy.
Radha disperses seeds of the purple berry in the hope of their germination. A Jamun sapling planted with much love with a silent prayer that one day her children will climb up the tree and she will sit under its shade remembering her very own Jamun tree.
She floats in her own memory of hanging on to the branches just like the monkey her mother imagined her to be.
It is monsoon, the seeds germinate, and Radha is thrilled. It is years before her children will climb but climb, they will and that would be her sight to see.