Gulmohar

Come summer, the Gulmohar colours the world a striking shade of red.

My wondrous heart, is often drawn to it.

I instinctively pick the bounties strewn beneath it, reliving moments of the childhood. The Gulmohar is inseparable from memories of summers.

Since both my parents worked, almost every summer my brother and I were packed off for a 2 month vacation to our native place. We'd reunite with our cousin and the trio would then hop across relatives for the next 2 months.

The vacation mostly began with my mom's parents. They lived in a not-so-little house on the outskirts of Belgaum; which, for us excitable kiddos, was a huge place away from the city, with lots of space to play. A few feet from the porch, you would be greeted by this magnanimous Gulmohar with a chabutara (sitting platform) around it. We would play our games around the tree; my grandfather sitting on the chabutara, discussing the news of the day with his friends. My grandmother wove the days together; plucking the "sadafuli" from the flower bed that grew in the chabutara, winnowing grains with a watchful eye on us, or sometimes drawing alert to the hungry bellies drowned in play. Some evenings the whole family (aunts and uncles included) would gather under the largesse of the Gulmohar for tea-time and chitchat.

The tree stretched over the porch onto our terrace. One of our favorite summer pastime was playing with the stamens of the Gulmohar, a game we called "chikka-chikki". This involved two players, each with their own bud that contains a stock of stamens. You picked one stamen, locked the anthers with your opponent, and tugged lightly, till it was separated from the filament, while trying best not to break your own. This went on in rounds, and we could be at it on and off. When we couldn't find enough buds on the ground, my aunt would be recruited to forage for buds. I have vivid images of her, nimbly climbing over the asbestos shingles of the porch-roof, to replenish our stock of buds.

The sepals of the buds would turn into nail extensions; the palms would turn into claws, the pods would turn into swords, and we'd run around as witches, warriors, and wild-beasts, in a mad chase across worlds of our mutual imaginations.

One summer, a cousin taught me to re-imagine the buds as bowls, spoons, ladles and crockery. The buds were never the same again, and it was fun to be able to summon a kitchen whenever you wished. We played this role-playing game of pretend vegetable-sellers. We would scourge through grasses and bushes for veggie look-alikes to stock at the store. Then make a weighing scale out of coconut shells, and the shop would be ready to roll. The Gulmohar was chosen to represent the red Amaranthus (lal-bhaji). Leaves were often the currency of choice.

We had this deal with my father that we had to spend atleast 10 days at his folks place during the vacation. My paternal native is a dusty village, an odd half-hour drive from the city (Belgaum). The last stretch of road was lined with Gulmohars, that shaded it through the year and carpeted it an orange-red in summer.
The village of our childhood was more rustic than it is today. There would hardly be reliable electrictiy, there was no TV for most of our childhood, and if you wanted to watch some, you had to huddle to one of the houses in the neighbourhood. So we spent most of our days playing beneath the Gulmohars in a school-ground adjacent to our house.
There was a funny game, which the boys played, that was called something like "tree-monkey" in the village dialect, where they played a form of tag (catching cook anyone?) from these trees. I recall my brother ending up with a black-eye after one of these. 
Then there were the hours, our trio spent planning an escape from the village, trying to make a case for summoning someone from mom's side to take us back. Those were also times when my brother and I, got along the best. (we were notorious for not getting along in the summer, so much so that we would have to be housed away from each other to preserve everyone's sanity). Scribbling on the dust with the pods (that were pens now), we discussed family feuds the way our little heads grasped; spoke games, movies and all those wonderful things and, planned little rebellions against the grandparents.
The Gulmohar stands testimony to many echoes of the past; some fond, some frigid.

Several summers later, the Gulmohar from the porch was struck down by lightning. It broke my heart. It felt like a chunk of my childhood was chopped off.

The Gulmohar avenue that led to the village was lost to a road widening project. The village doesn't embrace you any more, it just stands there, glaring.

The school compound still houses the Gulmohars though; my nephews now play in the shade of those trees.
Life comes full circle...

sometimes there are claws, sometimes there are swords and then sometimes there is us; passing memories of the Gulmohar, making memories of the Gulmohar.