The Guava Tree

by Devika Matkar (Canada)

I didn't expect to find India

Prabhakar - in Sanskrit, my grandfather’s name means “the Sun”. When I was born, he planted a guava seed deep in the rich soil of our yard with his dark, calloused hands. It grew into a giant with the heavy Indian monsoons, towering over the fence, where I would watch and laugh as children from the neighboring school would jump up to try and pluck the fruit. This memory makes me smile en route to India after his death. The flight is an illusion, a haze among the slow-passing clouds. I watch them like old VHS tapes on a loop. The sun pierces into me, and I imagine it’s him. I can feel my grandfather’s warmth even through the airplane windows, and I dig my nails into my fingers to stop the tears. Each second feels infinite, as dread creeps through my veins. This is my first time going home without the person who made it that for me, waiting on the other end. It is then, the guilt of immigrating to Canada years ago, sneaks up on me. The air is hot and sticky when I land in Indore. My t-shirt clings to my back, my pale arms a reminder that I no longer live in the heat. I hop into a rickshaw, and make my way along the bumpy roads, taking in the stucco houses and shops on either side. At one point, I yell in Hindi at a man running dangerously in front of us, motioning for him to get out of the way. “You coming home, miss?”, the rickshaw-wala asks, confused by my fluent Hindi. I stare out the window in response, and he mistakes my numbness for ignorance, insulted by the silence. “You NRIs, you think you’re too good for us!”, he exclaims in disgust, spitting out his half-chewed tobacco. I open my mouth then close it. I want to explain to him - I am familiar with the smells and sights around me - stray dogs peeing and street vendors serving bhelpuri wrapped in newspaper. But I am alien to this feeling; no one prepared me to be a stranger on my own soil. Sometimes travel is as simple as going back to a place you’ve been before, and yet, as difficult as going back to a place you once called home but no longer feels like it. The rickshaw-wala drops me off in front of the house, its salmon colour now a somber, dust-covered brown. As I walk through the iron gates, my grandmother, all 5’2’’ of her draped in a white, cotton saree, embraces me. We separate, and she looks at me, her eyes brimming with water, then takes my hand and leads me to the guava tree. “I called the tree cutters after he died”, she clarifies. “Your grandfather had climbed to the terrace to pick the guavas with a metal rod, when it entered the magnetic field of the low-hanging telephone wires. There was an explosion as I ran upstairs and found him on fire”. I feel hollow, my body in rigor mortis. In his final moments, my grandfather was truly the sun, burning with all the soul inside of him. I imagine when the tree-cutters had come, the raucous roar of the chainsaws loomed against the quiet, the only other noise the rustle of the tree’s leaves in the light July breeze. It had stood there for decades bearing sweetness, but all that rested now was a stump. My thoughts are interrupted by the school bell next door, and a little boy in a red uniform pops his head up and smiles. He jumps over the fence and joins us, and pulls a ripe guava out of his backpack. We all sit on the ground, savoring the tangy fruit, sprinkled with masala on top, just the way my grandfather used to serve it. I like to think that he and the tree were one and the same - bringing joy to those around them. I didn’t expect to find that they are immortal. But as I look around the yard and smell the beautiful moringa flowers, I realize that if flowers can still grow in a graveyard, isn’t that a kind of eternity?