Revenge, O sweet revenge!

The other day travelling to home from work, a heavy branch fell upon our bus. My colleague remarked “I feel this is the revenge of trees. We wreak havoc to their world. They are trying to find a way to distort ours.” Two days later reading Amitav Ghosh’s “The Glass Palace” I came upon a paragraph where a rubber plantation owner explains to an educated and accomplished lady about resistance. “All these rubber plants are grown from a clone of seeds. They look exactly alike, need exactly the same nourishment, yield exactly the same amount of latex every morning. Yet there is one tree among them which refuses to provide its latex to us. Let scientists get into the detail of its genes to find out what is wrong with the tree, I simply believe this tree is resisting our efforts.”

Consider for one moment if the trees could feel and talk as Greek mythology and the Chronicles of Narnia lead us to fantasize. I can imagine all the trees in the world uniting in a unanimous mission of destroying the human race by now. I, for the love of god, cannot presume a king and queen of trees, but I can sure see the battle raging on. If I were to provide a live commentary, it would run like this.

In the backyard, the neem tree seeing three intruders in its territory, decides to shake itself vigorously so that none of the men can catch hold of one single leaf on its body. Sadly it recognizes the denuding it is causing itself. Gosh! Most of the beautiful leaves fell as if the autumn arrived without warning. Arrested in thought for a few seconds, it decides to shower the men with its alkaloids. How they would hate the taste on their lips and hands. Good for them.

The Mango tree got the whiff of the commotion as the birds stopped singing to it and left in a panic afraid of the Neem tree’s antics. Thirsty from their battle with the Neem tree when the humans come to the Mango tree, it decides to benevolently provide them with its fruit. (After all, it was sleeping at the time the battle started lulled by the Mynahs and Koels). As soon as they come near, one human picks a stone and aims its branch for its fruit. The Mango tree insulted thus, release all its fruits so that they attracted by gravity fall onto the ground hitting the humans in the process. Hit and thoroughly battered, they still try to make the best of the situation, pick a mango each, and start eating. No sooner that they put the mango in their mouth, they taste bitter alkaloid more on their lips than the sweet juice of the mango.

Defeated the humans turn to the safety of their house. But the front yard Peepul tree has decided to battle in stealth. Knowing its strength to grow in the crevices of houses, it decides to transport its seeds to every corner possible of the house while instructing the neophyte to root near the walls, infiltrate the wall with root hairs causing the walls to crack and eventually crumble. The prodigies have decided to follow the instructions to the letter. After all they have to avenge the death of their aunt by the hands of these humans. Few minutes after entering the house, the house crumbles all around them surrounding them in a cloud of dust.

On the other side of the house, the legumes are still perfecting their strategy. They have hit upon a technique of reducing the protein content in their seeds. Their scientists after careful examining has finally allowed them to process the extra nitrogen from amino acids back to nitrates while storing them in the seeds. The scientists booming with laughter is claiming that humans will not be able to consume them anymore. Ha ha ha….

Oh no! This can’t be true. This is certainly not happening. The flowering plants have detected my presence and they seem to think I am laughing at their efforts to eradicate human race… Achooo… Achoooon…… they have also joined the battle. Achhhhhooooooooooo…... They are doing their work splendidly. Aaaaaaaachoooooooooooo…… Aaaaaa…. POLLENS… chhhoooooooooo……….. Aaaaachooooon………. Aaha ahah….ahahahahahahah…. Aachchchcoooooooooooooooon………….. The trrreees… Aaahchoon…….. ha. ha. have …. Ahahahahah…. Won the ….. aaaaachooon…sniff….. BATTLe…. Sniff… Aaaachoooon…. Sniff….. achooooooooooooon….aaaaaaaaaaaaaachoooooooooooooooooooooooooo………………… dham... thump.. thummmmmmmmmm.