My mom and I peered at the jackfruit tree. It was tall and healthy! But at the ripe age of 60 something, the tree had not fruited yet and my mom, who was the same age, knew precisely why!
According to her, the tree was an egoist!
I am like, “mom…, I have a bachelor’s degree in Botany. I also studied landscape design. I courted several hundred trees but never met an egoist!”
Mom turned to me.
“You think Ego is a human thing? Every living thing has a sense of self that drives us all to survive! That sense goes off balance sometimes. Trees are no exception!”
Isn’t that profound?
Imagine the perfect looking plant in your perfect garden refusing to flower or fruit! You don’t have to worry about bees dying, dogs peeing, mulch choking, over vigor, under-care, nothing!
It is an egoist!
Now, what do you do if you have an egoist in your garden?
My mom wanted to cut the tree down because it was also close to the newly proposed boundary wall.
I objected.
I had just inherited the property from her, and she was working hard at making me feel heard. So she thought for a long moment and announced,
“Let me try to break its ego.”
You read me right!
Turns out, my mom has a 3-step secret ritual to solve the deepest and darkest ego issues of all your trees!!
Of the three, I will only share the second step, that has 6 invaluable steps within.
Step one- tie an old bed sheet around the tree trunk.
Step two- wake the tree. My mom picked up a small stick and started hitting the tree trunk gently saying something like, “Hey, wake up! We need to talk. Listen tree!”
Step three- once you are fully convinced that your tree is fully awake, rain on some compliments! Depending on whether you have an intelligent tree, stupid tree, or something in between, you need to use different kinds of compliments. My mom was convinced her tree was vain. If you suspect that is the case with your tree, you could also say something, like-
“Look at you pretty tree! Boy you are tall! Great proportions and the right color! And look at your royal cape!! You look royal in it! No other tree in the yard has any decency to cover up the way you did!
You are GREAT and I am going to make you GREAT-est!”
I am sure any tree would feel tall and GREAT and pay full attention at this point!
Time for step four.
“Btw, I am always nice to you but how come you never gave me even a single fruit in return so far? Don’t you like me?
Don’t you think I am GREAT?
Smart??
Rich???
See, I had spent a lot of money on you, tree. So you see, I AM rich!
Believe me, I am very very VERY rich!
Why are you staring at me like that? Don’t you believe me?
Ah! You don’t believe me!”
Step five!
“You don’t believe me?! You pig faced, crooked little tree! You don’t believe me? But you want me to make you greatest, ha?!
Here!”
My mother ripped the bed sheet off the tree trunk, picked up an old broom she had kept near which she used to clean her outhouse, and started hitting the tree hard!
“You are no jackfruit; you are a jackass!
Don’t you even have the decency to cover yourself in public?
You shameless, filthy, fat, ugly, slob!
You dope, you are such a disgrace to this universe!”
The whole political vocabulary of recent times flew out of her mouth!
Poor tree!
What a sudden turn of events! Such verbal and physical battery!
The additional humiliation of getting hit by a lowly, dirty broom!
New and confusing information on tree nudity!
Overwhelmed and distraught, any tree should soon feel adequately embarrassed.
Perfect time for the last step! Step 6.
“Better start fruiting next season, or you will endure this and more!”
This was 2012. I was visiting my mother who lives on a lush green piece of land in a southern Indian city called Kollam. Being a person with a big enough dose of ‘scientific temper’, the only thing I could do was laugh and laugh hard at my mother and her ritual! Even after returning to my home in the US, ridiculing my mom and her tree ritual became an integral part of my daily conversations.
My next visit to mom was in 2015.
Like every other time, she served me all sorts of fruits from her yard. Banana, Bimbili, Coffee Plum, Custard Apple, Guava, Mango, Papaya, Passion Fruit, Pineapple, Rose Apple, Soursop, you name it and she has it all!
Amongst all those sat a small piece of jackfruit. Mom asked how it was. It was delicious! The fruit pods were big and firm with honey pockets at the tip.
“It is the best jackfruit among my 11 jackfruits, and it is from the egoist”, she declared.
I glanced at the bare trunk of the egoist and glanced back at my mom.
“Season is over. I saved the last one in the fridge for a long time so you could try.”
I didn’t say anything but everything my mouth swallowed came out through my eyes anyway. Mom looked away.
My last visit to mom was in the early summer of 2018. The moment I got out of the vehicle; I saw it!
The egoist standing tall next to the new entry gate was fully loaded!
Mom saw my dismay. She didn’t say a single word but every word she swallowed shone bright in her eyes!
Believe it or not, at 70 plus now, the ex-egoist IS the sweetest and best jackfruit in my mom’s yard!
Last year in Portland, when my kids woke up on a summer Saturday morning, they couldn’t find their ‘scientific’ mother in the house. So they went around looking for her.
Guess where they found her?
In the backyard!
Armed with an old broom!
Beside a very unhappy looking pear tree, all wrapped in an old bed sheet!
