“He (Astrologer) sat under the boughs of a spreading tamarind tree which flanked a path running through the Town Hall Park…”
The cat sat under the tamarind tree at the boat jetty at Fort Cochin. It sat with its back to me, its tail wagged to some internal rhythm. The cat sat next to the shadow of the cobbler's cycle. I didn't notice the tree immediately.
The cat, cobbler and cycle sat under the tall Indian Tamarind.
“…It was a remarkable place in many ways : a surging crowd was always moving up and down this narrow road morning till night…”
The jetty was always crowded. Groups of people either were in motion or standing still. Even when their legs were still, their minds were in motion, ready to catch the next boat, the next bus, walk to their destination. They never lingered on. The place grew still in the interval between boats with a growing line of people as a constant, waiting , waiting for their turn to move out of the jetty.
May be that's why there are trees at jetties & bus stops where people need to stand & wait for longer—for the shade from the sun's rays, a rest in their journey. The tamarind and the banyan stand as gatekeepers to a gateless jetty spreading its shade to the people who gather under them.
Tamarind gets its name from Arabic, tamr, date palm + hind, India. It translates to dates of India, therefore, Indian dates. Officially, it is the Tamarindus indica. The indica in the name is misleading as they are not from here. They are believed to be natives of Africa, Sudan to be precise, brought to India long long time ago. When the Arabs found them here, they named it after their familiar fleshy brown colour dates. In Cities & Canopies, its chapter is therefore titled, the Firangi indica
They are tall evergreen trees, so tall that I just stand there and gaze at their leaves, flowers, pods & fruits, feel the trunk occassionally, take memory pics to store them inside the tamarind folder in my head/heart wherever it is stored, that is. The wait to spot a shorter tree at clickable distance begins about then, so I can feel, touch, click, something to recall from a tangible memory card. (Just may be I should invest in a selfie stick for clicking taller trees).
This photogenic tamarind in the pictures is at my uncle's garden in Cochin. I was walking backwards trying to take in the full view of the colourful canopy of his centre piece, the elephant ear fig tree (fodder for a subsequent post), when I block of wood.
They grow to about 50 to 80 feet with a light green feathery spread out umbrella like canopy.
It was also a tall tree, grown to a full height. As luck would have it, there were a few branches hanging low at its outer ends. They had a few flowers, and a few pink buds drooped midair at a height I could at least jump up to for a closer examination. The flowers are a tiny, a delicate cream with pink veins.
My first memories of a tamarind tree go back to those siesta days during school summer vacations at my maternal home. There it was, being a shade to those sunny mornings, in the lower grounds behind the house where the cousins rested and most times slept during the day, between play. When we were hungry, we used to open the brown shells of fallen fruits, chew on the pulpy flesh, wince at its tanginess, make faces at each other, wink once, press both eyes together to let the moment pass but kept on chewing until it seemed sweeter after, and spat out the seeds.
He sat under the boughs of a spreading tamarind tree which flanked a path running through the Town Hall Park.
It was a remarkable place in many ways : a surging crowd was always moving up and down this narrow road morning till night. A variety of trades and occupations was represented all along its way : medicine sellers, sellers of stolen hardware and junk, magicians, and, above all, an auctioneer of cheap doth, who created enough din all day to attract the whole town. (RK Narayan's An Astrologer's Day