Those days when the tamarind tree was the talk of the town from dawn to dusk are still vivid in my memory. How impassioned people were about the issue! The way they talked about it, you’d think it was their family affair. The issue of the tamarind tree had become the deciding factor in a tug of war between two parties. And everyone in town had their predictions about which party would emerge victorious in the end.

As far as the municipality was concerned, its own honor was at stake in this matter. Everyone—from the municipal council members who were close friends with Chairman M. C. Joseph to employees like Valli who had many years of experience in administration—was of the opinion that if the municipality was cowed by its opponents and failed to carry through on its resolution, it would lose its credibility and its future ability to govern effectively. People were saying that the job of cutting the tree down had been given to a contractor from out of town, that the municipality had written to the Thiruvananthapuram police seeking reinforcements, and that the date for cutting down the tree would be fixed once they heard back from the city police.

While everyone was busy talking about these events, something totally unexpected happened.

One morning, utter pandemonium erupted at the tamarind-tree junction. Apparently, the tamarind tree had become a deity.

As I write this now, I remember how my friends and I ran to the junction as soon as we heard the news and how we stood there, pushed and shoved in that crowd, all sweaty and dizzy in the heat, but utterly spellbound as we took in the scene in front of us.

At the tamarind-tree junction, music from a nadaswaram party jostled with music from a brass band. And if these weren’t enough, there were also musicians from a naiyandi melam folk-music group. There was also talk that Agasteeswaram Anantapadmanabha Pillai would be performing villupaattu, a form of musical storytelling, that night on his bow-shaped string instrument.