Summer winds had started to blow. The tamarind tree still danced absurdly in the breeze despite having given up its life. It was a pitiful sight. Revolting even. The spot where the tree stood would soon become a void. It had been so many years since the sun’s rays touched and danced on the ground at that spot! For nearly a hundred years, if not longer, the tree had turned light into shade, heat into coolness. But now it was done with its work.

The tree had made it through so many summers. Who could tell how much blazing heat and pouring rain the tree must have endured, how many hot summer gusts and chill north winds the tree must have withstood? Never once did it ever complain that it was too hot or too rainy.

The flood of 1890 was the stuff of legend. People still talked about how buffaloes the size of little elephants were swept away by the Pazhayar River. The pariah settlement in Therekalputhoor drifted in the waters like a temple float. The tamarind tree was very young then. And very small. For three days, it stood in water that came up to its neck—no murmurs, no complaints.

It had even survived the droughts of the last few years. Its body had shrunk, sheltering just a little life in its roots; it stood with its skinny limbs and branches stretched out, staring unblinkingly at the sky. Even then it betrayed no emotions.

The tree had witnessed so much, endured so much.

Surrounded by water, that spot had been an island when the tree was born. And all around it were fields that stretched to the horizon, holding up the curving arch of the sky. In those days, there weren’t many people around the tree. Only occasional passersby. The tree had no inkling of the extent of the human sprawl in this world. It had no idea that all those people possessed their own unique minds. The cowherd boys were its only friends. Their arrival always brought the tree some excitement. How animated they were, when they raced each other as they swam toward the tree! Didn’t some of those boys carve their symbols on the tree to mark their names? But those symbols had vanished without a trace over the years—and how cruelly time had marked those boys . . . Today, some of them could not walk without the aid of a stick; others saw their vision cloud over. Many even needed to mash the betel leaves before putting them in their mouths! And so many of them had already bade farewell to this world . . .

Indeed, so much time had passed.