So ever since Asan began telling us these stories about the tree, I wanted to know this story in particular. How did the pond become the junction? I knew that transformation had occurred during Asan’s lifetime, so I was desperate to hear the story from him. However, it was no mean feat getting Asan to talk about the things we wanted to hear. God alone knew how his mind worked! He was a wild stream; you couldn’t hold him in the palm of your hand. Besides, Asan had grown tired of talking about the tamarind tree. Yet another of his peculiar ways, I surmised. He sometimes developed a sudden aversion to the very subject he was in the middle of detailing with so much zest; he’d drop it suddenly and move on to a different topic. No one could fathom the reason for these caprices of his mind. Who knew; perhaps it was my own excessive interest in the tamarind tree that had turned him off the subject? People are full of strange quirks, and Asan was a confluence of eccentricities.

Those were our last days with Damodara Asan, and they were really something! His stories were outstanding, his skills at their dazzling best. Perhaps if I had been less of a scatterbrain then, I would have preserved these stories better. But life and the demands of making a living possessed my mind like a deadly spirit so thoroughly and crammed it with so much muck and trash, there was no room left for Asan’s treasures.

Still, even though I have forgotten several of Asan’s stories, this one I remember.

Asan was sitting cross-legged on the bench outside the laundry shop, looking somber. With his walking stick, he was poking at the pieces of coal that lay scattered in front of the shop. There was a narrow stool close to the doorway. As long as you sat on it carefully and with some humility, you could balance well enough to avoid tipping over. I stationed myself there.

Joseph was pressing clothes on the long ironing table. He was a committed socialist; in his shop, right above where he stood, hung a picture of Achyut Patwardhan, a freedom fighter beloved for his socialist ideals. Today, Joseph was prattling on about something to Asan. He was describing his revolutionary plan to give the British a twelve-hour notice before sending them packing in their ships. Asan, however, was of the firm conviction that only royalty and white men were fit to rule, and that they should certainly be the ones doing the ruling. He sat in silence, his face growing redder. It must have been hard for him to listen to a novice rambling on like that in his presence.