The tamarind tree was the property of the town council, which owned thousands of trees around the area—scores of tamarind, mango, and neem trees. It owned more banyan trees than you could count. Wherever you turned, you found banyan trees nodding in the wind, their wide arms pointing to the sky and their aerial roots exploring the dusty earth, standing on either side of the road like large merry-go-rounds with green cymbals hanging from their rims.

Since all trees belonged to the municipality, legally speaking, all income from them belonged to the municipality too. But in reality, the municipality did not get much income from any of the trees. Everyone in town who raised goats relied entirely on the banyan trees for fodder. This, in their opinion, was the most appealing and most profitable aspect of raising goats: they could nourish the goats on the municipality’s banyan leaves, but keep the milk for themselves.

If there was ever an exception to this state of affairs, it was the tamarind tree.

The municipality made handsome profit from the tamarind tree because of one simple reason. The tree stood at a busy junction that knew neither day nor night. Even when other parts of town went to sleep, this place was wide awake. The spot under the tree was the waiting place for people traveling out of town and people who were in transit, waiting to continue their journey back home after their visit to the seashore in Kanyakumari. It was also the spot where jugglers chose to show off their dazzling skills when they arrived in town with their wives and children. It was where the magician set up shop, beginning his act with a few magic tricks and wrapping it up by selling miraculous cures, without anyone realizing the gambit. This was where they staged ferocious fights between the mongoose and the cobra. It was also the venue for special discounted sales: everything for two and a half annas!

As if this were not crowd enough, there was also the movie theater right across the road. People headed for the first show; people who couldn’t get tickets for the first show and stood by, looking bereft and lost; those who could not afford to go to the movies but who could entertain themselves by looking at the posters, catching the stray bits of background music, dialogue, and songs that reached their ears, recalling with pleasure the scenes they had watched before . . . So the place was indeed very crowded.