Bud-dy

 Living in the same place since birth does come with its benefits. You don’t need to look for memories scattered all over, they find you instead. And friends! Your friends too stay with you, until you or they decide to leave.

But my friend, I knew, would never leave. My study partner, my playmate, my good-morning wisher and my agony aunt – the one to whom I could always turn to, always to find it strong and reassuring beside me. This is what my Ashoka means to me.

It was not as if we were friends right from the start. I was always a lost-in–my-own world kind of kid and though I always was an appreciater of nature, I never really noticed this pretty tree outside my balcony waving in friendship.

As I grew up reading Ruskin Bond and Mayank Austen Soofi (a.k.a The Delhi Walla) I instinctively learnt to observe and appreciate my surroundings, most importantly the natural beauty I was surrounded with.

It was then that I befriended the Ashoka tree. Though over the next few years, I was to befriend many more trees, the Jamuna, the Frangipani, the Neem, and the Peepul, but the Ashoka was always to remain someone special.

Standing calm and poised with its pretty leaves fluttering in the breeze, creating their own palette of green from its lightest to its deepest hue, it stands as a strong but pretty guard. My study table window opened out to the Ashoka and there I used to sit for hours, memorizing and repeating out to it, trying to work what the content in my books really meant, pausing for a chat with it when I got too bored,  wondering my doubts aloud to it, sometimes it answered them too, though I really don’t know how!

A bubble of life in itself, my Ashoka houses a cuckoo, a pair of mynahs and countless pigeons and squirrels. Sometimes, at night, it reminds me of a Christmas tree.

So, in times of joy and distress, I just need to peep out of my window to find my Ashoka, standing reassuring and tall. And if it isn’t physically possible to always do so, well, I can always close my eyes.