RELATIONSHIPS ARE LIKE TREES..

I had gone to this party hosted at one of my friends’ house; he was celebrating a major business win… It was real stag party; none of the fellows present had brought along their wives or girlfriends or kids….

As many expats know – it was that time of the year when the schools close for a five-week break and the wives rush back to their homes in India along with the kids leaving the hubby alone…. And I will let you in on a secret – many hubbies look forward to this break… They actually find so much work to do in office that they cannot accompany their families.

And in that group there were some who had a different story to tell…. The most effervescent among them was going through a difficult divorce…. Another friend, who had already made a pile with his contracting business and football betting, was an abandoned husband – his wife had left him for “higher studies” and moved to Australia with the kid – he was on a sort of two-year notice to give up his gambling and betting habits, and drinking…. A third fellow had just come back from India; his bride-to-be had eloped with her lover the day before the marriage was to take place… While there were quite a few like me who had left their families back in India for the sake of the children’s education….

The fellow who was hosting the party was a classic case – he was from Sri Lanka, purchased property and settled in New Zealand, and had married an Australian lady; one of his daughters was doing her post graduate studies in Canada while the younger one was in college in Australia and his wife spent her time shuttling between three countries and had no time to visit him. The last time they met was at Singapore’s Changi airport, two weeks before this party – she was flying east across the Pacific to Canada; he was flying west across the Bay of Bengal to Sri Lanka.

There was one poor fellow from Bangladesh whose newly wedded wife simply refused to leave her country and accompany him…. These were the “hardcore bachelors” of that expat community – always viewed with suspicion by the wives at the regular parties ….

The exotic addition to that party was crocodile meat… Crocodile, being an endangered species, is protected in most countries that do not have a crocodile farm, and in some countries their meat is simply banned…. And yet some unfortunate crocodiles get entangled in fishermen’s nets… the fishermen sometimes do have to kill them to protect their catch and the nets; and then they sell the meat clandestinely when they come ashore… It was through one of these channels that some crocodile meat landed up on our party table….

We had barbecued crocodile with whisky, then crocodile “nuggets” with whisky and finally crocodile curry (jhol !) with steamed rice, and of course, with no one frowning in the background, whisky kept flowing freely…

The conversation as usual was loud and covered a wide range of topics from how that particular friend had bet on a football club in some European league and won a handsome seventeen thousand dollars sitting halfway across the world and how he had followed that club for four seasons before hitting his “jackpot”, to how women in India no longer cared about expat husbands any more and were more interested in marrying IT fellows back home…

After a few rounds of whisky and crocodile meat, some became philosophical…we talked about how unfair life was for the crocodile that ended up on our table….. and something should be done about it, that being an endangered species and stuff – a conversation that was adequately stopped by more barbecued crocodile and one more round of whisky…

Then people started saying their goodbyes and leaving – they wanted to get home while they could still drive, finally leaving the stage for the five of us… we gathered together with one more round of whisky and barbecued crocodile…. And started talking about life….

And then one of them said, “Life is actually like a tree; you need to decide what kind of tree you want to become as you grow old…..” He went on to expand, “You can be a coconut tree or a casuarina tree or a banyan tree… the choice is yours…”

“If you are a coconut tree then you can be noticed from far but are not only of no use to people near you; you can be dangerous… If you are a casuarina, then you are definitely beautiful and do provide some shade to people, but the grass does not grow near your feet and many creatures shun you… Whereas if you are a banyan tree, you can touch the lives of those around you and make it beautiful for them…..”

As I drove home that night sozzled to the gills, those words rankled in my mind….. I tried putting it against the backdrop of some of the relationships that my group of friends had…. Trees ? Yes, some of those relationships were like winter trees without leaves casting scrawny, spiny shadows in moonlight, like a chiaroscuro of life that had gone awry….

But that is life, isn’t it, with its infinitely varied forms…

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There have been many years and many parties between that one and today – but those words still haunt me as I search for my model tree….

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