The next day, as the students of Vriksh Samosa School settled into their seats, the intercom crackled, and the principal’s tinny voice wafted into our triangular rooms.
“Good morning, Vriksh School! Welcome to yet another day of learning and wisdom.”
Samar shook his head. He opened his notebook and began to doodle a brain sprouting like a fountain. I smirked and opened my geography textbook for a last-minute revision before the test.
“We’re delighted to say that this Diwali and Eid vacation, students will get five more days off.”
The class broke into cheers and began thumping their desks. Amba Ma’am tried to shush everyone.
“A Very Big Company will be cutting down the tree at the back of the school, and the noise may disrupt classes. So the Parent-Teacher Association agreed that it would be best to extend the holidays and . . .”
Did I hear that correctly? I looked at Sana and saw her face fall. I turned to see Rushad look even more disappointed than usual. He began chipping at the green nail paint on his thumb. Samar had stopped doodling—his hands were clutching the pencil hard.
“Did she just . . . ?” Sana whispered.
“Sshhh . . .” Amba Ma’am flapped her hands. “Listen.”
“The tree cutting is important for progress. Economic development. Social development. Can’t you all smell the sweet aroma of progress? Thank you and happy holidays.”
With that, the intercom shut off. Amba Ma’am looked horrified and after throwing a nervous glance at us, she zoomed out of the classroom. The chatter went back to its usual decibel levels, but my ears were still echoing with the principal’s announcement. I jumped as I heard a snap. Samar had broken his pencil in half. Sana leaned towards him, but he shook his head. “Later,” he scribbled on his notebook.
Next was geography class. I was pretty sure I failed the test even though it had questions I actually knew the answers to—I just kept making silly mistakes.
The moment the last bell went, the Ents stood up as one and walked out of the classroom. I followed them quietly. The weather matched our mood perfectly. It was dull and gloomy, clouds rolling over our heads. At last, we reached Tree. I immediately went and touched their massive trunk. I felt the need to be close to them.
Immediately that same vision of a board meeting sprang up in my mind. There was a room full of shadowy men in suits, kurtas, dhotis, veshtis, and safari suits . . . and I could see two women as well. They all looked thrilled.
This again! I snatched my hand away. Why would this not stop? I only wanted Dad memories.
I could hear the Ents talking frantically behind me.
“Did you hear that?”
“Did she mean our Tree?”
“How dare they do that?”
“It must be illegal!”
“What’s for lunch?”
Everyone turned to stare at Gia. “What? What happened? I’m hungry. I just came from a dentist’s appointment,” she said.
Rushad filled her in.
Like the others, Gia quickly lost her appetite. She was glaring at all of us like we were a bottle of insecticide aimed at wasps. “Tree knew, that’s why they were sending us all those messages. To act urgently. That’s why they wanted us to talk to Savi . . . ”
“To me?”
Suddenly, the Ents remembered that I was also there. Group death glare! Ouch.
“Why are you here now?” Sana asked hotly. “Go away. This is all your fault.”
“Yes,” Gia said, speaking so fast that it was hard to follow what she was saying. “You with your ‘Oh, help me with my plants, but I am too cool for you’ attitude. It’s fine when you want help, but if we even try to talk to you, you have to go for a concert it seems. This is really on you.”
I looked at them blankly. It was true, I was not the most disciplined of club members. I felt a twinge of guilt because for the last few meetings, I knew that the Ents wanted to talk to me, but each time I had made an excuse and left early. I was terrified that I would end up blurting out everything I was seeing on Tree Channel. “I don’t understand. What did I do? I mean, I can go to talk to the principal, but I doubt she’s going to listen to me.”
“Or anyone, really,” Rushad said. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.” He coolly turned away from me, making me feel like I had been doused with insecticide. He nodded to the group. “Let’s go?”
“Don’t we need an appointment?” Sana asked.
“No, she has an open-door policy between 3:30 and 4 p.m.,” Rushad said.
So, at 3:25 p.m., the Eco Ents, Amba Ma’am, and Maharukh Sir stood outside the principal’s office. I hovered at the edge, while the tired assistant kept telling everyone to sit down or wait outside because there weren’t enough chairs. “Kay re, end of the day itna magaj maari. Don’t take so much traas.” The phone rang and she waved us in. We backed up against the wall as a group of uncles walked out, patting each other’s backs.
The Ents stepped into the cool, woody confines of the principal’s office. I slunk in behind them, feeling like a proper shady shadow.
“Yes?” Mrs. Pankhida asked, looking at us over her glasses. They were hooked to a shiny chain around her neck, which glinted in the brown, wooden room.
No one spoke. It was deathly quiet.
“Yes?” she asked again, now frowning at us. “What is it?”
Gia elbowed Sana, who jumped and said, “Ma’am . . . we . . .”
“Yes?” She steepled her fingers and looked at Sana intently. When Sana didn’t answer, she looked at the two teachers.
Amba Ma’am cleared her throat and said, “Ma’am, about the tree . . .”
“Ah yes, wonderful, isn’t it? Progress.”
“Progress?”
“You heard me once. Please don’t repeat what I’m saying. I do not like it when teachers and students don’t pay attention. This is why you come to school. To pay attention to things. To learn. For wisdom.”
Before she could launch into a speech about the school’s motto, Maharukh Sir spoke up, “Ma’am, but what sort of progress?”
“The capital P kind,” she beamed at everyone. “The only kind.”
“But why do we have to cut Tree down? Can’t we have Progress with them . . . I mean, the tree?” Sana spoke up finally.
The principal frowned. “I don’t understand, what is the problem? The tree is dying anyway.”
“Ma’am, we don’t think the tree should be cut. It’s a very old tree—do you know how many years it has lived?” Maharukh Sir plucked at his mustache anxiously.
“Oh, my teachers and my students! Don’t teach me history, I can tell you more history than you’ve lived in your scant lives. Out with the old and in with the new, I say. We must allow for Progress. Yes, see that’s what the letter says—it’s imperative for Progress for the tree to be cut down. Or else, we will be standing in the way of Progress and that wouldn’t do, would it?”
With that, she dismissed us as a pair of parents raced in, swearing that their child had not done whatever it was that they had been told he had done.
“So that’s that?” asked Gia, as we walked away.
“How can that be just that? We will protest. We will start a petition. They can’t just cut a tree in the name of progress. Even if it’s with a capital P,” I said quickly. I couldn’t let Tree . . . no. No way. The purple frog was pressing hard on my heart.
“Ahem, they’ve been doing just that in case you have failed to notice so far,” Samar replied. “Not just here.”
Seeing my expression, he said, “Will you listen to us now?”
I nodded slowly. Was this a terrible idea or was this a terrible idea?
The Ents stumbled back to the grounds as if magnetically drawn to Tree. The teachers clapped them on their shoulders and left.
I took a deep breath to say something, anything, but the club members had turned away from me. They were staring at Tree again. As one, they gathered and formed a triangle around Tree. Rushad pointed at an empty space, I assumed he was beckoning to me to step into it.
I felt like a member of some cult. I had heard about such groups—they lured you in and then practiced strange rituals and all kinds of things. I was suddenly petrified, and I wondered if I could leave somehow. Would they notice? All right, if they started chanting, I was out of there. Tree’s fate be damned. Sorry, Tree!
I looked around me. The last bell had gone ages ago. The grounds were completely empty. I suddenly remembered that I had told Raina I’d go to her place. Oh well.
“Savi, it’s high time we tell you something,” Rushad said.
“Wasn’t our decision,” Gia said. “It was the wasps who insisted we do.”
“Shush,” Sana hissed.
“We know,” Rushad said, frowning at everyone else. He turned to look at me. “We know about your grief, your loss.”
I stared back at them, my heart suddenly very still, as if the purple frog had swallowed it whole. “What . . . how? Have you been spying on me?” Rage ballooned inside me. How dare they? All thoughts of Tree being chopped down were pushed away at once.
“We don’t know who it is,” Samar said quickly. “We know you also have lost someone. Like all of us.” He gestured towards all the club members. “A loss—it leaves a mark.”
I touched my face. Was there some sort of a mark there, visible for everyone to see? An ugly gaping scar, like the slash of a claw? I stared fixedly at Tree. I couldn’t bear to look at the others. I couldn’t bear to see their faces filled with pity, telling me to be strong and resilient or some such gibberish. That would change everything, just like it had in my previous school. Chetna, Firoze, all of my friends had started looking at me differently once Dad had died. Like they were very sorry for me.
I dreaded that look. And those words, the hollow words that everyone—my teachers, the parents of my friends, and all those busybody uncles and aunts who had come for the cremation—said: “Time is a great healer,” “Death touches everyone,” “You are young, someday it will feel less sad,” “Stay strong for your Mummy.” None of them got it. None of them. I could not bear it. Every time that hollow pity came my way, I slashed at it with words. Made it shrivel with a look. Until none of my friends knew what to talk to me about. Or even how to come up and say hello. Until my teachers just glossed past me in their classes. Until I finally left that school and city behind. Leaving my friends behind along with their pity and hollow, empty words.
And now the pity would raise its ugly head again. My knees buckled as I crumpled to the ground. I closed my eyes, reached into the mud, where Tree’s roots lived. I felt the earth stir beneath me gently, and Tree’s rootlets surrounding me, as if holding me tight. A light shower of leaves enveloped me. My fists slackened as a hand covered my left hand.
“Savi, we know what it feels like.”
It was such a gentle, not-judgmental voice that I opened my eyes. There were no roots holding me tight, there were no leaves showering me, but I still felt comforted as if Tree had just hugged me. Of all the Ents, it was Gia who was holding my hand tight, like she would never let it go. “We know, not exactly, but we’ve all lost someone. Someone close to us. Someone who mattered.”
There was not an ounce of pity in her eyes. I took a deep breath and looked up—my clubmates were looking at me with concern, but not pity.
A fruit fell from the tree and rolled towards me. “Go on,” Gia said. “Keep it—it’s for you from Tree.” I reached out for it and clutched the fruit hard in my fist. It sat there, warm and very real. Immediately, I knew. A small boy laughing as he played cricket with Samar; Gia and a kindly-looking old woman walking to the park; a young girl arguing on a bicycle with Pushpaji; a disease that gripped both Amba Ma’am and her sister.
My breath caught. It was all too, too much.
The Eco Ents Club sat down, this time encircling me in the triangle formation.
“I lost my kid brother,” Samar said, looking up into the tree’s canopy. He could not bring himself to look at the others as well. “Cancer. It was so quick. One moment he was being my annoying younger brother, trailing my friends and me, wanting to bat with us, and the next moment, he was in the hospital, filled with tubes and all. He never came back home.” He took a harsh breath. A butterfly fluttered on to his arm, but I don’t think he even realized it.
“Ammi,” Sana said softly, clutching her hands tightly together. “Accident on the highway.”
“I don’t remember my parents,” Rushad said. “They were killed in a bomb blast on a train. I was just two years old.” His hands were shaking as he spoke. “I live with my Nana and Nani, who are awesome by the way.” He pronounced that last sentence fiercely.
“We know, we know,” Samar said. “We adore them too. Especially Nana’s sweaters. You know he knitted a whole one for Tree as well?”
Sana sighed, “Samar . . .”
Gia said, “My nanny, she was amazing. She took care of me like no one else ever has.” Her face was as white as bleached coral. “I miss her every day.”
We had run through the Ents and there was a pause. It was not an awkward one. It was a pause. An exhalation. I noticed that Amba Ma’am, Maharukh Sir, and Pushpaji had returned.
Amba Ma’am said sadly, “An illness, it took my sister and left me alone. Maharukh lost his partner to COVID-19. He was something else, a force of nature.”
Maharukh Sir didn’t say anything, he just looked at Tree, but his Adam’s apple was moving as if he was trying not to cry.
Pushpaji said softly, “I lost my daughter. She was born with a hole in her heart. My only son is in the village.”
A silence followed all these revelations. I knew it was my turn, but how could I?
“You don’t have to,” Pushpaji whispered.
I finally forced the words out from under the frog’s weight. “My dad . . . that’s why we moved. Delhi had too many memories—or at least my mother thought.” The purple frog shifted slightly.
“Are those his plants?” Samar asked.
I gave a slight nod. Gia gave my hand a squeeze and let it go to hand me a bottle of water. “Drink. You will feel better.”
“Each and every one of us,” Rushad said, “has been chosen by Tree. They speak to us through the fruits, through the wasps.”
“Ahem, they actually speak to me,” Gia pointed out, smugly. “I just translate for the plebs.”
Maharukh Sir smiled slightly and shook his head. “Not now, Gia,” he admonished gently. “Rushad here, he’s got magic in his fingers—any plant grows under his care.”
I had not imagined it then! But how was it real, how was this happening? There was magic in this air! Oh and Dad, he also had the same magic. I should have known.
“Sana, she just knows what each one of us needs and what each plant needs when. She is truly the glue that keeps the Ents together.” I looked at Sana, but she was looking intently at Tree’s roots. She was so not used to being the center of attention.
“Of course, you know Gia’s talent,” Sir said. “And Samar, all the other pollinators and the earthworms feel safe around him, which is why they are so comfortable around him and communicate with him. They have their own language.”
That explained the mantis, the butterfly, all of them, being attracted like magnets to him! That was a talent I definitely was glad not to have. I wondered what the grown-ups’ talents were, but I couldn’t ask. Or maybe now that they had grown up, they had found other ways to deal with their losses?
“Nature is an old magic. One of the word’s origins is,” Amba Ma’am said, lost in her world of syntax and grammar, “from the late fourteenth century, an art that creates marvel with hidden natural forces. It’s not a sleight of hand or trickery. It’s nature. And trees! Why do you think trees exist in all myths and legends? Because they are the center of the magic. We don’t know how it works, it just is.” She paused and continued, “And Tree’s been choosing us for generations. It’s like a fierce kind of love. A love compounded by grief. It’s that feeling that binds us together.”
I found myself nodding. I understood that.
“There is something about loss, which makes you really see the changing world outside—the trees turning old and gnarly, the seasons changing steadily, the glorious short-lived flight of the butterfly, the whirring seedpod hitting concrete, a flower that blooms for one night, a steadying, dizzying reminder of the world that goes on, and our place in it,” Amba Ma’am said.
“But you . . .” Sir stepped in, “seem to be important. We don’t quite know why. We don’t get it. But Tree insisted.”
I think I knew. I saw Gia looking hard at me—maybe she had an inkling as well because the wasps must have told her. But suddenly, a terrible thought came to me. “Are you saying Tree talks to ghosts?” Horror was totally not my scene.
“Bro, no, no ghosts, spirits, djinns, witches!” Gia said, shaking her head vehemently. “This isn’t some fantasy series we’re stuck in. If we were, I’d be the first one running out of here. Actually, no, Samar would be. He’s the scaredy-cat among us.” Samar stuck his tongue out at Gia as everyone laughed. I couldn’t help but chuckle as well. “Nothing of that sort, okay. It’s something else. Can’t you feel it if you listen hard enough?”
I could. I didn’t have to listen hard. I constantly sensed the power of Tree, a gentle, steady thrum, reverberating across the school, under the highways, the steel flyovers across the sea, a coming together of all beings, not a noise but a feeling cutting through the concrete. It was like looking at a rock covered with velvety green moss. Only this time it was the whole city covered by the tree’s roots, connecting it to another tree, and another, and another, until they were all holding hands under the earth, talking to each other, sharing losses and joys, propping each other up. Keeping the city alive.
It was such a relief to know that I wasn’t the only one who felt this, who knew this. That there were others connected to this power, part of Tree’s network, supporting all of us. That there were other teenagers who understood how sucky things were, and who didn’t think I was weird for being able to listen to a bunch of trees and plants. Actually, I didn’t think they knew the whole thing, so maybe I should just wait and see what they thought I knew.
I felt like I was going to burst with feeling so much. My expression must have given it away. “Yes, we know,” Sana said, wistfully. “And they are not even at their most powerful.”
“Tree is weakening,” Rushad said with a frown. As he even spoke the words, a feeling of helplessness washed over us. It made me tremble.
“What do you mean?”
“The wasps have been dwindling. Their numbers are going down at an alarming rate. Trees are being cut down everywhere, that means our city’s climate has taken a turn for the worse.”
“I know—” I said. But everyone was too taken in by the enormity of what was happening to listen to me.
“And the most frustrating thing is we are still trying to piece it together. It’s all down to four letters, really,” Sana said. “TLEU.”
Rushad cleared his throat.
But before Sana could continue, I spoke up, “Do you mean TLEU (ATA)?”
All pairs of eyes turned to me. It was their turn to look stunned.
“How . . . ?”
“You knew all along?”
“Dude, so not cool. You are back to being Savitri in my books.”
“Who told you?”
I put up my hands, trying to calm the tirade down.
“Let her talk,” Pushpaji admonished everyone. “Who told you, Savi?”
I looked up and pointed. “Tree did.” I reached out and touched their trunk and . . .