At the emergency Ents meeting after school, Rushad, Gia, and Sana were sitting across from Maharukh Sir, Amba Ma’am, and Pushpaji. The floor was strewn with chart paper, photocopied pages, markers and sketch pens, and lots of reference notebooks. Huh. Even Samar was there. He was a puzzle, that one. It was ridiculously cold now, and everyone was bundled in sweaters and scarves and woolen caps. Everyone looked like a mountain of sheep. Tree looked adorable, swathed in a brightly knit purple and pink wrap.
“So, petitions to school, to municipality, and to who else?”
“Yes, online and offline. Let’s do a hashtag and a social media storm. Isn’t Savi’s sister some major social media presence?”
“Do we have time for a PIL?”
“What’s a PIL, bro?”
“It’s a public interest litigation—how can you not know? Do you not listen in civics class?”
“Shhh . . . Maharukh Sir is right here. He doesn’t need to know.”
“Aye, what if they chuck us out of school for suing the school? We all can’t be like those American kids who sued the US government for causing climate change or something like that. My Ammi will kill me—like proper skewer.”
“Uff, shut up. We will if we have to.”
“What else, what else?”
“Let’s tweet Greta Thunberg, she will have some idea.”
“Now who is Greta?”
“Yaar, how do you know nothing?”
“None of these are going to work,” I said.
“Ah Savi,” Gia said. “Always the life of the party.” She looked at her watch and scowled. A wasp buzzed towards her and she muttered, “Fine, fine! I will try to behave. Why won’t it work? We have to do something, right?”
“Look, we don’t have the time, they have made up their minds. And have you not noticed? Other trees keep being felled everywhere. The protests start and then people get distracted by something or the other, and it fizzles out. I told you those were TLEU (ATA)’s tactics. I am not saying this doesn’t work, but this time, we have to try something different.” I quickly told them about the latest updates and the alarming news of TLEU (ATA)’s nieces and nephews. Strangely, no one else looked surprised.
“Well, we always thought there’d be their spies,” Maharukh Sir said. But before he could continue, Amba Ma’am spoke up.
“How can it not work? You are giving up before trying.” She looked disappointed, especially with me. Oh no, a disappointment glare was coming my way. That was even worse somehow.
“I agree—there are so many precedents of trees and forests being saved. Our country has some really strong laws,” Maharukh Sir said. He turned to Gia. “This is why civics is important.” He smiled to soften his remark.
“Yes, I agree,” I said. I shivered, but not just from the cold. “But I have an idea. And I think it might just work.”
“Ooh, she has an idea,” Gia said, sarcasm oozing from every word. The wasp buzzed again. “I said I will try, okay? But I didn’t promise.”
I sat down and blurted it out before I could change my mind or let Gia scare me. When I finished, there was a long silence and then everyone began to ask me questions.
“Hold on, hold on! I don’t know, all right? This is only an initial thought. We need to work together to fine-tune it.”
“I think it’s silly,” Samar said. “I mean, yes, you are skilled and all at communicating with Tree and your house plants, but this sounds a bit outlandish to me.”
Everyone began nodding, but Gia turned to Tree. A swarm of wasps rose in the air, buzzing. “Tree heartwoodedly approves of the idea,” she said with a sigh. She shrugged and looked at everyone else. “Well, it seems Savi’s plan is Plan A. So let us plan away.”
* * *
After what felt like forever, the weekend arrived. There were many things that could go wrong. Samar had helpfully pointed each one of them out. Frankly, I had absolutely no clue how this was going to go down.
First, sneaking into school on the weekend.
Second, planting messages to the human world using my secret skill, which, let’s face it, was not really a skill. It was just bizarro behavior.
Third, making an excuse to get out of the house because the rendezvous (ugh, not rendezvous but mission—mission sounded way better) was not only on the weekend but at night. Apparently, we were less likely to be seen and heard.
I looked at Dad’s photo and his plants—our plants. I could do this. I had to. I touched the sword lily for strength, but I didn’t linger enough to let a memory suffuse me. My phone pinged—it was time to head out. Anyway, Mom was busy cleaning the kitchen. It seemed her new children were the broom and the duster.
I missed her. Or at least, I missed what I remembered of her. I definitely did not miss this ghost of a mother, who stared at us blankly, cleaned like a vacuum cleaner on triple power, who kept making plans and forgetting about them, and who paced up and down the teeniest, tiniest of flats every night.
“I am off to Sana’s,” I said, peeping into the kitchen. I had packed a bag because after the mission, I was actually going there. I picked up my raincoat because it now looked like rain.
Mom turned and looked at me, puzzled. “Who is Sana? The one with the shiny hair?”
“No, that’s Raina—you met her and her parents at the mall. This is Sana, part of my eco club. We have a project due tomorrow, remember?”
“Uh-uh,” came the response. “Text me her number? Do I need to speak to her parents?”
I wanted to yell back that she only had a father, but I didn’t because, for once, Mom actually remembered to ask. I sent her Sana’s contact card. Her father was an Ent alumni and so he was totally cool with our plan.
Because it was late, I took an auto, which dropped me outside the school. “Baby, aapko pakka yeh time pe school jana hai?” the driver asked.
“Hum camping jaa rahe hain,” I said, crossing my fingers behind my back. It wasn’t a lie—we were camping. Sort of.
Despite the streetlight, our brown school looked browner than usual. Suddenly, something hooted, and I jumped. It was all too quiet. But as I got used to the silence, I heard the orchestra of the cicadas and felt less scared.
Where was everyone? Even Pushpaji was not by the gate. I looked at my phone and realized I was late. I hadn’t expected to have a concerned conversation with Mom!
The gate was slightly ajar, so I slipped in and headed towards the ground. The importance of what we were doing dawned on me once again and, for some reason, I was splat in the center of this! As I neared the ground, I saw silhouettes and exhaled. It was a moon-filled night, fewer stars now than the Shajarpurians were used to. But still a clear enough night. I could make out Rushad, Sana, Gia, and our teachers. Sana had a big bag of food next to her. How did she think anyone would eat at such a time?
“Late,” Rushad said, shaking his head.
Before I could offer my excuses—“Sorry, sorry,” Samar piped up from behind. “Traffic, you know.”
“Really, at this time?”
“There’s always traffic,” I said quickly, thankful that Samar had shown up when he did. “Thanks to our wonderful climate. Well, now less-wonderful climate. How do we do this? I am not holding hands.” I put my hands behind my back.
Everyone laughed and shook their heads.
Rushad looked at me and said, “You know what you have to do. We are just accessories, as Gia loves to say.”
“No one is an accessory,” Pushpaji shook her head. “We all need to be here to make this work. We have to think of our person.” She smiled sadly again. I wanted to hug her. Who was I, wanting to hug people? I was surprising myself! Tree was making me soft.
We all moved to Tree and formed a triangle around them. The wasps rose as if they had been waiting and began to dance.
“They wish you luck,” Gia said quietly. “And they say everyone is counting on us.”
“No pressure then,” I said. Yikes, my voice came out like a squeak. I cleared my throat and broke away from the triangle, getting closer to Tree. The group reformed behind me. Nobody was going to hurt a single branch of Tree. Well, unless it was natural forces, cannot help that.
I put my hands on the trunk and closed my eyes.
Remember?
Remember when you were a child?
And climbed your first tree?
Smelled a rose for the first time?
Ate your first mango?
Heard a bird chirp outside the window?
Stood in awe, as an elephant passed you in the forest?
Saw the waves on the sand
For the first time?
That wonder. That sense of wonder.
Remember?
Remember?
Your person.
Now stardust and soil.
Remember who you were with them.
Your grief, your loss.
You, without your person
Your person, always with you
Remember?
I could feel the deep thrumming of Tree as the message raced through the Wood Wide Web network, through the earthworm holes, moving quickly from one tree to another.
If anyone had been looking at the school—which they were not because it was nighttime and the only people who could have were the neighbors, who were sick of the school because of all the noise that came from it during the daytime—they would have seen a faint glow emanating from Tree.
Tree was bathed in silvery green moonlight. The light shimmered and shot through Tree, it went into the ground, from where it entwined into their many-fingered roots and sinuously made its way across the city.
I reached into my memories.
Dad was taking us for a long, too long, walk in the rhododendron forest of Binsar. I was just a toddler, and I felt like we had been walking for ages. But then Dad hoisted me on his shoulders, and suddenly I was surrounded by a sky of red. “The trees are blushing, like someone put rouge on them,” Meher had pointed out. Mom had laughed and pulled her closer, giving her a hug, her hands still, not itching to clean something. I touched one of the velvety crimson leaves, the sunlight was playing hide-and-seek on the forest floor which crunched beneath our feet, and I felt safe on Dad’s broad shoulders. I spoke my first word then, the late bloomer that I was, as Meher loved to constantly remind me. “Leaf” (or rather, “veaf”). Just then the leaf beat its wings and fluttered away. It was an oak-leaf butterfly, perfectly camouflaged.
Remember?
I felt something stir, it wasn’t just my memory anymore. It was everyone’s—
Amba Ma’am cutting her sister’s fringe secretly in their garden, giggling nervously, a Betty and Veronica comic lying next to them.
Samar cooking mock Maggi over a mock fire with his brother in a makeshift sheet tent on their balcony, surrounded by tons of plants.
Pushpaji on a tree swing with her baby.
A mother applying nail paint to a toddler’s thumb. It was Rushad, gurgling happily under a banyan tree as his father held him tightly.
Gia plucking a jamun as her nanny held her up to the tree.
Ammi tucking a hibiscus in Sana’s freshly oiled hair.
Maharukh Sir standing under Tree, laughing with his partner, eating peanuts from paper cones.
And with that, something else stirred.
It was something deep under the soil, somewhere in the deepest recess of the earth. Something that felt alive, suddenly invigorated, as if they had just been woken up. It was something primal, something who held earth’s stories, the narratives of all beings. It was that someone who stays right at the edge of your memory, just out of reach, but almost there, almost at your fingertips. It opened up the stories it held and let them out, finally.
“It’s done.” I opened my eyes and stepped back with a jerk. I was trembling. Gia slipped her hand into mine and squeezed. “I could feel it,” she said.
Everyone nodded. Nobody could speak yet, but they had all felt it.
“What was it, you think?” Sana asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said. “But whatever it is, it’s now out there.”
“Take that, TLEU (ATA),” Rushad said, raising a fist in the air. A tiny green shoot popped up in response right next to Tree, and everyone whooped.
Our grove of teenagers and three adults slowly walked out of school. We looked around—everything seemed normal.