Roots Of Love

I.

It is summer again and I love to lie in the cool shade of the banyan tree in my grandmother’s backyard and think of summers long past. It is almost as if I hear the tree speaking to me— in echoes from the thick stem, the roots hanging from the branches as if to graze my skin and unlock my memory. The earth has a mind, I think— one that collects the memories of everyone that ever walked on it and returns them when one stops and rests. I think of summer two years ago when the brown-eyed boy bought a few seeds with the pocket money he’d saved and held them out to me in his rough palms.

“You like plants,” he’d said. I remember telling him he had beautiful eyes before taking the seeds and planting them in one of my mother’s earthen flower pots. I thanked him and promised him I’d take care of the seeds and help them grow into strong, healthy plants. I remember the look of satisfaction on his face. Time stumbles and slows down.

This is how love begins. A few seeds planted in innocence and a promise.

II.

Throughout the summer two years ago, I diligently watered the soil in that flower pot. I waited and waited for the seeds to sprout. I remember my mother saying that water and sunshine weren’t all that plants needed to grow and I remember begging my grandmother to let me borrow some of the fertilizer from her gardening shed.

Summer two years ago, you asked to hold my hand for the first time. I remember you bringing your mother’s handmade pickles for me and us eating raw mangoes under the shade of my grandmother’s banyan tree. You carved our initials into a pebble and gave it to me. I kept it in the fish tank in our living room so that no one would know. No one but us.

The seeds finally sprouted. I remember the glee I felt when I first saw green. I rushed out of our house, crossing the road without looking once, to go to yours.
“The plant is growing!” I told you happily. You just smiled and said, “Yes, it is.” I didn’t realise we were holding hands then.

This is how love grows. From shared hope.

III.

The sprout grows into a sapling in front of my eyes. I remember us meeting under the banyan tree every day. You told me your secrets and I told you mine and nobody else ever has to know anything we said to each other. Nobody but my grandmother’s banyan tree.

My mother’s voice pulls me out of nostalgia and back into the present for a moment. She hands me a bowl of cut-up raw mangoes and leaves. I lean back against the stem of the tree and sigh. The shade is too big for me alone. The roots of the tree are grazing my skin and I imagine they do it intentionally. By the time the bowl of fruit is empty, I have lost control of my fantasy and one of the roots is wrapped around my neck and choking memories out of me.

This is how love grows. Slowly, then all at once.

IV.

The plant grows rapidly, but not without care. Summer two years ago, I could’ve forgotten to breathe but God knows, I could never forget to water the plant.

I remember you telling me that the holidays will soon be over and we will both be far from each other, in two different worlds. I told you I’d write to you about the plant every day. Did I know then that there isn’t a noticeable enough change in the plant’s growth for me to write about each day?
Summer two years ago, I was naïve.

This is how love lives. You suddenly notice that it has settled its roots deep within your chest.

V.

The days of summer two years ago ran out too soon, like your mother’s jars of pickles or like the sand in the hourglass that my father kept on his desk. I remember sitting at my desk every evening to write you an email each day— updates about our plant; in fact, those emails were just thinly veiled letters of grief— I missed you so terribly. I could feel the roots of love move within my chest. The distance between our two cities was almost as much as the distance between our two new worlds and slowly your replies became rarer. Autumn rolled around, and the roots of our plant spread deeper. I still watered it every day because that’s how it is with hope— right when you think hope is almost dead and gone, she rises back up on her feet again.

When the trees outside lost their leaves, time started sprinting again. I watered the plant more often, wishing to compensate for your absence from my routine. I watched the roots of our plant get clogged and start to rot— much like the roots of love in my chest. Did I know then that too much water can kill a plant? Autumn two years ago, I was still naïve.

This is how love suffers. By hurting everything around it.

VI.

Our plant started wilting when the weather turned cold. How can the leaves stay green when the roots have started rotting?

Winter two years ago, I tried all I could to save our plant from rotting. But it had already suffered so much due to the lack of enough sun and too much water, I could do nothing but let go of my denial. Then I was angry. I was angry because you, the brown-eyed boy from my summers, had taken away all the sunshine with you when you left to go to some stranger city. I found it unfair that you left none behind for our plant’s sake.

Yet, hope is difficult to kill. Hope keeps getting knocked down to her knees but she gets up again and again still. And while there is hope, there is love, and the roots in my chest are evidence. Spread so far, in the crevices of my lungs, spread so deep— I couldn’t dream of pulling them out without ripping myself apart. They were beautiful, they were strong, but they were making it so hard to breathe.

I watched the leaves turn brown and black and then fall one by one. I watched the stem bend and break ever so slowly. Winter two years ago, our plant died a slow, painful death. And I sat at my desk and watched.

This is how love dies. And you try to save it and find yourself helpless.

VII.

Spring last year, I kept the empty flower pot in the trashcan. I went outside after weeks of confining myself to the four white walls of my borrowed room in the concrete city. The greatest shock was that the sun was still there; you had not taken all the sunshine with you. I remember breathing properly for the first time in so long— the sun’s heat was drying out the roots in my chest. I took a few more deep breaths and watched the roots slip out of my body and become dust on the ground.

Spring last year, I went back to being just me, without any remnants of you within.

This is how love leaves. Quietly, then all at once.

VIII.

I open my eyes to the present again and it is as if this banyan tree’s roots have twisted around my limbs. My body feels so heavy with grief, I cannot bring myself to move out of the shade. Summer last year, I saw you for the last first time when you came back to our hometown to help your family move. I watched your hands pull out the roots of your mother’s rose bushes so carefully and place them in jute bags for the journey. These hands had held out tiny plant seeds to me exactly a year before.

I untangle my limbs from the thick roots of my grandmother’s banyan tree. The grief stays within, a loving parasite under my skin. I push the memories of you back to a corner of my mind.

This is how love lives. By becoming an eternal part of you.

IX.

The house across the road will always look empty to me. There is a new family that lives there now. But I grieve the brown-eyed boy with his rough, callused hands who lived there till last summer. My family barely talks about him now. He exists only as long as I live. I give the empty fruit bowl back to my mother and sit to watch the fish in our living room’s fish tank. Time stumbles and slows down again— it apologises for slipping by so fast when I’d prayed for it to stop. I’d hoped and I’d dreamt of being stuck in a moment of love for all of eternity. But love leaves as sure as it comes.

There is a pebble inside the fish tank with two initials carved on it— his and mine. Grief stays, despite everything, in a corner of my soul. Perhaps, the only proof that there was love here, and it couldn’t stay. Summer last year, I watched him leave for the last time. it hurt just as much as summer two years ago but I told myself at least I wouldn’t have to go through it ever again. I would go through it all again though, just to see him one more time. Instead, I hold onto the memory of the look on his face when I’d thanked him for the plant seeds.

This is how love stays. It spreads its roots in your soul and becomes grief.