It happened when I was in Kolkata , way back during the
summer 2002. I was accommodated in a spacious guest house of ITC over looking
Hooghly River in Chandrahati, Tribeni , during one of the project assignments.
I was fascinated by a full grown mango tree , which had
numerous mangoes of similar sizes , which had its branches very close to the
guest house room. I was told that the tree was almost 70 years old at that time , which came
up on its own during the British rule , during 1930’s . All other trees were documented and captioned
with the name of the VIPs , who had planted them during different
occasions. This
particular mango tree was not documented .
I took a liking for a particular healthy mango , which
was on top of all the branches and visible only from particular angles . I kept
on watching that particular mango , daily , out of curiosity. I used to watch
some urchins aiming at that mango and pelting stones , only to be driven away
by the Guest House warden , for the fear of breaking window panes. The Guest
Warden himself had a liking for that particular mango.
One day , during the lunch interval I happened to see a
group of contract workers , plucking the mangoes , since it was given on lease.
The guest house warden had instructed the contract workers to hand over that
particular mango , after they have plucked all of them , since he liked that
particular mango. Somehow the workers
could manage to give the warden some other mango , since that particular mango
was un-reachable and risky. Since we used to have one hour lunch time, I was
able to hear all the conversations going on between them.
In the evening , when I
returned to my room around 0530 pm , I got the answer. One full grown green parrot
, was enjoying that particular mango fruit , which escaped the attention of
everyone. I too was enjoying the happiness of the parrot . Around 0545 pm ,I
have realized , who had decided ?
I could sincerely and hopefully guess that un-documented
mango tree , would have parted with that particular “last mango” of the season to that green parrot
, whose great grand parents , might have dropped that mango seed , which had
grown over these 70 and odd years , as a gesture.
A true
incident
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