Up to its very summit near the stars,
A creeper climbs, in whose embraces bound
No other tree could live.
Reading Toru Dutt's Our Casurina Tree is always nostalgic. Particularly because I had a similar chapter in my childhood too. It was at the age of eight I came to stay at my mother's family house, in the Aleppy district of Kerala. With its red stone steps which led to the pebble-spread courtyard, the ancestral home in my memory, had a rustic charm. An arched Cassia tree bend over the smooth worn-out steps, littered with yellow Cassia flowers. But it was the grand Badam tree with its broad dark green, light green, bright red, and rust-colored leaves that set the stage. The tree had a python-like money plant and a climber jasmine slithering over its trunk to the top. The courtyard smelled of jasmine.
