---

 

THE PASSION FRUIT

SreeKumar K

We are six siblings, me the youngest, six years younger than the fifth, a brother. Passion fruit was a rarity in my childhood and my brother had procured a sapling from somewhere and planted it close to a cashew nut tree in our backyard.

It grew hugging the tree and soon flowered and flaunted its first fruit a full fifteen feet above the ground.

The moment I saw it, I coveted it and decided that it was ripe. My brother tried to convince me it was quite tender, but I fought with him and insisted that it should be plucked instantly. Being youngest, I was tolerated much at home. Still, my brother took all his courage and resisted. In the end, i got furious and chopped the plant down with a kitchen knife. I got away with that.

Well, I didn't.

My craving for passion fruit continued to grow. What never grew were the numerous passion fruit saplings I went on planting for the next three decades of my life. I have green thumbs and whatever I put into the soil, straight up or upside down grows, flourishes, flowers and fruits. But not the only passion fruit of my life.

We, my small family of me, wife and daughter, moved into an old rented house near a river and its terrace was covered by a single sprawling passion fruit vine. 

We admired its blossom every evening and on one occasion counted 165 flowers.

We were away for a few days and our well intentioned house owner hired a worker to clear the premises. The not so well intentioned worker took a short cut by chopping the passion fruit vine at its roots and hauling it off the terrace and towards the sand bar near the river. The house looked pleased having been unburdened of the silly creeper.

That night, sitting alone on the terrace, I figured it all out.

I rang up my brother. He hadn't gone to sleep. I apologized to him and wept rather bitterly.

Recently we moved into another rented house. 

Three months back, I spotted a passion fruit sapling, weak and lean, as if from an exhausting long time travel.

Yesterday, near the front balcony, my daughter found a few tender fruits flecked with a full summer blossom.

Like pleasant thoughts in a calm mind, the creeper is solemnly moving all over that side of the house.

---