Songs from the school

I have always regarded the school campus to be a special place. But I realize that I have only understood the meaning of the word special in the past few months.  Living inside the school is once in a lifetime experience. It made me realize that I had not heard the chirping of so many birds in my life. It is refreshing to wake up to the cooing of the cuckoos. I soon realized that the cooing did not exactly start in the morning.  One sleepless night, I discovered that the cuckoo conversations took place every thirty minutes from 1:30 am. 

I find the birds in the campus are not averse to human company. One morning as I was walking to the school, I was fortunate enough to be escorted by two woodpeckers. An owl stared right into my eyes till my hand moved towards my camera, one evening. Of course, the campus is home for animals too. Many a times, I interrupt the stroll of a mongoose family. They always express their displeasure at this interruption, by staring at me for a few minutes before disappearing into the bush.

Feeding Looty, during the early days of the year, was also an experience. She was young at that time and was constantly harassed by the crows and cats in the campus. To catch her attention we used to whistle and meow as we walked around the office block. Invariably, Looty jumped off a tree and gave us the “at long last you are here look”.  Before long, the crows noticed that food appeared in Looty’s bowl soon after the meowing and whistling. Many evenings, the tree outside the assembly had enough crows perched on it to make it an ideal location for a Hitchcockian movie.

Let us talk about trees for a moment

Every time I enter the school I am struck by the sight of the trees lining the path to the office.  Sadly, the previous year’s cyclone uprooted many of them. But this has brought to the fore the trees in the background.  One of my favourites stands beyond the cycle stand to the right.  Most times, it looks like just another tree.  But some nights, when its silhouette stands against the moon and Saturn, it forces me to pause a moment and gaze at it.  As I write these words, it seems more spooky than pleasant.  But the sight of a tree with the sky in the background can never be spooky.   In any case, the noise of the vehicles drives away any trace of the spooks. 

A little further, the path gets crowded with plants and trees with beautiful pagoda shaped leaves.  Recently, I realized that these are known as the Indian cork tree.  Its bark is soft and used as a substitute for cork.  This is not the most interesting aspect of the tree though.  The tree has shallow roots running up to 60 metres.  Every metre or so, the roots sprout the tree’s next generation from root nodules.  Using this mechanism, the Indian cork tree ensures it occupies an entire area to itself.  When I looked around I found two such locations in the campus.  The first is on the right side of the path leading from the main gate.  The other one lies beyond the dining hall; besides the path leading to the science block.

I understand very little about trees but this one fact has made me look at them differently.  I can identify the mango and neem trees.  I think the time has come to learn more about trees.

A tree

Like a tree
Growing from a seed
Focusing on self
Turning deaf to the rest
Doing for self and not for other
But letting them benefit