Under the Banyan Tree.
I am suddenly noticing that the city has a relatively large number of Banyan trees or vat vruksha.
Most of them seem to be just a few years old. They are young and proud like our youngsters who are at the median age of our nation yet they seem large enough to to look mature like banyan trees tend to look. They are also in unlikely places. They can grow close to the salty sea and mangroves and on the tide line! They are next to concrete roads too and not where you usually find them in the usual centre of a neighbourhood, or where people used to congregate.
They are everywhere and they are welcome islands of shades from sun and the eerie sunlight reflected from glass buildings. And wherever they exist, the attract people, people watching people, people who end up talking to each other.
Above them hang the very tender roots of the tree, as tender of a child's skin.
I think they are the banyan's ears. They seem sensitive enough to listen to what the beating of your heart is saying when people pause between sentences. Or the messages we type into mobile phones to people faraway and too busy to meet under a banyan tree.
