THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A TREE

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A TREE

Points: Introduction - I was useful when I was young but now an outcast – Shot up one hundred years back – Saw many changes – Old events – Conclusion.

Can you recognize me? Probably not. And how can you do so when I have no leaves on my branches, when age has crippled me so mercilessly and nobody takes any notice of me? But I had my youth once, I had my spreading branches with green and fresh leaves thereon.

I was useful when I was young. Birds took shelter in my twigs and sang their melodious songs in the excess of joy. Fatigued people sat under my cool shade, talked and gossiped and sometimes lay at their full length and enjoyed sleep. Cow-boys gathered together under my shade in the afternoon and play their rustic games. But nobody now comes to me neither “the birds nor the fatigued people nor the cow-boys. I stand here all alone just like an outcast and wait for the day when my life will have its end.4essay.blogspot.com

Though you cannot recognize me, I cannot keep quiet. For though old and neglected, I have an urge in me to be known and pointed at as an object not to be so unkindly Forgotten. I shot up from the earth some done hundred years back when there was no human habitation here. Only the peasants and cow-boys frequented this place. During this long period of my life there have been many changes. The uninhabited place gradually became inhabited, here have been births, deaths, marriages and what not? There have been ups and downs, mirths and sorrows, unions and separations. I have seen all these and many other things and have remained a silent witness.4essay.blogspot.com

I remember how one dark night a gang of robbers assembled at my feet and then, in a body, fell upon the house of the richest man here and committed triple murder; how one night a, young woman, weary of her married life, came to me and put an end to her life by hanging herself from one of my branches; how one night a young man gagged his neighbor and murdered him at my feet; how one night two lovers stood here and wept bitterly as they could not be united in marriage. I know many such stories which the people here do not. How I wished that I had a tongue to speak out all these to the people, but you know that a tree can see and feel but cannot speak. I have, therefore, remained a dumb witness for all these years.

God along knows how long I have speechlessly to bear this weary existence.