NostalgiApril: A Series 

"If Memories could be canned..."

(Photograph By: Ria Chowdhury)

The Kadam Tree

Kadam Tree is named Burflower Tree in English but memories don't follow strict language protocols. So I like to call it kadam even when I am writing in English. 

The path to the old Kadam tree in the middle of my town has now been blocked for traffic purposes but Memories also do not follow regular traffic rules. They can cross all blocked roads. This kadam tree was not an exemplification of an outstanding beauty or anything or something one would remember just because it IS/WAS or romanticize it on a moderately sunny day at hours of leisure. The kadam flowers attracted me as a child out of curiosity as I witnessed it every day on my way to school with Dadu, where we stopped for collecting the kadams.

I have not seen the tree since the last 14 years and I have not seen Dadu since the last 3 years but I see a lot of things around me every moment that makes Dadu and the Tree alive.

These wrappers were of chocolates that he brought for me almost every day and I kept them safe in a glass jar so that Someday- like Today, these wrappers can turn into leaves of the kadam tree and I can go back to the child going to school with Dadu.

...If only, "Memories could be canned."