The Oak Tree

There is a large Oak tree punctuating the tree line that marks the starting of the wooded part of our backyard.

The large Oak tree, in the days of past, must have been one of many old oak trees , scattered around the woods lining the lake on the eastern side of our subdivision, waking up in the spring to the chatter of chipmunks, the calls of the blue jays, falcons and the flock of migrating loons that return to the marshes surrounding the lake.

The tree must have witnessed on one eventful spring, a fleet of bulldozers that came in and cleared out a part of the forest to make space for two score of scattered homes , one of them ours. The large Oak Tree that once nestled in the cozy comfort of the woods now cautiously guarded its border with the civilization.

The start of the tree line overlooks a sloping hill that rolls down to our grassy backyard. The view and shade from the tree line made it a perfect spot to place a hammock.

Out of the two trees that were selected for the hammock, one was a River Birch and other a young Oak tree adjacent to the large Oak tree. The large Oak tree would almost crane its neck and peep through the small tree as I glanced up through the hammock , its leaves rustling with a cautious and reserved countenance.

****

One of the summers, I started flying model airplanes. Back in India, I used to be a big fan of flying kites. Kite flying transcends passion in some cities in India. The skyline in these cities gets dotted with thousands of colored paper kites, bobbling and swaying in a colorful dance. Men, women, children line on the terraces and open spaces, almost possessed eyes gazing on the small dot connected to the other end of the string.

The red polyurethane aircraft modeled like an old biplane, was my kite today. The RF control my invisible string, as I fixed my gaze at the model biplane.

I could almost feel like the plane as I soared higher and higher .. over the house, over the treeline .. when suddenly a gust of wind blew the plane out of control. I tried desperately to steer it back but just as I adjusted the roll to steer clear of the trees, a large branch of the large Oak tree , swinging in the wind, plucked the plane out of the air.

It was not the first time my aircraft had got stuck. Our neighbors had spent a lot of bonding moments retrieving my planes from the top of their roofs. Most of the times, I stood with a home made contraption made with duck-taped sticks, on the top rung of the largest available ladder. Fishing for the plane as my and neighbor’s family provided directions .. “little bit left” and “little bit right” , kids clapping when the plane was finally retrieved.

What worried me today was that the last time my plane was stuck in a tree, I could not get it back. The plane remained suspended through the summer and winter. A mocking reminder as we could see the plane clearly amidst the tree line. I checked every day from the windows overlooking the backyard, hoping that the plane will rescued from its prison by a gust of wind one day.

The plane’s dilapidated carcass was finally handed over by the tree during a blizzard almost after a year. That tree was only half the size of the Oak tree that had claimed my biplane today. The plane was lodged in one of the topmost branches which was impossible to reach.

****

As I stood below the Oak tree , I noticed for the first time, how big it really was. Looking at the number acorns scattered near it’s perimeter, it was clearly in it’s prime. The red biplane swayed far above.

My son and daughter who are my co-pilots , arrived on the crash site and longingly looked up.

“It is stuck” , said my son “ One more plane gone”.

“We can still get it” , I said.

“How ?” asked both of them.

“Just ask the tree to return it”, I said smiling.

My son walked up the tree and touching the bark, said something to the effect “Mr. Oak tree can you please return the plane ?”

It was getting late; we got back into the house for dinner.Me and my wife took a quiet stroll along the woods after dinner. Since the sun sets late in summer in this part of the world, there was still quite a bit of light. I remember that the air was calm and there was no wind. Near the trunk of the Oak tree, lying on the ground was the red bi-plane.

“Thanks Mr. Oak tree ”, I thought as I picked it up and ran towards the house to share the news with my kids as my wife watched me with amusement.

The Oak tree has never been cautious and reserved since then.

The Black Board

I have a fascination for the black board. The omnipresent center of attraction in the classrooms, almost sacred by the virtue of its limited access that demarked the teachers from the lesser mortals.


Countless times I had watched with fascination as the chalk transformed itself into dust, leaving ephemeral impressions that would last for less than an hour on the black board, but much longer in our minds.

Writing on the black board was an art in itself. Those expert in the art almost used the pauses between the impressions they made on it, as time to let a particular concept sink in. The concepts magically materializing in our minds a split second before materializing on the board.

Then there were others who used the medium for written dictation as the students furiously scribbled down the words of knowledge and wisdom from the blackboard before those words were wiped off to make space for more.

The black boards were very black in the hundred and fifty year old boys only convent school where I did my schooling from. The chalks were thick, soft and created a awful lot of dust. In fact, for a long time I had assumed that the reason the tunics of the fathers, brothers and sisters of the convent were white because it would be easier to go unnoticed after wiping the chalk dust from their fingers into their habits.

“Why did they assign Navy blue blazers for our uniform then” , I often used to wonder.

The blazers used to get stained with chalk by the end of the school day, much to the annoyance of the parents. If one was particularly lucky to got caught focusing on anything else apart from the blackboard, the punishment, was to be assigned to a space next to the blackboard , facing the class, where one was unable to see what the teacher was furiously scribbling, but at the same time get thoroughly drenched in the chalk dust.

After my school days, I managed to get admission in one of the coveted engineering colleges in India. The black-boards there were modern and were actually green in color, often stacked two or three on top of each other, and each could be individually pulled up and down by a pulley system.

Multiple boards gave a lot of time to the students to scribble down the words of knowledge and wisdom from the blackboard before those words were wiped off to make space for more. It also gave us sufficient time to sneak out of the class while a professor was busy writing a particularly lengthy passage on the board with apt concentration.I used to often silently admire the fact that someone can fill in four blackboards worth of information in one hour!

The chalk in my engineering college was thinner and harder, often making squeaky sounds especially while materializing into a particularly long mathematical formula. Also, the chalk dust was significantly less.

This light-weight chalk also doubled up as projectile ammunition that could be thrown at a person. In fact this was a very popular use, especially in the first year of college when several such projectiles were tested on the girls in the class who usually sat in the first bench of the class. I was in expert in this projectile art and often practiced on the lone girl in my class, the girl I eventually ended up getting married to.

My next encounter with black boards was at MIT. Here, there were a mix of black and green boards , mix of thick and thin chalks and in some classrooms pulley systems that stacked up four blackboards one on top of other !

But times had changed. In majority of the classes those magnificent black boards stood dwarfed by projector screens where well crafted and rehearsed slide shows materialized. There was no need to take notes as the lecture slides were available to all the students. 

I had just completed my Master’s thesis and had to do a dissertation. My presentation was up just before the lunch break. As I entered the room during my allocated slot, I was surprised to see more than a hundred people in the lecture hall. I started hooking up my laptop with the help of the technical staff and we found out that there was some glitch in the projector setup. The projection screen would not unfold despite several attempts.

As the clock ticked through the futile attempts, the restless din in the room got louder and louder.

I looked longingly at the fixture on the roof just in front of the black boards, from where the currently inoperable screen was supposed to appear.

“Why me?” I thought when suddenly my gaze fixed into the three level stacks of black boards just behind the projector screen fixture. Looking at them, I realized that these boards were not green – they were actually black!

“I guess we will do this the old fashioned way!” I addressed the classroom as the din gradually died away.

I briefly paused to glance at my Navy-blue Blazer, and picking up the soft chalk from the podium, I walked towards the blackboards amidst an applause.