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Rose and fetterbush vines


“Put some more coils on that tendril will you?” said grandmother as I lazily yawned and stretched across the emptiness around me. “You will snap and will have invested your time in nothing,” she had not finished censuring me. I could tell from the way she brandished her loose drooping head before jilting back into a stiff posture. “The bark of a live tree always grows wide as it ages. Chances are that it leans away in the beginning and stays that way.” Yes, that made sense. More coils on the tendril allowed for an unlikely expansion or an unforeseen leaning of the source’s stem. Coils in our stems allowed us to pre-empt the natural and unnatural mood swings of our supports.

We, vines, have never been liked by our peers. The tall trees hated it, for we had it easy growing. Traditionally, all we did was to fish around with a loose head blindly, until our sticky nose met a strong stem. And then, we grew coils and more coils. Just as an old witch preserves her age in the wrinkles of her forehead, we built resilience in our coils. And, we crawled higher and higher up the stems of tall trees; saddled the bulb heads of strange igneous rocks; shot around the side members of steel fixed ladders; and over the meshed rafters of wooden roofs.

“Grandma, why are we how we are?” I asked one day, and she feverishly cast her crooked brownish green tendril over my neck, wound tight in three curls, dragged me up close, and pointed skywards. “Look at that,” for a moment, all the chloroplasts seemed to recede away from my asphyxiated neck. “To spring out fast and get to the sun, leaving the rapacious shrubbery behind,” by now I was unable to breathe. I felt as though I had absorbed the last CO2 puff of my life. Grandma however continued with a bereft tone “some chose broad leaves, some chose gargantuan trunks. And we chose supine tendrils. They chose gradual building up of solid foundations, while we chose the easier route. The shortcut – to wind our silly backs around their solid trunks.”

She released me from her vile grip, looked away for a long time. And, I fell down from the generous height of the great tree with a muffled thud just as a petticoat with loose waistband gathers around a girl’s feet. Now, this meant that I had essentially lost good two months. I had to crawl back up and it wasn’t going to be easy. To grow and wind around a support simultaneously was always the easiest. One could carefully work out the length of coils and the number of loops. But this was different; I had to drag along the full weight of my tendril along the length of the support.

I was too lazy to climb. Also, I needed a moment of clarity to think about a lot of things. So I stayed back on the ground; like a snake, I rested my green budding head on the wound tendril. That evening, as I shot my neck around, I noticed the length of my listless stem interspersed with coils. Presently, I was growing pale with lack of sunlight. I wished I had been more like the strong trunked trees. To feed on supports all lifelong for strength – it saddened me. I laid there, bereaving my existence until a climbing rose tapped my neck with its thorn stricken stem.

The climbing rose had acquired a unique style of climbing the length of supports. It bore its thorns into the support’s stem as it wriggled about in loops and curls. Save the petered loose end and the nubile green flesh of the neck, its tendrils lock themselves tightly like wedges into a wooden centrepiece. As the supporting stem grew wider, the locks got tighter so much so that the climbing rose, over a period of time, coalesced into the former.

Around us were tall trees and sunlight barely flickered through the broad treetops. That morning, the climbing rose squeezed my neck tight in its mellifluous grip. And I swayed my head under the influence of its charming thorny stem (from a distance lest I hurt myself) as it bared the pink petals of a budding rose on its crown. Leaving behind the dispiriting mood, in company of the new found friend, I elevated myself into a stirring vein.

We searched for a suitable trunk all day long. By nightfall, we had zeroed in on an injured trunk. Next morning, I shot my neck like a fishing rod to gain access to the injury on the bark of the tree. Beneath me, the rose dug its first thorns into the base of the tree. By the time it got to where I was, I had already cleared the deep bore on the injured trunk off the dry weed and pattered flakes. And I snuggled my back into the burrow when the rose blew its melodious whiff in my direction as it barbed its way around the bark.

In about three months, as I drilled underneath the host’s outer bark, I noticed in my blind state, that the bark was getting thinner and greener. I was getting closer to the top. It was only a matter of time before I smelt the pink petals again. When I initially began to grow and wind insidiously beneath the chiselled and timeworn outer bark, the dark interiors rendered dreadful thoughts of suicide. But the hope of meeting the thorny devil that unfolded its palm shaped whorl to reveal a bewitching pink beauty kept me going.

And to think that it did not occur to me. What a shame! Just as I thought I was nearing the summit of the host tree, just as I thought I had won over the dark times of my life. At the end, the thorny devil drove its green tapered thorns through the fresh outer bark into my coiled neck. And I writhed in pain like a man dreaming of an assaulter on his back, brandishing a shiny knife while his legs sank into a quicksand beneath him. One by one, a total of eleven thorns spiked the back of my neck lengthwise up till the tip of my skull, and ran over me to meet the treetop.

I can never tell if the climbing rose had schemed all the way or if it was ingenuous. I think I noticed the yawn of the pink flower, the ensorcellating blossom. The flush and the stir as the outer petals rolled outside like lapping tongues of a many throated lovely monster.

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