So near and yet sofa!

Not everyone can be Hanuman. He carried a portable sofa with himself. Captured by the rakshasas, he was paraded before Ravana in the durbar hall. He created a sofa according to his specification- adjusted to the correct height and with the appropriate amount of cushion, using his own tail! From this vantage point, he scanned his audience- brimming with “I am the master of all I survey” and took on his adversary. The sofa gave him this added edge and advantage.

The rest of us have to make-do with sofas that come in all kinds of flavors. When I visit someone’s home, I am always wary of the sofa I am about to settle in. Some sofas are veritable “sinkholes”- the kind of sinkholes you read about in the newspaper these days. The entire road suddenly caves in and takes with it cars and even entire trucks! Some sofas are exactly this kind. The moment you sit on the sofa, it sucks you into its depths like the famed Bermuda Triangle. There is absolutely no time to take evasive action. Peering from the precincts of this well helplessly, you will soon need external help to extricate yourself from this blackhole!

At the opposite end of the cushion-spectrum are sofas that are “all bone and no flesh”! Decades of usage has ensured that the foam is virtually non-existent. Newton’s third law of motion comes fully alive. You impose your weight on the sofa. Its bony, wooden frame resists and gives back a counterpunch! After a few minutes, it hurts badly. You try different antics- using your palms as a support pillar to hoist yourself that extra inch and lessen the weight on your seat. When the attention is focused on the lower part of your anatomy, coherent conversation with the host is impossible!

In some cases, the cushion is a free spirit. Each time you adjust yourself, the cushion is equally animated and moves along with you. In extreme cases, much to your horror, it bounces off the sofa and falls over. It is now a scramble- to retrieve the cushion and give it back its rightful place. We don’t know who is more red-faced- the host for owning such a sofa or you…for being so terribly clumsy!

They talk about the “swinging sixties”. That was before my time. The late-1970s and early-80s had two major inventions that virtually defined these decades. One was of course the “safari suit” that invaded and captured the man’s wardrobe. The other was the “sofa cum double bed”.  No home worth its salt could exist without a “sofa cum double bed”. It was like owning an i-phone- your social status was tied to it.

When you visited someone's place, the first activity was a “live demo” on the functioning of the sofa-cum-double-bed.  It was truly a path-breaking invention. When space was at a premium, it functioned as a compact sofa by the day. And come night-time, you could unfurl and expand it into a full-sized bed. How you reacted to this “demo” had a direct bearing on what proceeded thereafter. A lukewarm reaction got you lukewarm, stale coffee. “Wow! This sofa-cum-double-bed is absolutely stunning…and wonderful! It is so-so comfortable!” Such a reaction endeared you to the host and got you the best coffee- strong, hot, and frothy and even some tidbits to go with it!

Sofas have evolved over the decades.  There are sofas that rock and sofas where you can hoist your feet and rest, all with the click of a button. We spot even “massage sofas”- where the cushion curls and squeezes your sides, to “loosen the tension in the muscles” so that you feel “light and relaxed”.

Regardless of the amount of “research” you’ve done before purchasing the sofa, once it sits in your living room, you invariably wonder- maybe, we should have got a less bulky sofa, or perhaps a lighter color.  Like all else, it is a case of being so near and yet sofa!

 

On trees!

A certain modern day Indian writer is at his eloquent best when he writes about trees. A master wordsmith, his writings evoke nostalgia, “Those were simpler times. Roaming around the verdant hills of Dehra, we spent the innocent days of our childhood…climbing trees and eating lichis!” The “climbing trees and eating lichis” theme has supplied this favorite writer of mine, with ample text to fill several essays, spanning decades!

Life is unfair. For some of us, the entire topic centered on trees must be given a miss. The topic simply doesn’t exist. Growing up in Mumbai, there were no trees and surely no lichis. What is this “lichi” by the way?

Back then, there were exactly 2 trees in the neighborhood. The first was cut down when the roots were perceived as a threat to the structure of the adjacent building. The second was sliced in one swift, decisive move. A makeshift screen had to be stretched across the building compound for the evening “film-show” during Ganpati time. The “aavla tree” was seen as a distraction, with its branches obscuring portions of the screen. There was no choice. The aavla-tree had to make way for the night show.

I would have also written about “spending the golden days of my childhood…climbing aavla trees and eating succulent aavlas”. Alas, that was not to be. Thanks to this prickly past, I am terribly weak when it comes to tree matters.

A month ago, while getting to the office cab in the morning, I saw Venkat busy with the apartment gardener. “I need a clump of these neem leaves. My son is just getting out of chickenpox!” Venkat explained. “Wow! These leaves are so huge!” I expressed my earnest admiration. Venkat was stumped. “You mean these leaves? That’s not even “neem”. That’s almond! Neem tree is the one behind the almond tree!”  Venkat could not contain his bewilderment anymore. “You don’t know neem? What tree do you know then?”

Without batting an eyelid, I replied “Coconut!”. Coconut and I share an edgy past. In one “inter-school drawing competition” centered on the theme of “Kashmir”, I drew an elaborate landscape. There was Dal-Lake, there were the shikaras skimming across the lake, there were houseboats and of course snow-capped mountains.  There was also one lonesome coconut tree stretched across the page. Back home, after the competition, sister didn’t mince words, “You drew a coconut tree in Kashmir? In Kashmir? Your painting will be disqualified!” I did not see eye to eye with sister. What was the problem with the coconut tree? Kashmir se Kerala tak, hum sab ek hain, na? Also, like “poetic license”, isn’t there something called “painting license” which allows “an artist’s imagination to run riot”? What about all that tall talk? But sister was right. I didn’t win. May be, they did disqualify my entry.

After my morning tete-a-tete with Venkat, sitting in the office cab, I did some soul searching. How many trees did I really know? There was banyan, there was ashwattha vrksha, there was coconut and then the gulmohar. May be, I can include the pine tree also. The count ended at this point.

It was a humbling moment. Suddenly, other irrelevant trees gatecrashed into the mind, in fact, three of them. There was the “family tree”, there was the computer-science “binary tree” and the “Bhagavad Geeta samsaara tree”. Surprisingly, all the trees I knew about, were “upside down” trees, with the “root up” and the “branches below” (urdhva mulam…adhah shaakham)!  

Kalidasa was also weak when it came to trees. We read that he tried to cut the branch on which he was seated and was surprised that it matched a bystander’s “prediction” and he fell down! But some divine grace helped him. He grew up to be a master poet and composed a full verse, exclusively on trees. He enumerates them by the dozen… “ashwattha…vata-vrksha…chandana..mandaara” and ends by saying- ”kurvantu nah mangalam”- may all these trees bless us!

We can take a leaf from this incident.  There is some hope for every tree ignoramus, even an ignoramus who cannot distinguish between the root, the shoot and the fruit! Shoot!