An encounter with the tree-verandah house of Malleshwaram

A year-old tree memory that still warms me

It was a sunny November morning in Bangalore last year: a welcome sight after many gray monsoon months. I was walking through the streets of Malleshwaram, a neighborhood the city’s old-timers described as vintage Bangalore. As I walked past the bygone bungalows and their lush, rich gardens spilling out onto the sidewalk, I realised how grateful I was to be on this walk. I was six months post-partum and no longer had time to take long, rambling walks, photographing all that I observed and subsequently making my the city my own, as I had done when I first moved here seven years ago. Today, though, I had this precious opportunity via a diaper run of all things and I savored every moment of it.

Even though I had left my baby in safe hands, I still felt on borrowed time; if walks were a leisurely journey earlier, I now treated them as transit points, a pause between tasks. The past months of pregnancy and post-partum had been a series of many such illuminating moments, highlighting truths I had earlier been oblivious to. Postpartum state was a unique kind of cognitive dissonance, highlighting the gulf between what you once were and what you had now become. I struggled to recognise myself both in the mirror and through my actions; I gazed at my baby, incredulous at times that I had birthed her into being. I was not alone in my journey: I had a partner equally dedicated to co-parenting and multiple resources of support - and yet, the journey of motherhood still seemed terrifyingly vast, intimidating, and scary, akin to an explorer setting sail into an unknown ocean even though they had all the sea charts at their disposal. As I walked carrying those diapers, I felt both their weight as well as of the responsibilities, anxieties, and ecstasies contained inside mother.

The walk soon made me forgot about the world beyond and within; I simply soaked in the sights I encountered, visual diadems I secreted away in the treasure chest of my phone, to return to and enjoy later. I gazed at the sunlight streaming through the tree canopies, thinking of all those trees which had helped me make home in Bangalore and remained constant, unconditional friends despite all that had changed in my life. Perhaps, it was why the tree verandah house caught my attention the way it did.

My mentally allotted time for my walk was ending: I needed to return home. However, just as I turned a corner, I saw it: a double-storied cream colored house, a flight of red oxide steps leading to a verandah in which grew a tree. Forgetting my resolve to leave, I remained rooted to the spot, inexorably drawn towards the sense of refuge the scene exuded. I imagined sitting on the verandah on a crisp morning like today, drinking tea and gazing at the canopy above, all my problems and fears temporarily vanishing in the air. I heard the twittering birds and rustling leaves, one gently detaching itself from the branches and falling upon my head.

As an undergraduate, I would awaken to a dense green tree canopy shimmering in my dorm window; I still recall the security I derived from the sight, the branches and leaves seemingly cradling me in a loving embrace. Over the years, moving from one home to another in Pittsburgh, New Delhi, and now in Bangalore, I am grateful that trees have always grown in intimate proximity to them. The tree leaves and their shadows insulated me from the world and all its pressing demands; their music drowned out the soundtrack of anxious thoughts on loop in my head. The trees’ presence were a lullaby that lulled me when nothing or no one else could. The new apartment I had moved into two years ago however did not have a tree as a neighbor and I felt that absence keenly and sharply. I was therefore grateful for the trees that I had met in Malleshwaram today and this tree-verandah house particularly spoke to me, representing a nest-sanctuary I so craved during this uncertain, strange time of my life.

As much as I yearned to linger there as long as possible, I eventually had to leave but not before taking a picture of the tree verandah. And so, the story might have ended there: a pleasant memory of a happy-making tree interaction. However, I had gotten into the habit of posting images from my walks on social media, the latter functioning as my online visual journal. When I posted this picture, though, I was pleasantly astonished to see how strongly it resonated with so many. Scrolling through Twitter and seeing the post interactions, I saw someone tweeting that it reminds them of Bangalore of the yore; another observes how the design thoughtfully incorporated the tree into the heart of the house as opposed to mindlessly razing it. Someone who grew up in Bangalore wrote to say that it was a house identical to one from her childhood neighborhood: perhaps, it was a popular contemporary design, she muses. Whatever the reason was, something had powerfully struck a chord with all those who encountered this tree-verandah house.

Perhaps, like me, they too had found a nest in this house; in its shade, they found the repose they had been so urgently searching for. For me, it is where I will mentally retreat to on jagged, uncomfortable days, sitting beneath the tree and collecting my many, varied scattered thoughts. And so the embrace of its memory will console me, a warm fire on a wintry day.

*I have been working on a version of this essay for a year now - and the sentiments still endure*