-Brian Mendonca
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| Fallen almond leaves. |
This July I have been driving slowly around trying to discern the state of my almond trees (badam). This is the time they are moulting, as it were. You will see them in myriad colours - each signifying the stage of growth (or decay) it is in. The colours progress from green to brown to red.
These days the rain-swept winds shake the almond trees and divest them of their old leaves. As I was driving this morning, I heard a whoosh of air and simultaneously several red leaves of the almond trees cascaded on to the road ahead of me. It was an awesome sight. As I raised my head I noticed several almond trees ranged to my right.
Eunice de Souza puts it beautifully in her slim volume Learn From the Almond Leaf (2016):
Learn from the almond leaf
which flames as it falls.
The ground is burning.
The earth is burning.
Flamboyance
is all.
Published in the year before her passing by Poetrywala, Mumbai, the collection is an incredibly slim volume of 35 poems. It could be seen as her swan song. And how are we to know if the burning of the poem is not an externalization of her pain? Yet one thing is very clear. One has to live life in style.
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Pic taken by Brian Mendonca at Khorlim, Mapusa. Updated 15/7/22.
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