Tree People

Depending on where we live, we are either coniferous or deciduous, except in reverse

As winter yields to warm spring, which will become the furnace of summer, I look at the trees that front my house.

Like almost all the trees in the plains of north India, these trees are deciduous, like the amaltas and the jacaranda.

Trees are of two types, deciduous and coniferous. Deciduous, from the Latin decidere, to fall off, are trees that shed their leaves in the cold as a survival strategy that conserves their energy in the icy embrace of winter.

Conifers, also called evergreens, like pines and firs, are generally found in cooler climes, and unlike the broad-leafed deciduous, their needle-shaped foliage is retained throughout the changing seasons.

It occurs to me that, depending on where we live, we are either like deciduous or coniferous trees, except in reverse.

People like me who live on the north Indian plains, with their extreme swings of season, are deciduous in reverse and shed their leaves, or outer garments, of sweaters, and shawls, and jackets with the onset of the hot season, and mothball them away till the Earth’s revolution around the Sun brings back the cold, and with it a complete change of wardrobe.

People who live in places like Chennai or Goa, where the year-long climate is pretty much the same, are like conifers and retain their sartorial leafage of kurta-pajamas, and T-shirts, and lungis no matter the calendar date.

Deciduous people convince themselves how boring it must be to have the same old, same old weather all the time, and wear the same old, same old clothes all year. What do people talk about if they can’t complain about how hot or cold it is?

Coniferous people like to think what a waste of time, effort, and wardrobe space – Where the hell did I put that damn pullover? – it must be to have to keep changing your clothes all the time.

Like the grass which is always said to be greener on the other side, the branches of deciduous and coniferous are both cloaked in the green of mutual envy.

END OF ARTICLE