Nurungukal…3...contd..

   I never thought that my grandson was such a bundle of energy. The way in which he climbed up a coconut tree with the help of  a tree climber surprised me. Even the robust worker in our estate hesitated to try it despite my prompting and incentives all these days. The machine was lying idle and almost at the verge of getting rusted in our store room from the day I purchased it. Once I even thought of selling it to a scrap dealer, who very often visited us and disturbed my siesta. My intention was to address a severe labour problem in Kerala. Now a days coconut tree climbers are not readily available and in my farm I used to collect the over ripe nuts as and when they fell. But this is not a good practise as it affected the fruit bearing and health of the tree.

         I doubt my grandson, APPU had visited a site in the net about mechanisation and came across this machine. He had seen young women being trained in TNAU and volunteered to give a try. He used his ingenuity to set the climber on one of the medium sized trees and after one or two trials succeeded to scale up to the middle.  It was a sight to me and his parents stood in aghast under the tree holding their  hands to the heaven and ready for any eventuality. But I enjoyed it, as a different incident unrolled in me. I was of his age. But in my case there was no machine. I ventured to climb on an arecanut tree with my bare hands. Usually such adventures we planned when our parents enjoyed a nap after lunch. When I had reached almost the middle of the tree precariously clutching it with my hands, heard a roar from the nearby compound. A shiver went through me, and the sweat in my palms made me slip down the entire height. I could not control the wetting of my half shorts. Just before reaching the ground and balancing on my feet, a smack on my posterior and a shout to go back home ,took me on heals. As I looked back Lakshmi etuthy the  next door granny was holding a stick high above with blood shot eyes like Bhadra Kali. My younger brother was supposed to stand in guard. But the unexpected shout did not give him much time to raise an alarm. There was a burning sensation inside my thighs  as the skin had pealed off during the sudden climb down. For many days I had to bear with it and never after ventured such heroic acts in my life…..dum dum dum  pee pee pi…