Samir Shukla
By Samir Shukla
The tree fell with a dull thud. It was a huge Oak tree, long dead and leaning under its own weight. When this one landed on the ground, it wasn’t as loud as another tree that fell on our property a couple of years earlier. Maybe because the top part of this tree fell into a pond. This tree was clearly destined to fall over. It was just a matter of time. Its roots had begun to lose their hold on the soil. It was bereft of leaves, slowly decomposing from the inside.
I thought it would remain standing like that, leaning, for a couple more years. Nope. Heavy rains and a very windy day gave the old timer a nudge and down it went. Thankfully, it was a safe distance from our house.
It is awe inspiring to see this mass of wood. You can climb on it, sit on it, try to gauge its total weight. I wondered how old it was before it stopped living. Sometimes you can count the rings on a cut tree to tell its approximate age, but this thing was already degrading inside before it fell. The rings are undetectable. Now there it is lying across the land. We will have to deal with it sometime, now that its sun-worship days are over.
I estimated that tree was probably 100 years old. It had stood there dead for a while. Not sure how long, but at least since we bought this property couple of years back. If my time estimate is correct, and since it emerged as a sapling, it had conversed and danced with the sun about 36,500 times, if you count the days in a century. Add another, give or take, 25 days of leap years during that century. A lifespan of 36,500 suns. It survived and thrived initially under the shadow of larger surrounding trees, persevered through droughts, downpours, blazing summers and freezing winters, until it grew to be a majestic Oak. Now it lies there at the mercy of natural forces and the impending chainsaw. The sun rose and set on the tree some 36,500 times.
Another sun-loving sapling birthed in India some 23,000 suns ago one hot day in July. A human sapling, if you will. Now once again July, this lovely mid-year month, is about to arrive. Sometime during this my birth month, this year, the sun will have risen and set 23,000 times on my existence on this planet. You can do the math to figure out the age. This means my life has gone through 23,000 sunrises and sunsets, give or take the extra day in a few leap years. This seems like a large number, but it’s not even a blip in the timeline of the greater cosmos.
These have been lovely 23,000 suns (and moons), full of adventures, sometimes boredom, lots of amazements, timely and untimely realizations, slapped awakenings, restful and restless sleeps, all roiled and formed by life’s ups and downs, the ever-present changes. Quite a bit of these were dictated by that spinning fireball in the sky. Life happened all the while dipping into, and adding to, the vastness of human knowledge and ingenuity. Making things. Building things. Raising a family. Telling stories. The days stroll on, one sun at a time.
On this scorching summer day, I’m sitting on my back porch looking at the old Oak tree lying across the land. I think of all the planet changing human maneuverings conducted during that tree’s lifetime. All the trees cut down for our purposes or pleasures since the first human flung some type of cutting tool onto a living tree.
I’m thinking that with some luck and healthful efforts, maybe I’ll match the longevity of that old Oak tree. Get close to or maybe even pass a century mark on my time in the cosmos. Keep adding one daily sun to reach 36,500 suns. Who knows? In the meantime, it is the meaningful daily interactions with the sun and life that matter. This fragility of life, this uncommonness of being alive, is nourished and warmed by sunshine.
This month, this year, for now, I’ll dance with the summer sun and thank it for its 23,000 daily mentoring visits with me. Sometimes it hides behind dark clouds, sometimes, like today, it blazes upon its realm.
Today is flowing along as a soft drizzle arrives with a light breeze and then moves on. A summer afternoon. The count ticks away in the background while I await a hard rain and a strong wind one day to knock me over and join that Oak’s spirit somewhere in the cosmos.
Samir Shukla is the Editor of Saathee Magazine.
Contact: samir@saathee.com
Twitter / X: @ShuklaWrites
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