Accidental Blogger

Cross-posted from Fluff ‘n’ Stuff

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Jonny stood by the gate, tapping the latch to gain attention, his
red-shot watery eyes blinking in the late morning sun. Mother stepped
out on the veranda.
"Ah, finally, you have come. Why did it take so
long? The palm leaves have been in danger of falling on the heads of
passers-by for more than a week now."
"I was sick and couldn’t make
it," Jonny mumbled, scratching the wispy grey hair peeking out of his
uncovered pate, wrapped with a dingy cotton towel around the crown. He
still reeked faintly of the liquor he had spent his night imbibing
after a day of toil.
"Never mind. Get to work on the front tree first and then finish up in the yard."
Nodding
his head, Jonny nimbly hefted himself and balanced on the wall near our
front coconut tree, the wall having been built split on either side of
the trunk. It would never do to cut down a bearing coconut tree,
especially one, the priest performing the house pooja had assured us,
that was planted over the remains of a scion of the local aristocratic
landlords who had sold the land to our residential co-op.
Tying a
strong rope around his ankles bent around the trunk, he bent forward in
the pose honed over the years, gripping the trunk with his forearms as
he locked his wrists. He started his journey up, inch by precious inch,
reaching the top in a matter of minutes and whipping out the sharp
cleaver tucked in the belt around his rucked-up lungi.
"The leaves on the other side. No… not that one, the one to the right has the browning leaves."
Passers-by
paused in their tracks as Jonny let out a warning shout. The fronds
came down with a crash. Our servant stood ready to pull them away from
the road to the side, and would soon drag them to her home to convert
into thatch, or strip the leaflets on the fronds to get graceful long
twigs for a broom.
Next was the turn of the ripened coconuts. Jonny
had a fairly keen judgement of which these were and called out in
warning when a bunch dropped to the ground as he whacked at their
stems. It was my job to help the servant with running after errant
coconuts that rolled down the slope of the road. Who knew, there might
be a pilferer or two lurking to grab whatever came their way!
By the
time Jonny came round to the veranda, there would be a tidy pile of
fresh husked coconuts in the work room behind the kitchen, with one or
two de-husked coconuts sitting on the grinding stone next to the sink.
Then the negotiations would start.
"10 rupees per tree is all that I can give." -Mother would insist.
"Amma, I can’t survive on that. Please make it 20 rupees per tree."
And
so it would go on back and forth, till we arrived at the princely sum
of 15 rupees per tree with a bunch of five coconuts as a bonus. Jonny
would lope off morosely with his wages, till the next time we needed
him and sent word out through the servant maid.
The last year when I visited, I noticed more browning fronds on the trees and unpicked coconuts.
"What happened, doesn’t Jonny come any more?"
"He
died last year. Nowadays, it is next to impossible to find a coconut
tree climber around here. Jonny’s son doesn’t climb, he does other
things. "

R.I.P. Jonny.

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Note:
Jonny
was one of the last of a truly dying breed, the coconut tree climbers of
Kerala. The children of these climbers have moved into other trades,
less hazardous and physically demanding, and better paying than coconut
tree climbing. The demise of coconut climbing as a hereditary
occupation has led to recent inventions designed to make it safe for
unskilled workers to climb trees, such as this contraption. The coconut growers are trying bring in new workers into the ranks of the coconut tree climbers, using this invention.