You know, with the perfect inch of surety, that when fruits start falling as soon as you look at their parent tree, your day is deemed to be unusual.
It first started with the guava tree outside my room. I was ready to go out and was walking to the front gate when a ripe yellow guava fell right in front of me. Nothing strange there. Fruits fall from trees all the time.
Then, as I started walking outside the galli that led to a bigger road, a bhogate fell behind me. If I had looked at that tree a second early, I would have seen stars; the same way Amara sees stars whenever Hattori hits him with his wooden katana 刀.
The last one was when I was walking past a watermelon tree. A watermelon, too, almost hit me. Wait a minute… do watermelons grow on trees?
Anyway, my point is that my day was not normal.
***
I had gone to the one-of-the-very-few-parks that Kathmandu had to meet a friend. He was sitting below a peepal tree to shield himself from the scorching sun.
As soon as he saw me, he closed his book of Subtle Art of Giving a Shot, and waited for me to approach him.
I went and sat down next to him. “What’s up?” I put down my bag on the slated floor.
“Nothing much,” he said. “Want to eat something?”
“What do you have?” I queried.
He opened his Torilaure’s Apparel bag and took out a big microwavable plastic tiffin box. Inside them were pieces of guavas, bhogate, and… you guessed it. Lemons.
Ishan Mainali 