Today I looked below the balcony to see a creeper grow.

Quite full, its thin branches and many leaves were springing all about, around a lanky ashoka.

...aimlessly guarding a pile of rubble.

That creeper has taken three years to renew itself. Some years ago, about the time when everything else also seemed to be crumbling, I had gone into the balcony, maybe for a peek or to stare the sun down.

I noticed that all the young green leaves of our creeper were drooping.

It had been with us a long time, and its what made the house pretty, really. I was
never the petal petting variety, and so never really
lavished much attention upon it., because of the sheer nuisance of sun and dust and merely the disturbance of being anywhere bare of roof ,
but every evening upon arriving home, looking upon the tiny blooms and many
leaves--so free and beautiful each single time. It was hard to miss the effect.
the effect that green will always have, and leaves always create. of quiet so silent
that for a listening moment you can entirely miss the dust.

The drooping creeper was still holding breath, its green still shone surreal.
like the sun perhaps put its rays, each tiny, and singly to rest in, beneath veins
and skin of leaf. But it was drooping, preparing for a big, heavy sleep.

I looked below. And saw wrenched above the dark, wet clotted soil--naked seeming
knots of root. Simply pulled up and laid bare to just lie by!

A little further away down the street, a few pairs of dark knees squatted above
other plants, to pull out and make way for a great new road.

My mother had probably gone abroad on a visit to my brother. so it was just my
father and I at home. Neither able to look at the other. we just muttered, by
turns, to the room in general. I said something about the creeper having been
torn. He said something about the New Road. I said something about ringing bells
and permissions. He said something about this country and respect. The dog just
ran to and fro from the room to the balcony. The balcony to the room, into inner
rooms.

Summer storms were circling it seemed. the rooms just darkened for a few days, when neither I nor he spoke any more of it. We just sometimes peeked. I told the mali when he came by to tuck the roots in any bit of space. By the third day, the whole, tall bloom of it had withered. It felt very much like the death of someone known. Very much like a gross negligence.

And the New Road has not yet come up, but the Old Road has made itself comfortable with pits and piles of loose stone, so walking it or driving down it--one cannot really look up to read leaves or tree. The inches of metre gathered for the New road lie loose too. The country has intermittent ideas. About how a street must become Main. And how leaves can crowd space. It does not ring on your door. just rakes a way, and then leaves it away for pits, for rain and diehard creepers to resoul the remains.