naranjito..

The Spanish visa office at Mumbai was a commercial-corporate building like most others we are familiar with, much blue glass and beige walls and cream cubicle spaces. The walls were adorned with several framed posters, and there was one i associated almost immediately with my vision of Spain. It was framed in a dark wood and featured a small, back-door of a cottage standing slightly open, with a yard in the foreground, littered with fallen leaves. And alone the left side of the poster was a bright young orange tree, a vision in green and orange, strikingly simple and inviting. The only invasion of words in that picturesque backyard scene, was España written in a suitably European font as befitted the poster. That was one of the earlier images of Spain I carried with me.

My house here is not two minutes from Parc Ciutadella which is one of the most central parks in barcelona. It has a lake inside, and several official and historical buildings, sculptures, a zoo, and some fine lawns and rows of trees. I went walking there the day after christmas, my first leisurely walk in this park, as the sun was coming down for the day. Most of the trees along the center of the park were coniferous, and they were all lush green. But the ones along the side of the park, where i was walking, were mere shadows of their former self. They stood there austere and unclothed, their bare branches held upright and unmoving. I was not paying them much attention, treating them as superciliously as they seemed to treat me as i walked past. However, at the end of that row, stood something that made me smile. It was a smaller tree, a child in stature compared to the venerable old stick-in-the-muds id been walking past. It was a vibrant green, with the most stunningly bright orange fruit, hanging invitingly from its laden boughs. It was a long awaited friend, meeting me there, finally.

Now i see orange trees all over the place, and i wonder, was it a season for the oranges that i had to wait for? Or had i simply been blind to them so far?

PS: They werent cloaked in that delectable fragrance of oranges though, nor do i see a bloom on the trees, only fruits.