You Killed My Tree

Varun was up early that day. He was excited to go for the tree plantation drive organized by the Municipality and his school as part of the Environment Day celebrations. He and several other students would be going to the unused plot near the school for the program.
There were students from other schools too. Each of them was given a plant. “Yours is a mango sapling”, the teacher told Varun. His friends had got litchi, guava, and neem.
They chattered like sparrows as they dug holes in the mud and watered the saplings, the wet mud clinging to their hands and under their fingernails. “This will be a forest one day”, his friend joked.
“Name your plants. Give them the name of your loved ones. You’ll take care of them better that way”, the organizer announced through the mic in a dry, flat tone.
“I’ll call you Meera”, Varun told the plant. On the wet earth near the plant, he traced the letters with his fingers. ‘MEERA’.
Meera was his younger sister. She was five years old and suffered from some medical condition. Varun couldn’t remember the name of it. Cerebral something. His parents had explained it to him.
His sister couldn’t study or go to school like him. She couldn’t walk or talk properly either. But he loved her deeply.
“I named the plant Meera. Your name. We’ll have mangoes from it one day”, he told her after he reached home.
Varun was among the few students who visited the site regularly, watering and talking to his plant. Most of his friends had forgotten about their saplings, wilting away under the hot sun.
But Varun was proud of his plant’s growth. He used a ruler to measure the plant’s height every day, till it outgrew the ruler by many times. Then he measured it against his own height.
It had reached a little over his waist. He could feel its stem become harder. Like a tree.
He was already sad that day when he went to visit the plant. His sister had to be taken to the hospital after a bout of fits. He badly wanted to see ‘Meera’.
But when he reached the place, bulldozers were levelling the area. His plant was lying flat on the earth, its stem cut in half. The plant seemed to writhe in pain, its leaves trembling slightly in the breeze.
“No! no!”, he ran towards the plant. “What have you done?”
“Someone hold the kid”, one of the workers yelled.
A few other workers and the local leader pulled him towards them. “What are you doing here? Go home.”
“My tree was here. You’ve killed it!”
“No kid. There weren’t any trees here. Some wild plants only.”
“It would have become a tree if you hadn’t killed it today. I planted it on Environment Day”, he said, picking up his uprooted, half-cut plant, and crying.
They didn’t know what to do. They bought him biscuits and a tetra pack of mango juice, and asked him to go back. “Should we call your parents?”
He removed their hands from his shoulders, and walked away slowly, letting the packets in his hand fall, and carrying tenderly the half-cut plant, wondering if it could still be saved.