A Note on the Origin of Bananas

I'm lying here on my bed typing. Dusk is bleeding the colour from the cityscape but it isn't becoming any more subdued. With dusk comes rush hour and its cacophony of honking horns. The Mynah birds compete, squawking a bit louder in unison with the cars. Fruit bats are emerging from their arboreal slumber and swooping overhead. I'm feeling slightly wistful, as I often am, missing people and places, wondering about other people, and worrying a bit about an old Indian man.

Probir, my next door neighbour, is an urbane, lively, and wiry old Bengali. Once he took my (ex) roommate to the university district and regaled us with stories about youthful flirtations and mischief. At the coffee cooperative, with its waiters in their white coats, red sashes, and ruffled white hats, he told a little white lie that we were on our way to the airport so could we please get our brew a little quicker? Another day he shuffled into my apartment and asked me: "do you know where these bananas came from?" He was holding up a great bunch of ripening bananas arrayed around a curved emerald stem. “Let me tell you a story...” This guy loved telling stories almost as much as he loved apologising for telling too many stories! “I have an old friend named Suman. He was a very skilled man, working for years building the frames of cars by hand. One day he lost his business and so he was forced to become a key-maker, sitting on the street making keys. He became very poor but remained a proud man. I could never dream of giving him money so I decided to help him in other ways. His son was in grade five but had never had a proper pair of running shoes! The shoes that he was using were no good for sports and against the school regulations but the teachers knew the family was poor and so they said nothing. I decided to buy him a pair of shoes but I told the family I made them myself. I got a piece of paper and carefully traced my way around the boy’s feet. When I was done I showed them to the boy and said ‘now I've got everything I need to make your shoes!’ ‘but the paper is ripped on the corner,’ the boy said and so I began to trace again. When I finally presented the family with the shoes they were so overjoyed I was embarrassed. They could not pay me, but in return they gave me these bananas from their tree!” His face was illuminated by mirthful pride. I never did get a chance to try those bananas but surely their origin alone rendered them a little more delicious than the average banana.

A couple of days after our (slow-motion) tour of College street Probir had a stroke and fell into a coma. I hope that with time this old story-teller will re-awake. Until then...