
What they planted
In a lot of old houses there is a tree nobody chose.
A guava at the edge of the courtyard. A neem by the gate. Someone put it there the year a child was born, or the year they moved in, and then spent thirty summers under it without mentioning it again.
The tree outlives them. It goes on dropping fruit on a floor they used to sweep. Children who never met them climb it. Somebody trims a branch because it is scraping the wall, and no one left in the house can say who planted it, or why that corner.
Most of what we leave behind works like this. Still standing, still useful, already anonymous.
What is there in your family's house that someone put there, and nobody can still say who?
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