My 4-year-old brother woke up to see the hills and paddy fields of tropical Kerala.
“Those umbrellas are so big!” he said, wide-eyed. I (R.G.), his older and wiser sister, was happy to educate him: the umbrellas were coconut palms, trees that did not grow in the plains of northern India where we had our home.
A few days later, my brother and I watched in amazement as the bare-chested, bare-legged coconut climber shinned-up the tree, a ring of cloth holding his ankles in apposition. Two stories above our heads, gripping the branchless trunk with his bare thighs, he extricated a sickle from his waistcloth and cut down tender coconuts for us to drink.