Songs Beneath the Tangerine Tree
written by: Monika Ajay Kaul
The afternoon sun slanted through the lace curtains, painting the kitchen in a faded gold. A bowl of oranges sat on the table, their pebbled skins glowing as if they carried some secret fire within.
Mira peeled one absentmindedly, the citrus scent spilling into the room. The burst of bitterness on her tongue made her pause. She looked at her grandfather across the table.
He was staring at his hands, knotted with veins, as if they belonged to someone else.
“Do you remember how you used to pack oranges in my school lunchbox?” Mira asked, trying to sound casual.
Her grandfather looked up, confusion clouding his eyes for a moment, then softening into a faraway smile. “Lunchbox…” He frowned, the word dragging out. “Yes, yes… I think so. I, I used to to… cut them, q-quarters… sprinkle… little sugar, so they wouldn’t t-taste too sharp.” He paused, staring somewhere past her shoulder, then gave a faint chuckle. “You… you hated the sour ones.”
Mira’s throat tightened. She hadn’t thought of that in years. The taste had unlocked something, an entire afternoon from childhood. She was eight again, sitting cross-legged on the veranda, orange juice dripping down her wrists as her grandfather teased, “Eat quick before the ants find you first.”
But the smile faded from his face as quickly as it came. “Did I, did I really do that for you?” he murmured.
“Yes, Dadu,” she said, her voice trembling. “Every single day.”
He blinked, searching her eyes as though the memory were trapped somewhere just beyond reach. “Strange,” he murmured. “I f-feel it here…” he tapped his chest… “b-but my mind, it slips away.”
Mira reached across the table and held his hand. “Maybe memories don’t live only in the mind. Maybe they live in tastes, and smells, and in the way we love each other.”
He nodded slowly, like a child learning something for the first time. “Then… you’ll carry them, if I cannot?”
Her eyes burned, but she smiled. “Always, Dadu.”
Just then, Mira’s father walked in, loosening his tie. He looked at his father, Mira’s grandfather, and then at the orange peels scattered on the table. His face tightened for a second.
“You gave him oranges again?” he asked Mira quietly. “Doctor said too much citrus isn’t good for his stomach.”
“He remembered me,” Mira chuckled. “The oranges helped.”
Her father sighed, rubbing his forehead. “Memory comes and goes, Mira. Don’t make it harder for yourself… and him as well.”
Grandfather giggled suddenly, breaking the tension. “Your f-father,” he said to Mira, pointing at his son, “once climbed a t-tree to steal m-mangoes, fell, and cried for two d-days. Now he… he gives me lectures about oranges!”
Mira burst out laughing. Her father looked startled. “He remembered that?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” Grandfather said proudly. “Though I might be m-mixing him up with his cousin.” He frowned. “Did you fall from the tree? Or, or was it…?”
Her father’s lips twitched, torn between exasperation and tenderness. “It was me,” he admitted, sitting down. “You carried me on your back all the way to the clinic.”
For a moment, three generations sat at the same table, tied together by the simple tang of fruit and the half-frayed threads of memory.
“F-funny,” Grandfather said after a pause. “Life tastes of many, many things… mangoes stolen, oranges shared, bitterness swallowed, sweetness savored. Maybe memory is not about what we keep in our head, but what lingers on the tongue of the soul.”
Mira and her father exchanged a glance. It was one of those rare flashes—his mind dimmed and brightened like an old lantern, and sometimes, unexpectedly, the flame was dazzling.
***
Later that evening, Grandfather sat near the window, staring at the yard. His voice was barely audible when he said, “Your grandmother and I… we, we planted a tangerine tree the week we moved into our first home. She laughed at me because I, I dug the pit too shallow. But it grew… grew alongside your father. Every year, he would run to it when the fruits turned gold. We thought the tree would outlive us both.”
Mira’s father, standing by the doorway, turned away quickly, hiding the wetness in his eyes.
The image lodged itself inside Mira’s mind. Her young grandfather and grandmother, dirt on their hands, the tree rising with the family, seasons looping around it like a song no one could forget.
***
That night, long after the house had quieted, Mira sat at her desk with a notebook open. An orange rested beside her, unpeeled, whole. She began to write: “Today Dadu remembered. Not everything, not all of it… but enough. He remembered sweetness. He remembered love in a tree.”
As she wrote, her headphones whispered an old song her grandfather used to croon while pruning plants, its melody a thread running from his youth into hers. The words filled her ears, soft as breath:
“The heart remembers what the mind forgets.”
She closed the notebook. The orange glowed beside her like a small sun.
And the song lingered, as if memory itself had found a way to stay.
NOTE:
Based on the Prompt – The Taste of Memory
- Songs Beneath the Tangerine Tree - October 18, 2025
- How Long Must I Wait to Forget? - September 18, 2025
- The Keeper of Rains - July 30, 2025
