I was standing at the window of the OT, looking out at the trees outside, the lawn beyond, and the open space of the tennis and basketball courts. Suddenly the happiness was broken by an incongruous sight. The stem of the tree near the window had been painted white in an area of 1 square foot. There was the name of one professor of surgery painted crudely in black on that white square. The initials were in the first line, and the surname in the second line. The work was crude. The reason for putting a professor’s name was not clear. I called my Assistant Professor who was waiting for the next patient to be given anesthesia.
“Look at that” I said. “What do you think about it?”
“It is the name of a professor of surgery” he said.
“Could it be the gardener’s name” I said.
“Perhaps. But a gardener would not be knowing English and painting.”
“Perhaps the gardener’s wife or son or he himself were saved from death by the surgeon, and he has named the tree after the surgeon.”
“It is possible” he said.
“But why do it near our department? He should do it near the surgeon’s department.”
“Yes.”
“Will this not make Boss angry?” I said. “I don’t see any tree named after the Boss?”
“The adjacent tree has a white square on its stem too. Perhaps it is for the Boss?”
“The Boss should come first, in the hierarchy.”
“Sir, they should name one tree after you. You are the head of this department” the nurse said.
“I get salary for being head of this department” I said. “I have not done anything wonderful that should be rewarded with a tree being named after me.”
“Does anyone have power to name trees after someone, when the trees belong to the civic body” another person asked.
“I think this is more like what children do on school benches or backs of seats of public transport buses, or tourists do at tourist spots” I said.
I checked the tree the next week and the following week too. The name was scratched off by peeling the bark off the tree after two weeks.
“The Boss must have seen that” said my Assistant Professor. “Poor professor of surgery. He lost his name from the tree and probably got on the wrong side of the Boss too.”
“Poor tree” I said.
