The tale of the table

The mango tree had been sick for a couple of years. It never recovered from Fire Blight despite some ruthless pruning and was looking increasingly forlorn. It was something of a special tree planted by my late mother-in-law and once the chopping-crew had left it lay before the front verandah for a year, a character in search of an author.

There are some pieces of furniture that never quite enter the heart. Our dining table and chairs had never got anywhere near mine — heavy, dark, ugly — and a light went on. Mango tree? Table and chairs? Time to call the Carpenter. Carpenter is one of the team of people that keep me up and running, brother of my rickshaw driver and a man perpetually smiling. Comes the Carpenter and surveys what is probably half-a-ton of horizontal mango wood. Some scratching of head. Quite a lot of scribbling on bits of paper that he always seems to have about his person. Some very busy stuff with a tape measure. A larger than usual smile announces that yes indeedy, a table and chairs. But maybe not enough good wood for chairs. So how about stools? Nodding and beaming he went off to arrange the transport.

Scroll forwards several weeks and there was an invitation to view the now sawn trunk, and what a revelation. There had been some Googling and a natter with a couple of mates who I knew to be woodworkers. Mango huh? Beautiful wood. Finely figured. Will look terrific polished au-naturel. And there was the makings of my table and stools and yes very finely figured. There were swirls of colour from a bright yellow to a pale parchment with everything in between including greens and greys. A veritable woody rainbow.

Carpenter had a tiny shop with not an electrical tool in sight. We discussed the basic design and off I went leaving the delicate matter of finish until closer to completion. Delicate? Finish? Indeed so. When I announced that I did not want my table cloaked in vile dark varnish and that I proposed polishing it with beeswax, consternation and carpenter came together as one. Beeswax? It took my Urdu-English dictionary and a certain amount of brisk mummery to explain that one. Other carpenters in the same alley looked askance as an elderly gora mimed a bee. Buzzing. They looked at my carpenter as well, wondering at his consorting with the clearly deranged.

Naked table eventually delivered and it was to work with the Black-and-Decker power tools. More wonderment. More gora strangeness as he spent three days taking the bare wood down to a satin sheen. Carpenter visited to inspect my work, declining the offer of a go with the rotary sander, a device he looked on as if it might need exorcising.

Cut to the kitchen at 4 am. Almost a kilo of beeswax had been rustled up by my mate Lilli and about a quarter of it was grated finely, added to three cups of olive oil in an improvised double-boiler pan and BINGO! There it was, my beeswax furniture polish. A buttery colour, odourless and shortly to perform a minor miracle.

Newly-purchased duster in one hand pot of polish in the other there was one of those tiny transformative moments that make life worth living. The bare wood already looked good and had been admired. Even Carpenter was impressed. But within seconds of the first tentative swipe of the duster the surface came alive, the colours with a depth and vibrancy that were revealed by the polish. On I went, photographing for posterity the transformation of my sad mango tree into a rather fine memorial for my mother-in-law — who I have little doubt would have disapproved on the grounds that she disapproved of everything. And was considerably discombobulated if there was nothing to actively disapprove of on any given day.

So why bother to regale you with this tale of bees and carpenters and mango wood? Why for no other reason than I very much doubt that I could ever have done this back in Blighty. Pakistan huh? Great place to live once you have got the hang of it. Tootle-pip!

Published in The Express Tribune, April 6^th, 2017.

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