Doveton’s unique Christmas tree

The once-majestic rain tree at Doveton Girls Higher Secondary School in Vepery began to be unsteady on its feet, a weakness that went unnoticed until the day it slumped. With this care and determination, the school ensured that the tree would continue to stand on the campus, offering a home for its feathered friends, particularly the rose-ringed parakeets. Amputated and wrinkled and shorn of thick foliage, certainly, but what matters is this tree still hums with life, hosting scores of vibrant parakeets that chatter, whistle and nurture their young within the hollows at the ends of “amputated” branches. At the crepuscular hour, a procession of noisy parakeets fly into the wrinkled branches of this tree much like schoolchildren flying into the arms of their grandparent on returning home.