On trees!

A certain modern day Indian writer is at his eloquent best when he writes about trees. A master wordsmith, his writings evoke nostalgia, “Those were simpler times. Roaming around the verdant hills of Dehra, we spent the innocent days of our childhood…climbing trees and eating lichis!” The “climbing trees and eating lichis” theme has supplied this favorite writer of mine, with ample text to fill several essays, spanning decades!

Life is unfair. For some of us, the entire topic centered on trees must be given a miss. The topic simply doesn’t exist. Growing up in Mumbai, there were no trees and surely no lichis. What is this “lichi” by the way?

Back then, there were exactly 2 trees in the neighborhood. The first was cut down when the roots were perceived as a threat to the structure of the adjacent building. The second was sliced in one swift, decisive move. A makeshift screen had to be stretched across the building compound for the evening “film-show” during Ganpati time. The “aavla tree” was seen as a distraction, with its branches obscuring portions of the screen. There was no choice. The aavla-tree had to make way for the night show.

I would have also written about “spending the golden days of my childhood…climbing aavla trees and eating succulent aavlas”. Alas, that was not to be. Thanks to this prickly past, I am terribly weak when it comes to tree matters.

A month ago, while getting to the office cab in the morning, I saw Venkat busy with the apartment gardener. “I need a clump of these neem leaves. My son is just getting out of chickenpox!” Venkat explained. “Wow! These leaves are so huge!” I expressed my earnest admiration. Venkat was stumped. “You mean these leaves? That’s not even “neem”. That’s almond! Neem tree is the one behind the almond tree!”  Venkat could not contain his bewilderment anymore. “You don’t know neem? What tree do you know then?”

Without batting an eyelid, I replied “Coconut!”. Coconut and I share an edgy past. In one “inter-school drawing competition” centered on the theme of “Kashmir”, I drew an elaborate landscape. There was Dal-Lake, there were the shikaras skimming across the lake, there were houseboats and of course snow-capped mountains.  There was also one lonesome coconut tree stretched across the page. Back home, after the competition, sister didn’t mince words, “You drew a coconut tree in Kashmir? In Kashmir? Your painting will be disqualified!” I did not see eye to eye with sister. What was the problem with the coconut tree? Kashmir se Kerala tak, hum sab ek hain, na? Also, like “poetic license”, isn’t there something called “painting license” which allows “an artist’s imagination to run riot”? What about all that tall talk? But sister was right. I didn’t win. May be, they did disqualify my entry.

After my morning tete-a-tete with Venkat, sitting in the office cab, I did some soul searching. How many trees did I really know? There was banyan, there was ashwattha vrksha, there was coconut and then the gulmohar. May be, I can include the pine tree also. The count ended at this point.

It was a humbling moment. Suddenly, other irrelevant trees gatecrashed into the mind, in fact, three of them. There was the “family tree”, there was the computer-science “binary tree” and the “Bhagavad Geeta samsaara tree”. Surprisingly, all the trees I knew about, were “upside down” trees, with the “root up” and the “branches below” (urdhva mulam…adhah shaakham)!  

Kalidasa was also weak when it came to trees. We read that he tried to cut the branch on which he was seated and was surprised that it matched a bystander’s “prediction” and he fell down! But some divine grace helped him. He grew up to be a master poet and composed a full verse, exclusively on trees. He enumerates them by the dozen… “ashwattha…vata-vrksha…chandana..mandaara” and ends by saying- ”kurvantu nah mangalam”- may all these trees bless us!

We can take a leaf from this incident.  There is some hope for every tree ignoramus, even an ignoramus who cannot distinguish between the root, the shoot and the fruit! Shoot!