Down in Jungleland: Temples of the Earth

Believe it or not, there were trees in Mumbai, too — where we lived next, for 15 years. A dark rustling mango tree virtually abutting the huge verandah, from where you could peep into the private lives of crows and knock down keris (raw mangoes) with your catapult or airgun — which always gave you such a rush (also to run down and collect the booty before someone confiscated it!).  Further away, a large peepul tree overlooked the whole of central Bombay, and, on it, I saw the bird that triggered my interest in birding — a coppersmith barbet hiccuping away. Here, too, a pair of black kites had an old khandani residence and would launch high-speed bombing attacks at voyeurs in the verandah every time they had chicks. At the other side of the flat was another big peepul, where the fruit bats rested during the day. At dusk, they would chatter and squabble and then take off one by one like bombers out on a mission.

Delhi, too, was a tree haven — and hell as well. When we shifted, the Nicholson cemetery, which my bedroom overlooks, was like a dense, almost tropical forest, crowded with magnificent mature old trees — neem, peepul and tamarind, to name just a few. It’s a small cemetery, maybe of seven or eight acres, but inside, you could easily feel lost, even though the cacophonous Kashmere Gate bus terminal was just a stone’s throw away. I would happily and lazily bird from my balcony, notching up over 70 odd species.

Then, in the early ’90s, came the holocaust. Woodmen with axes turned up and brought down (or mercilessly mutilated) nearly every mature tree. (This was before the law was passed banning the felling of trees). When I called to find out why, I was sullenly told, “You don’t know how expensive it is to maintain a cemetery!” The axmen had a different explanation: they said the trees were rotting (which was tommyrot!) and, so, the wood, which was being carted away every evening, would be kept in the godown. Store rotting wood in a godown, I wondered. To breed termites, perhaps. Then, in order to clear the undergrowth, they set fire to it that crept insidiously across the ground and licked at the trunk of one of the few surviving neem trees. I woke up in the middle of the night to see a flickering orange glow on the bedroom wall. The tree was ablaze. The next morning, after creaking and groaning, it gently lay down and died, its canopy feathering our front garden.

But there’s hope now! When an old dead fish-tail palm was knocked askew by a storm against our building a couple of years ago and needed to be brought down (for safety), it took a month or more to get the requisite permission. Eventually, a tree inspector with a sidekick turned up, took numerous photographs and declared the tree was alive (that was the cheese plant creeper growing on it) before he was corrected and permission granted.

There is a simple way to protect trees, at least those in gardens, parks and in school grounds. Assign every child a personal tree (instead of a personal trainer, for god’s sake!), a tree under (or on) which they can play, against which they can throw a temper tantrum, sulk under and seek comfort on, where they can go for a bit of precious privacy or share as a secret hideout with a best friend.

As for me, while I remember all the trees I have been friends with, I’m still pretty hopeless at identifying most trees. And really, there’s no excuse, because trees, unlike birds, don’t fly away!