Squirrels should write the books on trees because no one knows them better. A botanist would study the leaves, fruits and flowers and then give the tree an absurd Latin name. The birds know the best spots to build a nest and where to find the sweetest berries but leaves and trunks leave them cold. Only squirrels know every inch of a tree – the texture of the tree trunk, if the bark is slippery or rough, which tree has the crunchiest berries and which one’s branches have the biggest leaves behind which you can play hide and seek. When our ancient storytellers wove their mythical tales about celestial trees, they must have checked with the squirrels. Then they combined all their knowledge and imagined a tree that has it all — the celestial wish-fulfilling tree that we call kalpavriksha or kalpataru. In folk art, the kalpataru has a broad trunk with leafy branches radiating in every direction; fruits and flowers peep out in between the leaves and colourful birds perch on the branches. The kalpataru is everywhere. It is hand printed on textiles, woven into carpets, painted on the walls of palaces and carved on filigreed marble screens. It is also a popular name for lotteries and shady chit funds that promise instant riches. If I were asked to select a true kalpataru, as a Bengali, I would choose the banana, as we use every part of it. Bananas appear in all our offerings to gods, from weddings to funerals. We make banana fries and kofta curry with the raw banana. We gather the flower petals to make the delicious mochar ghonto and we chop up the trunk for the sweet and chewy thor charchari. Then, we serve it all on a banana leaf with a pinch of salt and a slice of lemon. Trees, plants, flowers and fruits are a part of Hindu rituals and our deities have their favourites, too. Durga and Saraswati are worshipped with lotus blossoms and Lakshmi’s favourite seat is a giant, flowering lotus. Vishnu likes the peepul and his ninth avatar Krishna sat under a peepul tree at Prabhas Patan at the end of the Mahabharata. Heartbroken at the decadence of his Yadava clan, Krishna chose to die from a hunter’s arrow there as the peepul provided a gentle, compassionate shade to his tired body. Indra, the commander-in-chief of the army of the gods, possesses all the celestial trees found in his garden, Nandanvan. Here, he has the kalpataru and kalamra, a mango tree whose fruits confer eternal youth. Though alphonso-lovers may disagree, I think the kalamra of the Kali Yuga is the dussehri of Malihabad. I once drove through the Uttar Pradesh district during the mango season and the air was redolent with the drunken aroma of ripening mangoes. Who can grow old if there is dussehri every summer? The most mysterious of the mythical trees is, of course, soma, which was used by our Aryan ancestors to make a hallucinatory drink. Soma was Indra’s favourite tipple and in one Rig Vedic hymn, he sings in exaltation, “Have I been drinking Soma?” and then repeats the question after every verse like a truly tipsy poet. Our rishis found soma to be a great brew and turned it into a deity. The Rig Veda includes 114 hymns written in its praise. Buddhist legends often have trees woven into their tales. Gautama Buddha’s mother, queen Maya, gave birth to him under a flowering ashoka tree in the forest of Lumbini. On his final attempt at gaining enlightenment, Gautama sat on a seat of fresh-cut kusha grass in the shade of a peepul tree at Bodh Gaya. He gave his first sermon in a mango grove in Sarnath, where the deer still wandered in the shadows of the forest. At the end of an extraordinary missionary life, old and ill, the Buddha lay down between two sal trees in Kushinagar and gained nirvana. In all the landmark moments of his life, he was sitting in the shade of a gentle and understanding tree. One afternoon, I sat under a spreading neem tree in Hampi, the site of the magnificent medieval city of Vijayanagara. I was very tired, my feet were aching from tramping around since dawn; my head was buzzing with all I had seen and the tree seemed to understand. The breeze went softly shushing through the leaves, as the branches bent and rose with a questioning whisper. There was a mellow, refreshing coolness that no air-conditioner can give you. As the afternoon sun dappled the ground around me with moving spots of gold, I let peace, joy and serenity take over. That afternoon, the neem was my kalpataru.
