As the leaves turn to brown

It was in 1978 that Awati and his wife Sandhya first came here. Four hectares of barren land was what they saw. The land was in exchange of another that was granted to Awati in Loni for his services in the 1971 Indo-Pak war along with a Vir Chakra. Incidentally, it was the last grant of its kind.

‘‘This area is thick with history. Also there’s that solitude, that distance from the bustle of Pune, the traffic, the pollution…everything seemed perfect here,’’ he says. He proceeded to convert the four hectares of land into a green paradise. When the Awatis finally came to live here in 1985 after the vice-admiral’s retirement in 1983, they took to greening the area. Awati is chairman of the Pune-based Ecological Society and is involved in experiements on watershed management and grassland ecology at Vinchurni.

First on the Awatis’ list was creating a lake with help of bunding the nallah that passed by the piece of land. ‘‘After the bunding was complete, we had the heaviest of rains in 1985. In 1993 we received 20 inches of rain water—the average is about 12-14 inches. Tapping this water, 25 acres of stream land filled up to form the lake. It was absolutely beautiful! More for what it lent to the area with migratory birds like ducks from Ladakh, bar headed geese, pochards, teals coming here during the winters,’’ says Awati.

‘‘We’d just boat across to our neighbours and friends,’’ smiles Awati. Along with the lake came up a woods of sorts. Taking saplings from Pune’s Empress Gardens, the Awatis planted close to 8,000 trees around the house. Varieties of sandalwood, tamarind, gooseberry, custard apple, figs, grapes pomegranate, eucalyptus, neem, Australian babool being among these. ‘‘Trees were sacred here,’’ says Awati. A borewell on the residence grounds was sufficient for all domestic needs.

For the Awatis, their children, friends and students of the Ecological Society who camped on the adjoining grounds every year as part of a course run by the society, this was paradise.

But in 2001 in Vinchurni it rained only in the winters, in 2002 during the monsoons, trickling down to barely three inches of rainfall in 2003. As of now, the Awatis receive only five minutes of tubewell water. The woods are gone. The trees have dried out and are being axed and sold. ‘‘We had fires here twice earlier, having so much dead wood is dangerous,’’ says Awati. Four thousand trees have already been cut.

The camp for the Eological Society has been cancelled. Some of the alumni are raising funds for an alternative forest site.

Yet, the Awatis are not prepared to abandon their paradise. ‘‘We’ll start planting trees again. At our age we’d rather not give into despair,’’ says Sandhya.