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 I chanced to read a news item in ‘The Hindu’ recently (December
’99) about a lady campaigner in California atop a redwood tree to
save it from being felled by a local lumber outfit. The special
feature about it was not that she climbed a fairly tall tree but the
fact she was successful in her campaigning after staying atop for
seven hundred and thirty seven days i.e., two years in simpler terms.
This made me get into a nostalgic reverie on my association with trees
as a schoolboy when by way of protest against "parental
harassment" like Lord Muruga, I also took to
"elevation". Mine was, of course, trees and not hillocks. No
amount of entreaties and persuasion by emissaries like the servant
maid, cook, office peon and the driver would make me relent. I climbed
higher, clutched and clung to the branches more steadfastly like a
recalcitrant Koala till my mother came on the scene. She looked up
towards her "little monkey" at this game of defiance to
almost plead as to when the "climb down" would commence.
I had pleasanter provocation also to take to the
trees. One was when I wanted to study undisturbed. With a book in hand
I would climb fairly high to choose a sturdy branch that would afford
me a firm & secure perch, and at the same time the convenience of
reclining. I would be up for quite sometime ignoring many a times the
swarming insects.  The other was when we (my friends) got into playing
‘dreeandro’ – a game which involved choosing a boy to do the
climbing and the catching by a shot-put tree. Something like hide and
seek, but the difference it involved climbing and catching. A very
robust and interesting game involving quickness in climbing and timing
to come down which would result in easy climbing, thus robbing the
game of the thrill and excitement of clambering in a hurry.
Around that time K.M. Munshi propounded the
Vanamahotsava scheme and it touched off mandatory mass planting of
trees. Schools were one of the agencies to follow this as in the case
of many government schemes. This saw all of us – toddlers around
seven or eight years of age doing it under the teachers’ guidance.
Bereft of any experience or expertise in this game the planting was
done mostly in sun drenched barren tracts where not even bacteria
would grow. The school had to "show" participation and
"accounting" and we were happy to be away from scholarly
work quite oblivious to what Vanamahotsava meant, much less being
aware of who Munshi was. At about that time I used to come on vacation
of Madras from Coimbatore, where an uncle of mine was staying at
Kilpauk – Wadels Road. It was a pleasure to roam about in the near
by Poonamalee High Road dotted with huge compounded bungalows with
Anglo-Saxon names like Locksley, etc. It was a promenade with densely
foliaged trees lining on either side. These were uprooted years later
to accommodate widening of the road. Thus many trees literally fell by
the roadside.
 Having been imbued with our culture where near
reverential pride of place had been given to trees, it was a trauma of
sorts when I had to go once by road to Trichy from Madras in my early
fifties. Though I was informed that there was protest by a particular
political party, even in my wildest of imagination, I could never
connect trees with agitation – the former being the victim. Huge
lively trees had been felled like elephants that are periodically
culled in Uganda and other African countries. The detour I had to take
to reach Trichy was not only time consuming, but a harrowing
experience feeling bad for the trees that were felled by heartless and
ruthless vandals. It is curious however that the same political party
has now (I am sixty plus) advocated nurturing trees as a repentance
that has taken nearly a decade in coming.
With plastic coming in a big way in our lives I
expected trees would be spared for construction. Sadly this has not
happened. To add fuel to fire the so called "urban
development" has seen "topes" mowed down to yield place
to concrete jungle. Paddy fields have been converted into developed
plots for houses to be constructed. Up the hills it is the same story
– the tall trees covering the undulating hilly tracts have been
sawed down to make way for holiday resorts, tea gardens, potato
fields. In this clan there are also those who indulge in selective
sacrilege – Veerappan and sandal trees. At this rate, very soon,
thanks to all round devastation, trees will remain a distant memory of
the sanctified concept of Vedic Vanaspati. One, perhaps. has to have a
look at it (a bonsai or petrified version) in some thoughtful
Smithsonian.
T.L.Raghavan
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