Sahyadrica

Every day around noon, he perches on his favourite, fifteen-year-old neem tree, tugging at a branchlet fallen over his usual seat, but never really trying to get rid of it. This neem tree grows in a pot in the window, three feet from where I sit separated by a reflective glass. He is the calmest of his kind I’ve ever met. He does not call in response to every conversation he overhears, only some. Mostly, though, he is quiet in spite of the constant ruckus all around, and there are a lot of his kind. I didn’t know they could be so – if I may use the word – disciplined, or appreciate solitude. He certainly appears to enjoy it. How do I tell he is calm and relaxed? He hunches down on his toes, sinks his shoulders, and ruffles his crest and neck feathers – looking snug. Sometimes he scratches, shuffles his feathers, stretches his wings one by one, fans his tail and shakes his head – and finally gives a long sigh of satisfaction and relief, I’m willing to believe. Like every ...

A subtle scent of Alstonia still lingers on the road I take to work – a leftover from the winter when these avenue trees had filled the air with their sweet, intoxicating scent. It lingers only in one particular place, near a secluded street that leads away from the main road where vehicular exhaust slaps against your face. As I meander through this road every day, I see more and more of lone parakeets darting through the air, squeaking as they fly to get somewhere in hurry, rather than flocks of them. I also notice more crows than sparrows. And I feel the exhaust and the aftertaste of being blasted by the soot of vehicles more strongly, piercing my lungs and leaving me breathless. My senses are heightened only when I experience these things as an outsider. If I were to sense it as a part of this landscape, I’d be seeing, smelling, and feeling the flavours of the city every night and every day, and so I would never have smelt the flowers, nor seen the birds nor tasted the fetid toxi...

[This piece draws its roots from the previous article In Forests Trees Fall , and focuses on the trees particularly of cities with an insight into their existence; their past, present, and, if ever bleak, the future.] I faintly recall the last time I clambered up a tree to fetch a juicy fruit – it was probably more than fifteen years ago, in the heart of a wooded city which was then less a city but more than a town. When I was a kid, I was told that our co-operative housing society boasted largest number of trees of the city – indeed it did, for it was also supposedly the largest co-op housing society of Asia. It had old, really old – some over 25 year old trees; if they stood today they would be nearing their half a century of existence on this planet. Fortunately, a few still stand. And all these trees were, as I later came to realize, exotics – Gulmohar ( Deloix regia ); Copperpod ( Peltophorum pterocarpum ), Rain tree ( Albizia saman ), and Subabul ( Leucaena leucocephala ). ...