T R E E T A L E S

The place where I live, Neem trees are easy to spot, with their dark, slender trunks and dainty green leaves. In the earlier days, when there were fewer roads, even fewer vehicles and concrete structures, Neem trees were integral part of local communities. Neems offered shelter to travellers, stray animals and birds seeking shade and shelter in sweltering summer afternoons. Neem trees often would have a pot or two of water kept by local residents for weary travellers. Neem trees were where people would gather to talk, either sitting on the ground or on charpoys (cots). Some Neems would host devatas and devis, so believed those who lived nearby and during special occasions, the trees would receive offerings in the form of lighted diyas (small earthen lamps), flowers and sweets, to appease the gods and goddesses living in them. In those summer days where mosquitoes were in distant future and warm winds blew from the desert, most of us slept on rooftops, under a clearer, dark sky ...

This simple question has no easy answer. Birds are beautiful to look at. Birds are around us, not far from home; we can watch them from our windows, even from our bird as the sunlight lightens up the dark sky in the morning. Many of the birds sing, their unique and sweet voice livening up our daily lives. We may not hear them because we are most often immersed in electronic noises around us; but they are there, on the branch outside the window, high in the peepul tree in the street, around the well, near the electric pole, they are everywhere, singing, hopping about, sitting still or flirting with flowers and fruits. They add beauty and music to our dull and loud urban landscape, where most of us live today. Birds tell us about ourselves and our surroundings. Fewer birds and bird songs mean polluted, concrete surroundings, less trees and flowers; a higher number of birds indicate trees, bushes, flowers and fruits, a cleaner environment, clean water sources and generally garbage-...

June 5 is celebrated as the World Environment Day around the world. In many countries, it is observed with all seriousness and purpose. In others, it is like any other `day` which has to be observed more out of obligation to international conventions than for real commitment towards protecting the environment. School children take part in painting and drawing competitions, debates and speeches while adults, politicians, bureaucrats and social activists get busy in hosting seminars, conferences and meetings, most of them photops for the television channels and next day’s newspapers. Why do we celebrate the Environment Day? The principle objective is to highlight the importance of protecting our living environment and to rededicate ourselves to prevent any further damage to our natural surroundings. This is also the day when countries make commitments, pledge funds and create plans to galvanise action to protect our natural environment. Pledges, promises and paintings apart, what ...

Swami Vivekananda, when he was about eight, used to visit a friend regularly. There was a Champa tree in the friend’s house. The young Naren, as Swamiji was called in his younger days, liked the Champa flowers. Whenever he visited his friend, he would make it a point to climb the tree and hang from it upside down. It was a regular routine and he loved to be on the tree. He was barely eight then. One day as he was swinging from the tree, the grandfather of the house saw him. He was afraid that the young boy would fall and hurt himself. Or the tree would be damaged. He asked Naren to come down and not to climb the tree again. The old man told Naren a ghost lived in the tree. But Naren was not the one to frightened by ghosts. It only aroused his curiosity. He wanted to know how a ghost looked like. So as soon the old man went back inside, Naren was up and about the tree, looking for the ghost. His friend, who had heard the exchange, told Naren to get down the tree. The ghost w...

Bapu was fond of plants from his younger days. There was no garden in his home, so he collected several plants and planted them in all kinds of containers and placed them on the rooftop. when his family moved to Rajkot, the new house had a little patch of garden for him work on. He would go to the garden every evening…after the school, work there for a few hours, tending to his plants. He would get up at the crack of dawn, walk with other children to a tank outside his village and while returning look for young plants for his garden he learnt a lot about plants and garden he told his friends about the plants. This love for trees and nature lasted all his life. One night, before retiring to his bed, Gandhiji wanted to keep his spinning wheel and materials ready. so his associate, miraben asked a volunteer to fetch some babul leaves to fix the bow. The volunteer went to the nearby garden and plucked a big branch of leaves. Miraben saw that the branch had young leaves which had folde...

Not far from the Ganges, near a small village in Varanasi, there was an old mango orchard. Here in the grove, every spring, clutches of yellow flowers used to herald the coming of delicious mangoes. Boys of the nearby village, Sarai Mohna, would wait for the flowers to give way to small fruits. It was a daily watch for the school boys who would pass by the grove every morning and afternoon. When mangoes would become bigger and rounder, and their fragrance would attract birds and butterflies, the boys would come in hoards, throw stones at the ripening fruits, betting who could bring down the most, and there would be a great ruckus around the grove. The scared birds and insects would stay away from this arena of stone throwers. Then one year, there were no flowers in the spring and no mangoes in the summer. The boys stared at the grove, threw some stones at the branches aimlessly but nothing fell from the branches. The mango trees had stopped fruiting. This happened year afte...