Tree haters incorporated

Tree haters incorporated
The Hindu

We don't deserve trees because they are our last priority

The more I think about trees in Bangalore, the more I'm convinced we don't deserve them. What is the use in growing them if we don't know how to take care of them? If they could talk, we'd all be jailed for tree abuse.

If a tree could speak, here's what it would say: "Just kill me and get it over with. Don't torture me inch by inch, chopping my arms to make room for a building, hacking my feet to make way for a pavement, ripping my fingers off when they brush against a power cable. I'm a multiple amputee, a cripple without a crutch. All I crave is a merciful death."

Trees are living organisms. You wouldn't think so, from the way we city dwellers treat them — like objects that can be hewn and hammered to our convenience. It's hard to find a single large tree in Bangalore that hasn't been mutilated in some fashion. Defence land is an exception, of course; trees there branch out in full glory. Trees (besides those in parks) are left pristine at another place I know: the Isolation Hospital. As I pass by, choking from petrol fumes and dust churned up by heavy wheels, I almost envy the tuberculosis patients inside who're enjoying both oxygen and shade.

Ah, the coolness of the shade beneath a verdant canopy. It's indescribable, isn't it? One moment you're getting a powerful blast of the sun and the next, ooh, the air is temperate and there's a sweet little breeze that fans the sweat on your face. But we don't deserve it. We don't deserve trees because they are our last priority. We sacrifice them too easily. Building a second floor? Branch getting in the way? Axe it. Roots endangering the compound wall? Raze it to the ground — the tree, I mean, not the wall. We actually expect trees to behave themselves, I swear. "Must you shed your dry leaves all over my lawn? Bad tree. Stop strewing those feathery seeds from your split pods. Damn nuisance. Didn't your mother teach you not to litter? Now look what you've done, you've allowed a bird to build its nest right above my parking space. My car's going to be ruined, absolutely ruined."

In a growing city, trees are irritants. There used to be house-owners in Bangalore who would allow trees to grow right through their roofs rather than cut them — not just coconut palms, which are cash crops, but trees with spreading foliage. Not any more. When a builder develops a property, the first thing he does is to sweep away the trees like so much rubbish. He then pays a landscape designer a hefty amount to decorate the premises with a few tame shrubs dotted on a carpet of sprinkler-fed grass.

Trees have become expendable. That's why we should seriously consider changing the "Grow More Trees" slogan to "Save More Trees". Why plant a sapling if it's doomed to die before its prime? Instead of nurturing trees we're systematically weakening them in many ways: roots are sliced when laying pipes and cables, uneven pruning further affects balance, and jagged stumps invite moisture and termites. All it takes is a gust of wind and rain to dislodge the rotting, tottering young things. Then it's time for the local authorities to get into the act. "All unsafe trees must be chopped." Since trees are worth more dead than alive, somebody makes a killing in more ways than one.

The killing is part of an ongoing mass slaughter. Just the other day, officials said that 700 trees would be guillotined to widen roads in the city. Just think about that number: 700. How much wood would that be? But it's difficult to argue when traffic jams are landing us in a pickle every day. Perhaps there's unjustified felling going on in the guise of reducing congestion, but you cannot deny the part that automobiles play in edging out whatever greenery we have left. The city-dweller is blind to his own contribution to the mess. He buys a car and so does his wife, and his daughter who feels unsafe on her two-wheeler gets hers too. Then he gets stuck in a jam, complains that there are too many cars on the road, and wonders where the trees have disappeared!

If we want to keep our trees and our sanity, we must tackle the traffic chaos head-on. But the words fade on my lips even as I utter them. How oh how do we do it? The answer depends on so many impossible ifs: if we could ban single-occupant cars and enforce car pool, if we could have smooth roads that are not prone to flooding, if we could have a metro without eating up more trees... The last I heard, over 100 acres of defence land may be released for the metro — the only kind of land where trees remain untouched.

Oh, I give up. Hang the trees. We don't deserve them. Not the rain tree, pipal or gulmohar, not the cassia or rusty shield bearer. Fibreglass is good enough for the likes of us. Fibreglass trees look real, can be made to order, and never die. They're what's best for a city of tree haters.

You may mail your feedback to ckmeena@rediffmail.com.