The sight of trees growing amidst heavy traffic, construction and demolition sites and roads with tremendous dust and pollution have always triggered some complex feelings within me. It was a feeling that I had not engaged with completely. I was at the Bangalore City railway station recently waiting to receive someone and as I was waiting I saw these two huge trees with an excavator in between them. JCB is the commonly used name for these excavators here. There is hardly any locality in Bangalore where you do not see a JCB at work. This JCB at the railway station had finished its day’s work as it was resting among the earth that it had dug up during the day. This site is probably being dug up to create a new platform or to widen the road that leads to the entrance of the railway station. These huge old trees close to this site seem to have a very uncertain future. It looks unlikely that the infrastructure that has been planned around this site has the grace to accommodate the peepal and the rain tree. I really have no idea if these trees have a mind that thinks like we do and I don’t know what they might be going through as they see the land around them being ploughed by the JCB. Interestingly the name of the scientist who tried to understand the feelings of the plants also has the letters JCB. The great scientist J C Bose would have been able to give us a more objective account on this situation with his extensive experience related to the measuring of the response of plants to various stimuli. I feel like it is an insignificant curiosity to take the trouble of finding him in heaven and bringing him to the back gate of the Bangalore City railway station to weigh in on this situation of two trees threatened by a JCB. Therefore for an insignificant curiosity like this, we have to settle for the interpretation of a person like me. I have studied Botany as one of my main subjects during my graduation if that manages to add any credibility to my assessment of this scene. 

While it feels tragic to me, I am not able to sense any feeling of tragedy emanating from these trees. I am fully aware that this is my own interpretation and I have no scientific evidence to prove this. However I see myself comparing the feelings I would have, if I was that tree and the way I wood look, with how the tree actually looks. Most of the trees I have observed in such situations look similar to the ones in a happy and lush garden. Especially the big old trees. I have seen some young trees give me a feeling of sadness. I have felt this looking at the trees that are planted inside the separators between the two lanes on a main road near crowded signals. Their leaves are covered with black soot from the exhaust of vehicles and their growth looks stunted. 

The trees that trigger this complex feeling in me are the ones that look happy and robust in the face of complete uncertainty and destruction. I wonder how they manage to be so resilient. This peepal tree has the typical fresh red leaves that they sprout during the beginning of summer. It is going about doing what it can do best in spite of a great possibility of it being wiped out of existence before the rains are here. How can a sedentary creature with an agency close to nil, deal with an adversity with such simple and beautiful grace. While I know this is a total assumption and a personal interpretation, the feelings and the questions  that these sights generate are real for me. I would like to have the capacity to look like this when faced by an adversity and just continue to do whatever I can do at that moment. It might just mean to unapologetically be my organic self responding to the climate as naturally as I can. You never know who happens to observe you while waiting to pick someone from the railway station and get triggered with some complex feelings that push you a millimetre towards being relaxed and authentic while facing a calamity called life. 

I just realised that what I have expressed here has no connection with botany. 

Skanda

10/3/23

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