Geetanjali Krishna: Cutting the wedding tree

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It's rummy how I go online meaning serious business, and end up spending hours on unconnected websites instead. A few days ago, when I was supposed to be looking for hotels in Mauritius for my parents-in-law, I suddenly realised I'd spent the last fifteen minutes in a forum on responsible travel.

It was all very remote but fascinating "" I was, after all, chatting with Swedish adventurers fretting about their ecological footprint as they travelled down the Amazon in a wood raft. Deforestation was a general concern, and a spirited discussion about clean fuels was on.

Just then, my phone rang. It was a friend, bugged with her employee Ramesh who was getting married once, like all lesser mortals, but wanted leave at two different times of the year for it. One eye on my new responsible traveller friends and one ear on the phone, I asked why he wanted to go. "He says he needs to cut a tree to prepare for his upcoming wedding," she said bitterly.

Here I was, engaged in an academic discussion of deforestation on the web, and there was this guy cutting a tree because he was getting married! Questions just bubbled over. Why did he personally need to cut a tree for his own wedding? Was this some obscure, unheard of cultural practice? My friend patiently heard the flurry of questions. "Why don't you talk to him?" she suggested, and gave him the phone.

I asked Ramesh to explain this tree-cutting business without much ado. "Actually, when I get married in February next year, it's going to be very cold in my village high up in Uttaranchal. We'll need to keep fires burning for cooking and for warmth," he explained.

Since village weddings were merry free-for-alls, he added, they'd have about four hundred guests. "The wood from one large tree," he said, "would fuel the entire wedding." He wanted to go after the rains to cut his tree so that the firewood could be dried in readiness for the big day. "There are no able-bodied men left in the village to do this job for me," said Ramesh, "for like me, most have migrated to the city leaving their old parents behind."

Did they get permission to cut down trees just like that, I asked. "Of course!" he replied indignantly, "we pay Rs 300 to the forest guard for each tree we cut." I asked why they did not use LPG cylinders instead (although my new friends on the forum would probably look down on LPG too for being a non-renewable fuel). He then launched into a comparison of the practical utility of the two.

"LPG is much more expensive than cutting your own tree," said Ramesh, "but we prefer wood for another reason. LPG typically is used in smaller stoves which aren't effective when cooking for so many people," he explained, "whereas a large wood fire cooks and heats in a jiffy!"

While cutting a tree for each village wedding is a little inconvenient, he said, it remains the most convenient and efficient fuel for people like him to use for wedding parties. "But we mostly use LPG for daily cooking," he said.

From the uncomfortable pauses in our conversation, I gathered Ramesh was feeling defensive about it all. "At least villagers use the trees they cut," he rationalised, adding, "trees are brought down all the time in cities to build houses, roads and parking lots, and who cares?" He had a point. I guess people like me have to clean up our acts before raising eyebrows at people like Ramesh who still have to cut their own wedding tree.