Geetanjali Krishna: Tree

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

The old gardener raised his face to the pale sun filtering though the mists in Mussoorie. It was a curiously unlined face, belying the fact that he'd tended the gardens of the YWCA for as long as he could remember, and probably for a while before that.

We stood for a while under the shade of a giant oak, while he spoke to me about an errant nasturtium as if it was a beloved, though naughty pet.

"Just look at how it's escaped from the garden to run wild on the hillside," he chuckled, gesturing towards the plant with bright orange blossoms that made a fine display on the sunny side of the hill, "but to tell you the truth, I like a garden to look like God's done most of the work in it, not a gardener!"

His name was Bishan Singh, and he'd seen Mussoorie through its good times, when the British and then the Anglos after them planted thousands of trees and cared for them.

"Mussoorie was densely green during the British rule. The sahibs used to be very particular about maintaining forest wealth, and they planted many trees that they loved in their own homeland "" like this old oak here," said he.

Patting the bark of a gnarled pine, Bishan Singh reminisced about a long ago time when an important guest at the YWCA wanted a fire lit in her fireplace, and there was no firewood. The next morning, when a bough of that pine tree was found cut, there was hell to pay.

"The sahibs were so angry and took the matter so seriously, that the secretary was changed," said he, "that's why all these trees here were able to grow and proliferate so well!"

Bishan Singh has also watched with sorrow when locals denuded all that forest wealth for often-trivial, mostly short-lived gains. In the eighties, when Mussoorie grew tremendously in population but shrank correspondingly in vision, entire hillsides were stripped of trees to make way for hotels.

"Thousands of trees were felled. It was like a massacre, but there were few people like me who thought this way. Most just saw trees either as timber waiting to be sold, or worse, just obstacles in their construction plans!" said he bitterly.

"There are many rich families in Mussoorie today, who've made their money only by selling illegal wood. They'd cut trees at night, and by morning, be in Saharanpur selling timber!"

Many a time, while tending to his beloved flowers or weeding one of the wilder sections of the garden, Bishan Singh has wondered about the psyche of people who destroy ancient trees without compunction.

"Which is not to say," he hastened to add, "that if the snow brings down a pine bough, I don't burn it in my hearth. I do. But I've never knowingly cut a tree down "" and never will!" Which is why he was happy to see Mussoorie become the focus of a massive greening effort.

Once again he could see saplings, if not trees, on the hills of Mussoorie. "However, a few trees are felled even today, but not too many. Everyone can see the difference trees have made "" Mussoorie's much cooler these days, and it snows regularly in the winter months."

We wandered around the place, as he pointed out gnarled old pines and oaks, stopping often besides the ones that he'd planted. "I'm lucky, actually, that I've spent my life here," said he, "many of these trees were here before I was born, and will continue long after I die. And that's a strangely comforting thought for an old gardener like me!"