We Revere Our Trees and Also Abuse Them

THERE’S NOTHING new about paradoxes in India! But, what I saw this morning in our neighbourhood park prompted me to write a column about this strange ‘simultaneous reverence and abuse of our trees’.

- Krishan Kalra

I have often seen several people coming to the park every day with containers of water – and at times milk too – going round this ten-year-old beautiful peepal tree, do reverential obeisance/say prayers and put water at its base. Some of them – particularly girls – even do the same routine with milk and also tie threads and pieces of red cloth around the considerable girth of the tree.

Now, we know about the common belief that peepal trees give out oxygen 24 x7, just like neem trees, and it is good to treat them with respect – particularly when the whole world is struggling to fight the rapid march of climate change and its disastrous effects on our health and economy. Some of these do gooders have also kept open earthen pots at a couple of places in the park and fill them daily with fresh water for the birds, especially at the onset of summer.

Adoration & Abuse

But what surprises me is that people also routinely deposit their discarded moorties (idols), pictures of gods, flowers, sweets, fruit etc. at the very point where others put water and milk. Some even leave lit oil lamps at the place.! Isn’t that an irony that we abuse and revere our precious trees like that?