See how happiness glows on your face when friends and relatives gather around you? Like you, I too wish that dear ones young and old would surround me. How hard I try! Like my kin in the woods, I put out flowers but here I have to rise above countless obstacles to achieve that. Bees, birds and squirrel too grapple with constraints of their own.
Still, they extend to me a helping hand to turn my flowers into fruits.
They offer assistance again, to free the seeds from the fruits and scatter
them around. When he blazes down, the sun is an ally too. Burnt by his
heat, the fruits burst open to fling seeds all around my base. I can then
only wait and hope.
Like you, I too wish to rest after sunset. As darkness spreads, my
leaves fold along the midrib. Vital daytime functions like food production
and sap evaporation slow down. I fall asleep.
For years now, I have been deprived of this rest. Even as the sun is sinking in the West, little electric suns begin to glow. Small they may be but these little suns are so many and lie so close to my limbs that they keep darkness effectively at bay. Under the assault of their light, my leaves cannot curl up and I cannot sleep. To what extent has this disrupted my bloom cycle? I do not know. I will never know because I?m no scientist.
Elsewhere, others like me do not even get enough of the sun's nourishing
rays. Buildings rise up all round and hem them in. They have to stretch
to the extreme to push some branches at least towards gaps where they can
catch some sunlight. I still have time so why not hear more? Look at those
bare jagged twigs at the end of low branches. The leaves that covered them
have been ripped off in anger. How else can the city-dweller express his
displeasure with the road transport service?
Nails and thin metal wires sink deep into the flesh of my trunk and
branches. They hold in place signs that announce a discount sale or kabab
joint or an astrologer?s services available nearby or even in the next
town. The astrologer for example may have died a decade ago but the sign
lives on and the nails remain embedded in me.
I still wait for my young ones to grow up around me. Indications are, they will not. The seeds that sprang from my fruits owing to the benevolence of the birds or the squirrel or the sun lie on the ground, which is not soft and moist but black, hard and lifeless.
With the sunrise come teams brandishing brooms and sweep our combined hard work away, in the name of Clean City. Some seeds fall in the gutter and with the moisture there and some good fortune, sprout. The roots take hold and a tuft of glistening, tender leaves rises up. In due course, a harsh voice issues the command, "Pluck them out. They will grow and choke the drain."
My young heirs are thus uprooted, all of them. So I stand alone by the roadside, with a lamp-post for an uneasy ally. A natural companion stands some fifty metres away, also alone like me. Just as well, should I say" If, providentially, saplings survived to reach adulthood, would they not meet the same fate as I"
Forced to assume a perpetual "Y" shape because the middle has to be gouged out periodically to prevent contact between me and the stream of wires connected to the little suns"
Young shoots and branches fall thus to the electricity man's axe. Builders and hoarding agencies too wield the axe, to ensure a good view for their handiwork. The municipal men come not with the axe but the saw. For unfathomable reasons, they strike right at the base of my trunk, just a foot above ground level. Because nature has given me tenacity, I push fresh shoots around the rim of the sawn off trunk but the shadow of the saw is ever present. Here come more nails. Every stroke of the hammer drives them deeper into my trunk.
At least the sign the nails hold up should warm my heart. It says simply, "Protect trees."
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/dec29/metro2.asp
The City seems to be fast losing the sobriquet of Garden City. Statistics have it that 19,800 trees have been axed on the Bangalore-Mysore road in the last one year and 9,000 trees chopped in the City itself.
The High Court has been quick to react, though. It has come up with a “first replace, then chop” formula for preserving greenery in the State. The State government has planted 10,782 saplings on the Bangalore-Mysore highway, which has earned praise by the court
There are several policies on paper to check tree-cutting. But while a tree is being chopped, one hardly finds anyone questioning the act. The problem is negligence and lack of awareness about environmental rules.
The BMP conducted a census, to calculate the number of trees to be planted and the space available for them.
As many as 25,543 saplings need to be planted in the City, according to the census. The BMP has also chalked out a plan of action to conduct a census of existing trees in all the 100 wards of the City.
Out of the total saplings planted, the survival rate is around 70 per cent. There is a variation every year.
Though the lawn near the dividers and the road joints are watered, very little care is taken about the newly planted saplings. Often the tree guards are robbed or they collapse along with the sapling.
The Bangalore Mahanagar Palike is constructing footpaths leaving no place for the roadside trees to absorb water or even an alternative for the trees to absorb rain water. The KPTCL and Bescom chop the trees on one side forcing the tree to lean on to the other side, posing dangers to the houses on the streets.
There are instances where residents are known to jab at the trunks, pour acid into them and eventually axe them. The tree opposite the Food World at Koramangala is a case in point. As many as 4000 trees have fallen victim to the dreaded axe thanks to the flyovers coming up in the City, sources said.
The forest department in the month of July had directed the BMP’s horticulture department to withdraw all the orders, issued under sec (8) of the Karnataka Preservation of Trees Act 1976, to fell trees for which permission has been given till now, which means that the trees which have not been chopped yet, cannot be chopped.
But there seems to be hardly any check on the culprits, who seem to be wielding their axes left, right and centre to fell the trees.
The forest department has booked seven cases of illegal tree felling, four against the BCC and horticulture department.
The forest department started patrolling against tree felling in the city. The public can dial the tree unit squad on ph: 3343543 to tip off the squad.
An NGO Environment Support Group has started a helpline (6534364) to receive complaints and forward them to the forest department and follow up on the action taken.
The NGO has received 32 complaints of illegal felling so far. The helpline also educates the public on the kinds of trees to be planted in particular areas, Leo Saldanha, the co-ordinator of the NGO said.