Cuts
(Written in early May 2019)
It promises to be a cruel summer. The birds have fallen silent today. I too have nothing to say to them. They sit on my balcony and I find it hard to meet their eyes, their cocked heads. My backyard “garden” (which belongs to a famous sports club) is undergoing its annual pre-monsoon pruning. My human brain understands that this is necessary otherwise our beautiful but shallow rooted gulmohars would become top heavy and topple over in the first squall of the season. But today, it is the venerable peepal (my secret favourite of all the beauties) that has been quite brutally hacked. Its upper branches were home to my beloved bee hives. Since the last smoking to harvest the honey, the bees haven’t returned. The young Bhil boy who comes around selling the honey promised me, in a wild but completely unconvincing conversation that they had, as in years past, left the queen bee alone. But there is yet no sign of a new hive and today, they have chopped off the large branch that grew outwards at a sharp angle, the one the bees favoured … perhaps the newly renovated hotel next door paid the woodcutters a little extra to risk their necks and cut it down.
The parrots too have taken fright. The badams, unruly and wild, had just fruited and were the favourite meeting place / fight club for the rambunctious youngsters. The badams have been chopped almost to the ground and the parrots have retreated to the higher branches of the gulmohars, nothing left to squabble about.
The kites sit on their perches, far above the reach of axes and saws. They watch for flushed out prey. They will eat well this evening. The squirrels know this. Their high calls are muted, today is not the day for playing catching cook on the exposed branches.
The shy ones, the bulbuls and mynas and magpie robins, have fallen silent too. The wind has begun to change direction. Soon they will be on their way to friendlier places. Today’s carnage may frighten them into an early departure.
There is no need for sentimentality. The trees will regenerate in the monsoon. The birds will get over lost nests and hiding places and find new ones. But today, the sunshine pours in through all the gaps left by the disappeared trees and fills my home with a deep disquiet. The sea breeze too is laden with guilt and salt.
This morning, I passed by the two trees poisoned by a popular fashion store at Flora Fountain. It made me sick to see the bore holes, clearly visible, where the poison was injected. The stumps remain in front of the beautifully restored building. How much more beautiful it would have been with these graceful trees blooming at the corner. My personal boycott of this brand seems pointless and futile. Their business is thriving and everyone oohs and aahs about the excellent restoration of the old building.
When the trees are all gone, and the birds and the squirrels, will we take comfort in the metro stations and clothes shops? Will they renew our spirits and bring us hope of life and love? Will we trail our hands along the clothes racks and platform walls and feel them breathe and live?
Days like these are hard.