Humour by Rehana Munir: Tree’s company

If we just look up from our smartphones, there’s a summer canopy in bloom, and so much more that we are missing IRL

I love everything about the summer except for the weather. And no, I haven’t recently suffered from heatstroke. Consider this, if you will. Sun-drenched streets. Uplifting birdsong. Mangoes everywhere. Chilled drinks. Cheerful reunions. Superhero movies. But mostly—flowering trees. They’re bursting at the seams, like your refrigerator the day after a post-lockdown brunch where you ridiculously overestimate the number of beers, bowls of dip and kilos of fruit that will be needed to satisfy your freshly freed guests. Sadly, there’s never any cake left over. But, trees. This was about trees.

Summer may mean heatstroke and heat waves, but nature is in full bloom everywhere, if we choose to see it (Hexcode)

South America via Bhimtal

In Uttarakhand’s Kumaon, much of the forest cover is overtaken by greedy pine—an invasive species that leaves no room for ecological diversity. But, like many dangerous things, this tree variety—known locally as Chir ka Ped—is beautiful to look at and does have its benefits, from resin to turpentine. Elsewhere in the hills, you find more hospitable varieties, from the mighty oak to the fragrant eucalyptus and striking rhododendron. But my favourite is the kachnar, whose powder-pink flowers are a fleeting end-of-winter treat for both birds and humans. The kachnar ke phool ki sabzi is a speciality worth trying, if you’re lucky enough to be invited to a pahadi home that has managed to collect the buds before they swiftly turn into flowers.

If you’re driving around Bhimtal—a resourceful if cheerless town that services the many fancy homes and lodges that have sprung up in the surrounding hills—you’ll be struck by the purple splendour of the jacaranda. It’s native to South America, but like so many species from the frangipani to bougainvillea, it’s now naturalised. Watching Disney’s Encanto, a magical realist tale set in a flowering Colombian village, the jacaranda ironically transported me to Bhimtal, many worlds removed from the one on screen.

Streetside serenade

Somehow, a tree in Mumbai is worth several that you will find anywhere else. My city isn’t really known for its natural gifts, other than the battered old ocean, sighing its way to the shore. If you manage to look up from all the construction activity (luxury complexes forever being created for people who will shell out insane money for a made-up address like ‘Upper Juhu’ or delusional name like ‘Palazzo Opulence’), you’ll see droopy laburnums with canary yellow flowers. The tree at the Bachchan corner in Juhu always makes me hum Tera Jhumka from Abhimaan, featuring the first couple of Bollywood at their best. (Their office building, Janak, isn’t far, and it always amuses me when the eponymous Wi-Fi shows up on my phone. Yes, I’m easily amused.)

Deeper into Andheri, in the Republic of Yari Road, where scriptwriters labour over fine-roasted coffee and graphic designers host decadent soirées in bungalows with leakage issues, egrets watch from their tree perches. Bandra has its bold cannonball trees; south Mumbai has an abundance of riches, not least the expansive rain trees outside NGMA; and the Vikhroli stretch of the Eastern Express Highway gives you that cherry-blossoms-in-Japan feeling with rows of pink trumpet. Who needs a palazzo when you have such streetside opulence?

I am Groot

The earth is increasingly plagued by a depleting tree cover. Meanwhile, poets, artists, sculptors and other creators have squeezed out every last ounce of meaning from the overworked beauties. “What are the roots that clutch […]?” asked an erudite Mr. Eliot in The Waste Land. American cartoonist Shel Silverstein made us weep for The Giving Tree, a heart-breaking parable about its overextended generosity. Vedic scriptures honoured the Tree of Life, whose graphic representations grace everything from hipster bedroom walls to vegan soap wrappers. Van Gogh’s Cypresses are a lesson in light and movement, Lemon Tree by Fool’s Garden is a perennial earworm for every ‘90s kid while Groot lends a welcome earthiness to the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Much to my surprise, I have turned into a tree hugger, that most suspicious of urban pagans. My real ambitions, however, lie in the tree-climbing area, though my unfortunate mix of ill-advised optimism and chronic lack of skill doesn’t bode well for the enterprise. For now, it’s enough to look out the window and see a purple-rumped sunbird flit daintily around the chikoo tree. If I’m not careful, I’ll soon be writing a leafy ode filled with embarrassingly florid clichés.

Follow @rehana_munir on Twitter and Instagram

From HT Brunch, April 23, 2022

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