The Hindu Business Line : Friends of the Trees

This column is about trees in Kolkata because that is where the writer lives. But his views on the city's greenery can probably be applied to other cities as well because the basic issue is perhaps commonly applicable to all places — that is, the cutting down of trees leading to end of greenery that is so pleasant to behold but (these days, at least) so difficult to locate and savour.

In Kolkata, from time to time, concerned citizens have taken it on themselves to launch movements to protect our green friends and extend their coverage as well. The latest such exercise has just been announced in the shape of an initiative taken by a city organisation called `Flor and Fon' directed at freeing trees from small advertisements pinned to them with the help of nails, etc. Last Sunday, the organisation went on such a drive, a result of which was the filling up of `two trucks' with `pulled-out nails and hoardings'.

Spared the Agony

There can be no two opinions about the efficacy of such a move, not least because of the agony from which our green friends (who, incidentally, breathe and live just the way we do) have now been spared — maybe just momentarily. Like every sensible person, Flor and Fon is aware of this aspect of plant life, and it has projected the point of view feelingly when it describes the practice of nailing things to trees thus: "The trees on the streets of Kolkata remind us of Jesus. Our saviours are nailed all over mindlessly. On Sunday we took the nails off the trees to save them."

Like every fight against what is described as Evil, the campaign ahead will not be easy. Basically, the programme of saving trees must be seen in the form of a perpetual struggle against those elements of city-life who will go to any extent to make a few more rupees. For saner sections of human society, what this means is that the pressure must continually be put on the depredators to discourage them from certain practices which, in the long run (when, John Maynard Keynes once famously said, we are all dead) can only make the existence of human civilisation on this planet even more precarious than it already is.

Harking to the past

As a point of interest, groups such as Flor and Fon must realise that what they are doing today is actually following in the footsteps of predecessors who have done much the same thing in the past, which should imbibe them with the strength needed to continue their campaign even more energetically. Thus, on October 11, 1972, this correspondent had the pleasant experience of reporting the birth of a similar group called `Friends of the Trees', the objective of which was to spare the greenery of Calcutta (as the city was then called) from being consumed by the drive towards development, which was then in its most virulent, `digging' phase because of a couple of major infrastructural projects that were in the never-ending process of coming up. Lady Ranu Muhkerjee was named chairman of the committee with A. D. Khan (of the ICS) being made convener.

One wonders whether, after 35 years, the Friends of the Trees still exists today. But even if it does not, there is no cause for concern because newer groups such as Flor and Fon have ably stepped into their shoes and are continuing the struggle to save Nature — perhaps even giving it a fresh lease of life.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

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