I like taking my two-year-and-some-months old to the nearby park (large parks are prominent amongst the diminishing luxuries in Delhi). He is too young to understand most things I want to explain to him. But I see some excitement around squirrels and birds. I want him to run with abandon, jump around, roll in grass and mud, get dirty, hurt himself - hopefully in good time. I try and instill in him a love and respect for the flora. Mostly he is trying to pluck leaves brutally, or mock-slap them. It disturbs me. But on last few occasions, I have been able to convince him to gently stroke the tree trunk, to feel the roughness of the surface. I keep asking him to thank the trees and plants.
I have had nothing to do with flora in my life so far - I come from a boring, mundane job, and have lived all my life in a flat which has limited space to even pretend to garden. But I have a deep-seated love for the greens, which surfaces occasionally and in various forms. My usual high-strung state means that I find it soothing to even look at trees. I have recently shifted my exercise routine from a gym to a park. One condition that I have imposed is not to use any floor mat. I like to feel the grass below, roll in it and get dirty. It pricks at times, grass/mud sticks to wet clothes, and there is frequent biting by ants, but these are small prices. I enjoy when the shower washes away the park (mud and grass) which I bring home. Be it summer or winters, seeing people (groups of teenagers, labourers, idlers, beggars, kids, aunties) in a park makes me smile. I always get a sense of stillness, calmness, idleness on seeing them - a small cocoon in the madness, cacophony and brutality of the city - bustling just a few meters away.
Once, I complimented a client on lush, well maintained plants in his cabin. He was genuinely elated and mentioned that it has to do with the care shown to them. He talks to them, cares for them tenderly. He has a small garden at home. Lovely! It took me back to my heartbreak with plants at my home - they never survive. In one of my periodic bursts of heightened love for greens, and of trying-stuff, around two years back, I ordered home plants. I tried many kinds but nothing worked. Most plants gradually died. Earlier I used to care for them, watering them with caution, turning the soil, plucking wilted leaves. Gradually, as they continued to flounder I lost interest. My mom continued to soldier on. Springing of every new leaf brought hope, and its flagging brought back doubts. I took back the bamboo (my first desk plant) home for better care. But it too wilted. The fate of most of the plants at home made me pessimistic, and believer in mystic energy. I feel some negative energy in the house, or wave of apathy which makes them wilt. It worries me.
I keep a few plants at my office desk which have done reasonably. While they have not grown rapidly as I had thought, they have not wilted. The money plant seems to have finally found its growth spurt. I am envious of this vine at desks of my colleagues - expanding robustly, infiltrating other people’s workspace like undercover agents. But now I am tracking the daily progress of mine one with eagerness, almost egging it to grow fast, faster. I keep checking the stem for smidgens of new shoots - a new leaf fills my heart with joy (small joys in the daily office life). I once held a fresh leaf between my thumb and index finger and enjoyed the wax-like smoothness.
But I am disgruntled with the attitude of my cooperative apartment towards plants and greenery. While we still have a few well-maintained gardens, but over the years, large green tracts have fallen prey to parking slots, and building extensions - all signs of the greed and misplaced priorities. We once had an open balcony with provision for more plants. It is now a closed room, which fetches more real estate value. My feeling of guilt and powerlessness over this never abates. Nobody ever took a stand higher than that of materialistic gains - frequent nowadays.
Amidst this deeply cynical state, sights of deep foliage give me hope. As one wanders the cities, one finds sameness - stretches of concrete, glass, tar, gleaming progress, apathy, urgency, rush. Amidst these strands of humanity, trees stand defiant, bastions of sanity, like a final frontier. In residential societies, in office complexes, seraphic patches of green are succour for tired eyes, minds, even souls. But to me they also bring a sense of foreboding, of fear, of pain. How long will they survive? Greed expands like lava - it will burn most in the way.
And we will reach the stage projected in the movie Wall-E (the movie projects a grim post apocalyptic world). In the movie - a tiny sapling stands for everything good - for hope amidst misery, for rebirth, for beauty, for reversion to humanity. This brings me to how plants have elevated scenes in movies, because they symbolise so much, most of all hope and growth.
First up is the movie Lootera, released in 2013. The movie is based on O’Henry’s short story - The Last Leaf. As the winter sets in the hills and gradually subsumes the leaves of the tree visible from her window, the ailing heroine loses hope for her own health. She firmly believes that she will live as long as there is the last leaf on the tree. On surface, this pegging of something as strong as human life on something as uncertain and fragile as a leaf may sound illogical or sign of a failing mind. But it also shows how mind works, how hope thinks, and how we form strong relation with the nature - trees and plants. If there is some logic to vicariousness, then this is most logical. Trees stand for strength, for longevity, a strong attestation for life itself.
A recent movie had similar symbolism with a plant standing for life and continuity - ‘October’. This melancholic movie is about a young, comatose girl who has suffered brain damage due to an unfortunate incident. Her name is ‘Shiuli’, meaning night jasmine, her favourite flower. Symbolism of the fact that night jasmine has a short, beautiful life, and the fact that Shiuli eventually dies is apparent. But in the end, the hero walks away with a night jasmine plant gifted to him by Shiuli’s mother, highlighting the strong association between man and plant, and a continuity.
Two bollywood movies of yesteryears while do not have such strong linkage with the trees but have memorable shots which show a turn of events, from pain to clarity and hope - with trees being the central piece. In Amar Prem, a kid grows up in a seedy neighbourhood with brothels around. The protagonist is a prostitute who develops a strong maternal bond with the kid, who in turn likes her more than her foster mother. He once plants a sapling in her courtyard. Twists of time take the boy away from the neighbourhood. Years later, the boy, now a grown man, well settled in life, visits the neighbourhood with a vague, lingering interest in knowing about ‘her’. (He in fact uses just the pronoun ‘woh’ meaning ‘she’ for the protagonist). As soon as he gets off the rickshaw, his eyes fall on the spot where he had planted the sapling, and he sees a fully grown, lush tree. The background music hits a crescendo - the maternal lullaby ‘she’ used to sing to him. Immediately tears well up in his eyes, and the memories flood. The tree symbolises his own growth, the distance he has covered, yet a tugging with the past, a root which you cannot budge. To him the tree stands for care, for motherly love, for a bond - tenuous yet strong. This scene gives goosebumps, just like another one from the movie Anupama.
The protagonist named Anupama is an extremely shy, sensitive girl whose personality has been suppressed by a dominating father, who holds her responsible for the death of her mother who died while delivering her. Anupama comes in contact with a free-minded author/poet, who gets so enamored by her simplicity, and her dilemmas that he writes a novel based on her life. The novel is an appeal to her to break free from her mental barriers, to give her confidence, to embrace her innate beauty, to take control of her fate. Anupama reads the novel through the night. The room is dark. On finishing, she keeps the book down gently, there is an amused look on her face, she walks to the window and sharply pulls the curtain. And the sunlight bursts into the room, streaming through the branches of a large tree. Anupama now has a confident, almost arrogant, look on her face as she soaks in the sunlight. The tree is large, and majestic, almost acknowledging Anupama’s arrogance, congratulating her on her new-found determination.
Trees can mean so much, like their countless leaves.
