Felling of the Banyan Tree
by Dilip Chitre
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The poem laments the destruction of a great old banyan tree and, with it, a whole living heritage. The poet's father ordered the tenants around their house on the hill to leave and had the surrounding structures demolished; only their house and the trees remained. Though the grandmother insisted that 'trees are sacred' and felling them is a crime, the father 'massacred them all', the sheoga, the oudumber and the neem were cut down. But the huge banyan, three times as tall as the house, with a trunk fifty feet round and scraggy aerial roots, 'stood like a problem / Whose roots lay deeper than all our lives'. Fifty men with axes chopped it for days; insects and birds fled, and the great tree revealed its rings of two hundred years. The children watched 'in terror and fascination this slaughter'. Afterwards the family left Baroda for Bombay, a city with no trees except the one that 'grows and seethes in one's dreams', its aerial roots still looking for the ground. The poem is a powerful protest against deforestation and the loss of natural and ancestral roots.
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The father's order
The poet's father told the tenants living around their house on the hill to leave, and one by one the surrounding structures were demolished until only their own house and the trees remained. The grandmother used to say that trees are sacred and that felling them is a crime, but the father 'massacred them all'.
The trees cut down
The sheoga, the oudumber and the neem were all cut down, but the huge banyan tree 'stood like a problem / Whose roots lay deeper than all our lives'. Three times as tall as the house, its trunk fifty feet in circumference, its scraggy aerial roots falling from thirty feet or more, it resisted like a living challenge.
The slaughter of the banyan
First the branches were sawn off for seven days, making a huge heap; insects and birds began to leave the tree. Then fifty men with axes 'chopped and chopped' at the massive trunk, and 'the great tree revealed its rings of two hundred years'. The children 'watched in terror and fascination this slaughter / As a raw mythology revealed to us its age'.
The tree that lives in dreams
Soon afterwards the family left Baroda for Bombay, 'Where there are no trees except the one / Which grows and seethes in one's dreams, its aerial roots / Looking for the ground to strike.' The felled banyan survives only in the poet's haunted imagination, its uprooted roots still searching for earth.