“Nothing grows under a banyan tree,” and the authors of Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi's Last Battle had likened her to a banyan tree. This comes to mind twice within a span of a year because of two different banyan trees.
The first story was that of a banyan tree in Calangute that was actually cut down, and was being removed, when the snakes living around it were a treat to onlookers and covered the belly of the perpetrators with fear!
There wasn’t much of a protest – who protests when builders are involved? – but the tree that was half-destroyed found itself propped up again and slowly started breathing again. It is alive and kicking today.
The second story has a fresh dateline and is about a banyan tree that was not cut, but relocated from one place to another, in the vicinity of the capital city.
Reports suggest, that it was relocated once and then again, to another place.
Ponjekars, or people living in Panjim, have been quiet for years about the Smart City.
Reports also suggested that people had gathered to protest not just the banyan tree being relocated, but about an old rain tree that was supposed to be felled to make way for the beautification of Panjim.
The rain tree was chopped off, but the banyan tree is on a relocation dance forcing the question: why different treatment for the trees? A tree is a tree, and whether it is a banyan tree or rain tree, should make no difference.
Both trees were old and the protesters’ ire was that old trees were being cut, but it is sad that the emphasis was on saving the banyan tree and not the rain tree.
Hence, the rain tree got chopped off, and at time of the year when we most think of the rain.
Or, was it because of the belief that nothing grows under a banyan tree!
Both trees were old and the protesters’ ire was that old trees were being cut, but it is sad that the emphasis was on saving the banyan tree and not the rain tree.
Actually, nothing grows, or will grow, when we allow a banyan tree to grow in our mind. This is the problem.
Ponjekars, or people living in Panjim, have been quiet for years about the Smart City.
The work on the Smart City did not begin this year or last year or a year before that. It started when the late Manohar Parrikar was MLA of Panjim and chief minister of Goa.
Then, there was a guy by the name of Chowdhury, appointed by the late Chief Minister, who was entrusted to deliver on the Smart City project. As was well known then, and is now, this Chowdhury did nothing nor did the late Chief Minister.
The point is simple. People have started crying hoarse about the Smart City – no doubt the state of Panjim is bad – but that anger is spouted at the wrong people, or is it because we know that the dead tell no tales.
Everyone wants to live around a smart place, and smart people know that one of the preambles of smartness is being realistic. The best way to go forward is to realise and accept what was holding us back.
The inability to do so is akin to living under a banyan tree. And, forgetting the rain tree that was equally old and forgotten when a banyan tree was being relocated, is another sad reality of living under a banyan tree.