Frangipani or ‘temple trees’ are flowering everywhere nowadays. A few days ago, I watched babblers, sunbirds and red-vented bulbuls flying in and out of their branches. It was a very haiku moment of harmony.
Everyone knows that trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air, that they remove and store carbon. They know that trees absorb polluting gases like nitrogen oxides, ammonia and sulphur dioxide, and filter particulates out of the air by trapping them in their leaves and bark. They do all this while releasing good oxygen back into the air. But a haiku moment with a tree also brings home that it’s not only our physical health but also our mental and spiritual well-being that trees profoundly affect.
Such a moment can bring back the nastiest stories, like the one I was told by the best-selling Chinese writer Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. She disclosed that the late Chairman Mao, in his determination to completely desensitise his people and thereby make them mindless and obedient, had thousands of trees cut down all over China, especially the beautiful flowering ones. So, could the growing absence of trees be connected with the rising brutalisation of Indian cities?
Be that as it may, a haiku moment with a tree is really about good thoughts. So it also recalled a moving tribute to trees—to life itself. It was by the German-Swiss poet, novelist and painter Hermann Hesse. Movie buffs in India will recall his book Siddhartha. It was made into an Indo-American film in 1972 with cinematography by an all-time master of visual haiku, Sven Nykvist, the legendary Swedish cinematographer for another Swedish maestro, director Ingmar Bergman.
Herman Hesse said, “For me, trees have always been the most profound preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves.
“Nothing is holier; nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured.”
Meanwhile, I’m waiting for Delhi’s saptaparni trees to bloom. Normally, they bloom from late September to December, sending gusts of sweet, spicy scent my way.
Saptaparni is Sanksrit for seven-leaved, for this tree’s leaves grow seven or eight to a sprig. Saptaparni is also a name for girls. Said to be introduced to Delhi as recently as 1940, this tree has an ancient past elsewhere in the land, especially in the annals of ayurveda. Its bark-extract is said to boost immunity and help treat deep tummy disorders, malaria and epilepsy.
In the South, too, the saptaparni is called ‘seven-leaved’. Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil have names like edakula, aelele, paala, paalai-ezh-ilai.
I’ve read a theory that Palakkad, celebrated as the granary of and gateway to Kerala from the Western Ghats, and famous for the Silent Valley National Park and the scenic Malampuzha, may have got its name from being covered, once upon a time, by a kaad (forest) of paala trees.
On the eastern seaboard, the saptaparni is the state tree of Bengal. It’s called chhatim in Bengali. Graduating students of Visva-Bharati University are ceremonially handed a sprig of saptaparni at convocation. I’m told there’s a story behind this graceful cultural tradition.
Visva-Bharati was originally founded as an alternative Indian school in 1921 by Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan in Birbhum district of Bengal. But before that, in the 19th century, Shantiniketan was apparently the name given to the only pukka building in a quiet, scenic village called Bhubandanga, after Bhuban Mohan Sinha, the zamindar of Raipur.
One day in 1862, Debendranath Tagore, the poet’s father, happened to pass by while on a journey to Raipur. Charmed by the beauty of the village, and given to serious spiritual practice, he halted there for some days and spent time meditating in a grove of saptaparni trees.
He felt so light and happy there that he bought himself 20 bighas of land and built a spiritual retreat that he named Shantiniketan, where his son eventually set up his school. And that’s why the sprig of saptaparni is still handed to each graduating student at Visva-Bharati.
Scripture exults in the botany of ancient India. In the ‘Aranya Kand’, Sarga 75, of the Srimad Ramayanam, Sri Rama and Lakshmana halt at the lovely Pampa Sarovar, identified as a holy lake in today’s Karnataka. The trees, plants, flowering bushes and creepers listed around it include saptaparna. Some of the others listed are also found today among our given names: Tilaka, Bakula, Mallika, Ashoka, Malati, Kunda, Madhavi, Lata.
I’m sure ‘my’ saptaparnis will bloom soon. I anticipate their sweet scent, grateful both for their presence and the stories that their leaves rustle with.
Renuka Narayanan | FAITHLINE | Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
(shebaba09@gmail.com)
