It is early summer and many Indian cities are scorched with tomato red and golden yellow. The gulmohar, a foreign tree with red petals—four tomato red, and one white, flecked with red and yellow—is in full blossom. The native amaltas, also called the Indian laburnum, is heavy with golden chandeliers of flowers. The trees have gained so much popularity as avenue treasures that most Indians identify summer with flaming gulmohar red and simmering amaltas gold, sometimes watching the two merge into each other as two trees stand side-by-side.
This summer, I watched the gulmohar in my colony cover itself in radiant red blossoms. One day there were buds on the boughs, and the next day the entire canopy was covered in flowers, blooming together, looking endlessly fresh day after hot day.
A Common myna, a brown bird with a yellow mask, would sit on the branches of the gulmohar and sing. And sometimes, it would scold, railing at other birds, guarding a nesting site—the top of a drain hole—from intruders. At the end of the week, a storm swept through Delhi. The wind lashed at trees, and rain pelted down. The storm was unexpected in the way that climate change has altered the meaning of weather—storms or cloud bursts are frequent and extreme; the climate altogether feels cranky and unreliable.
Holed up at home, I wondered how the gulmohar, with its origins in Madagascar, would be doing. The tree is notoriously weak. As the rain reduced to drips, I rushed out to see its outcome.
The amaltas still stood, the ground swathed in its petals, in premature yellow tears. I turned a bend to see the fate of the gulmohar. It was early morning and still dark. The first thing I noted was a large branch of the tree, broken, hanging from electric wires. The branch ended in multiple flowers, poignantly looking freshly washed. Even in the gritty, early morning light, the bough looked aflame, a torch of red splendour. The rest of the tree still stood, even though it looked like it had lost a major limb.
As storms increase in frequency, there will be many who call for trees to be felled to reduce risk of their falling. Yet, we need trees, as surely as we need a stable climate. In the absence of the latter, it is the presence of the former that can make places habitable.
There will always be storms, and always be conflict. It is how we repair after conflict which counts. This repair has to happen with care, and with thoughtfulness.
It is prudent to plant native trees that are well-adapted and hardy to their bioregions. Though the coming of climate change means novel events—a desert tree might get battered by too much rain, for instance—native trees provide habitat and food to a wide range of wildlife. This gives muchneeded refuge in an overall disturbed and warming world. The days after the storm, I looked out at the depleted gulmohar with some sadness. The tree would take a long time to grow back its canopy. Yet, the myna was back. Its nest had been blown to bits, its woven sticks cast half a kilometre away. Yet the bird was back, fixing me with a jaunty eye. Near it, the amaltas stood proud. So many storms had come this year, flooding roads, felling trees, halting red lights. Yet the native bird and the native treeling, carried on almost every time. They had no time for despair. Our lives were ridden with conflict; they were busy seizing life.