Edward Hamilton Aitken in one
part of his book ‘A naturalist on the prowl’ talking about the banian tree sensibly writes“…another
thing that makes futile much of our roadside planting is the erratic selection
of trees, without any regard to whether they will grow or do any good where we
put them” If you were to see the kind of trees being cut, and the kind
of those being planted (if at all any) I am sure there is nothing that we can find to correlate.
And how we swear on the sun, the summer and go, “The temperature this year
could go a record high, may cross forty five” like we do not know how and why.
A fortnight ago when I was back
at home all what I heard from people around was ” Bangalore was never this hot”,
of course it was not. Like in most of the conversations where there is a talk
about each other’s health and the weather, there are some amongst us like my mother
who never stops telling about the beauty of Bangalore weather twenty or thirty years
ago. The early morning mist, the walks, the birds, the flowers, the coffee, the
cold just resting like a blanket on the skin, well it surely must have been heaven. And how
I envy her! Throughout all the years of my growing up in Bangalore on such similar
mornings I would tell “It’s cold right”,”Ah this is nothing!” she would retort.
I wonder till date which heaven she loves talking about.
This was a couple of years back 'Garden City Bangalore? 50000 trees cut, more to go'
and we still are counting. And while citing the reason I am not going to mention the
obvious. More than the trains, the trams and the buildings it is because of we
being complacent about issues. It is because we are sure that the consequence does not affect us
immediately. The sun has to shine right on our head, burn through the thick of our
skin, make us sweat till the last drop of water inside. Until then we prefer to live with this question “Howdy! Weather? ”
PS: If you are a Bangalorean,
apart from waiting for the Metro to start in your area is there anything else
you wish to do? ;-)
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