The Peepul ( Bodhi ) Tree – A Story About Urbanization and Its Effects

Cities grow. Some grow vertically, and when they can no longer go up, they grow horizontally. The concrete jungles slowly eat into lush, green farmlands and shady groves of trees. But what happens to those who called these lands home, those who have tended lovingly to these lands and trees for generations.

I live in a place where most of my neighbors are farmers converted to businessmen. The authorities gave them land to live on, took away the land they tended to, and loads of money in return. The younger generation loves it. Without raising a muscle to study or earn, they are millionaires. “Why would anyone in their situation complain”, a common refrain I hear from others who slog to earn a living.

But speak to the older generation, there is a certain wistfulness; those who were born on these lands, grew up, married, had kids, lost loved ones, sweat it out tending to the fields year after year. The love and the pain is visible in their eyes when they speak about it.

“There’s no gettin’ away from it, this love of the land…” said Gerald O’Hara in Gone With The Wind. How far would one go in this love…. Read on to know…

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The leaf fluttered down with the wind. That was the last leaf on the tree. Autumn and age had taken its toll on the rest. This one had stuck on the longest.

She remembered when as kids she would sit under this tree with her brother. Those were good times. Ma would pack lunches for them, neat little triangle paranthas, or round pooris, with a piece of pickle in the center. They would come to this field early in the morning and play in the river nearby. All the splashing around would make them hungry enough to gobble down their lunch and wash it down with mangoes picked fresh from the trees at the edge of the field. And then doze away for hours in the cool shade of the peepul, this very same peepul.

“Don’t stay out very long. Come back home before dark.” Her mother’s voice resounded in her head.

So many years had passed since she last heard that instruction, repeated every morning of their vacations. She had no intentions of disobeying her mother. In spite of her brother’s pleadings to stay on at least once till it was dark, so that he could see the bhoot in the tree. Just five then, he fantasized about catching the ghost and carrying him away, Vikramaditya style, and show off his bravery to all those who would listen. When school re-opened, she and her brother would stop over to spend time under this peepul tree on their way back from school.

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 “Shanti Ji, it has to happen someday.” Even after all these years, she remembered the scene vividly. The man with the thick spectacles and pot-belly tried convincing her parents one last time. “Everyone in the village is doing the same thing. How long will you people hold out. Those city-wallahs are very smart. They know how to make the right offer.”

“But this place has been our home for centuries. This house was built by my great great-grandfather. Generations of our family have grown up playing in these fields. How can we hand over all of this to some builder, just because some neighboring city has no more land to build on!” argued Bauji.

A year and innumerable trips by the pot-bellied broker later, it was the city-wallahs who won. Ma packed their belongings into two of the biggest trunks that the family possessed. The rest they left behind. Bauji loaded the mini truck and they set off for the new apartment that the builders had allocated to them, close to the outskirts of the new city.

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“Come Sarita, it’s time to go inside”, the warden’s voice shook Sarita out of her reverie. She took one last look at her beloved peepul tree and turned around to face the foreboding white building of the sanitarium, her home for the last seven years. Memories made you do strange things. Close to her, another inmate of the asylum sat on a mound of dry leaves, plaiting an imaginary daughter’s hair. Smiling, Sarita patted the daughter’s head and made her way back to the main door.