The Pangara

I was a BIG environmentalist as a kid. When I was twelve or thirteen years old, I decided that the society I was living in had too few trees and an open ground, and hence set about planting a few of the former on the latter. My parents gently reminded me that the ground was also used for other purposes, such as playing games and parking cars, and so my original grand plans of planting about twenty trees on the expanse got trimmed down to just two, on the boundary just inside the fence.

Now with just two to plant, I could not afford to be indiscriminate in my choice of tree. After some searching in the library (the internet was non-existent in those days), I went to the local branch of the WWF, of which I was a member. There I asked Mr Samuel - a mustachioed gentle guy with a booming voice - which two trees I should plant, that would be the most beneficial to the birds, the environment and the world in general. Mr Samuel immediately brightened to the idea, and asked me to return in a couple of days while he conducted his research.

Two days later, he presented me with a list of about twenty five trees, which I looked at with some dismay. I just wanted two, and here I have been given a list of probably all the trees that grow in India? I probed gently as to which of these trees were most favored by Mr Samuel, and left after about half an hour, with my brain full of the qualities of all the trees on the list, but also with a firm decision - I would plant one Singapore Cherry, and one Pangara.

None of the nurseries around had the Singapore Cherry in stock, so I finally settled for an ordinary cherry tree, which I later realized belongs to a different plant order altogether. However the Pangara, or Indian Coral Tree, was easily procured, and planted next to the cherry for company. Over the next few months, many hours were spent lovingly tending these trees, watering them, giving them fertilizer and spraying them with pesticide. The latter did not prevent the Pangara from being persistently attacked by stem-borers, though. After wracking my head looking for a solution, I decided to let the stem borers be, since the tree was anyways growing at a rapid pace, leaving the poor cherry looking like a dwarf in comparison. And once the fleshy stem of the Pangara hardened into bark, the stem borers would be less of a problem, I reasoned.

In a couple of years, my family left the rented apartment and relocated to our own place, a few km away. I slowly lost touch with my former neighbours and the trees I had planted. Every few years I would make a trip down to the society specifically to see how the trees were doing, and felt proud to watch them grow large and beautiful. Soon none of the nameplates on the doors indicated that any of my former neighbours had remained, and I contemplated the permanence of trees, as compared to people.

Last week we moved office since we had outgrown our earlier space. I found the new place to be within walking distance of my earlier residence, and decided to take a stroll and see how the good old trees were doing. I was in for a surprise. The cherry had grown up, and was finally looking like a respectable tree. However, in place of the Pangara, there now stood a... car.

I stood a bit and wondered about about this turn of events. Had the tree been diseased, and thus been put down? Had it grown too large for its own good, and been hacked down by the electricity board to protect their overhead wires? Or had this callous car-owner decided to pave paradise and put up his personal parking lot? No, that could not be - there were only two cars parked on the grounds, with lots of space for any more. Too, the society in general looked dilapidated and hardly lived-in. Which was surprising, since it was close to one of the hubs of the city. But there it was - only one tenth of the apartments showed any sign of life, and of the once-flourishing garden in the premises, there was no trace.

While I was about to leave with a heavy heart, something caught my eye - just outside the fence, near the cherry tree, was a small Pangara, about ten feet tall.

I smiled, and could feel the cherry tree doing the same, in its own way.