The following Sunday....

Saturday morning…Its 830 and I am mechanically pressing ‘snooze’ on my cellphone almost for the fourth time, the sound biting into my ears… I am at Nashik (Mahesh Nagar, my Place)… yet again… And for one more weekend after the last one..! Each of my friends at Mumbai and Pune curse me for this ‘fleeing Mumbai’ act but I can’t help… The place has a natural serenity, flashes loud green colour in monsoons and it’s a great feeling waking up to the chirping of birds than chaos of crows..!!

Finally, Nilya comes and ‘shake-wakes’ me up… We are to go to fetch tree-guards for our plantation the next day… This guy has an amazing zeal when it comes to plants / trees… He has already finished his routine weekend task of watering the trees that we planted over the last two years… We didn’t know until the last few plantation sessions that the Nasik municipal corporation provides good & healthy plants, free of cost, for social plantation (along public roads, parks etc). All you have to do is to follow up with the local gardening officer for some time etc (Again, Nilesh is marvelous at this job… He’ll really be following up with the ‘Sahib / Sir’ for a long time, do the necessary lobbying, get the relevant phone-calls made and finally get the trees! One of the best ‘liaisoning’ officers I have seen. I guess he’s can deal with everybody from the lowest rung staff to the babus themselves, until the ‘gifts and monetary payments’ enter the scene…)

I revise the list in my mind… Plants, pits, tree guards, red-soil, manure… everything appears to be in place… Most of the important logistics part is over, we have twenty something trees to plants and we’ve got a good variety - Neem, Sisum, Peepul, Amla, Apta, Rain tree etc… But something is amiss… I think of the monsoons and leave the list in the middle…

Sunday morning… We start again at eight… But we are stuck up for a small thing… The ‘binding wire’ for connecting the two halves of tree guards… Sometimes, the smallest thing makes a big difference… Meanwhile, Nilesh keeps the things moving by building an army of kids who were playing around…

We fetch some pieces of binding wires from a construction site nearby and get cranking up… I love this job of patching the two tree guard halves together…The job of bonding two halves borne to be made for each other… :)

We have finished planting about seven-eight trees in the last couple of hours… A bit of hunger enters my stomach and brings some fatigue along with it… But the situation changes as Dad, Ashwini, Vibha, Kaushik, Anand enter the scene… The division of labour takes place and everybody is contributing with an expert’s hand by working on various tasks... Things are now moving quickly…

As we approach noon… And its just the last 2-3 plants, one of the nearby shop-owners is watching us for a long while and approaches us… He likes the execution and asks if he can help, joins us… The guy finally ends up asking his men to create a couple of new pits for two new plants around and more pits near his home… That’s the spirit… I feel it just needs that ‘start / first plunge’…

When we finish, I wonder that the kids’ army has contributed with their efforts till the end, only for one thing in return - A few snaps of theirs :)… I think they are the hope for these trees’ survival and conservation… If these kids are motivated enough to care for trees, nobody can stop these trees from growing… I hope the thought spreads… like Nilesh, like the shop-owner, like the kids… When everybody thinks of planting / adopting and bringing up a tree… When the ‘De’ in Net Deforestation of earth will be replaced with ‘A’….

A good Sunday morning..!

This Sunday, we went on a plantation drive with ‘Hariyali’ in Mumbai. Just had a noble thought of spending the Sunday morning volunteering than snoozing inside that warm ’n’ cozy blanket. So, like all of our other OTSPs (On the Spot Plans) :), this one was cooked on our dinner plates on Saturday. While the canvass was ready in the form of an ongoing plantation programme by Hariyali at Bhavale Forest land, off NH-3, near Bhiwandi, we just had to help with our bit of green colour..!

We started for Kalyan on early Sunday morning, glad to see the less crowded train..! When we, full of the familiar gusto, reached the site, it was stunning to see ourselves joining a pool of another 300 volunteers (Mahindra & Mahindra employees and other Hariyali volunteers)..! About 2,000 odd healthy saplings at the base were waving their greens to us. These were to be transported to the top and various other parts of the hills. While half of the team carried some of the plants to the top, the rest formed a human chain. It was overwhelming to see so many people, bustling with enthusiasm, passing the saplings and actually planting them. Recalled the good ol’ story of ‘human spirit’ holding true..!

Hariyali’s plantation drive, to be carried out over two months (June and July), is underway at Bhavale. The plot of land, 25 km from Thane, measures about 25 acres. Till last Sunday (13th July, 2008) ~9,000 saplings of various species of native, forest-friendly plants have been planted to cover about 2-3 barren hills in this area. That’s awesome, literally..! And just take a note of the target – A whopping 25,000 trees at this site during the current monsoon. All these plants have been sponsored by Kandivali Plant of Mahindra & Mahindra ltd, and supplied from their Plant at Nashik.

Hariyali is a Thane based NGO working towards protection and upgradation of environmental conditions in and around Mumbai. Hariyali, has to its credit, a plantation of massive number of trees across barren hills in the Yeoor range of Sanjay Gandhi National Park and a number of other sites around Thane and Powai area since 1996. In the past, it has also undertaken water / soil conservation by development of a number of lakes, check dams and bunds in these areas. It has played a key role in converting some of the abandoned quarries in the region into water bodies. The man behind this humongous effort is a noted environmentalist and nature lover, Mr. Punam Singhavi. Mr. Singhavi with his team of volunteers from Hariyali has been guiding the current campaign with a notable zeal.

We, a group of five, ended up planting about 30-35 trees, some of them being Banyan, Neem, Shatavari, Bamboo, Jamun etc. We finished by noon with our small contribution. All of us drained of water, drenched with sweat but filled with the satisfaction, headed back to our homes..! A fulfilling Sunday indeed..

The drive is on till the weekend of 26th/27th July, presenting a good opportunity to contribute our efforts!

On the other hand, Nilesh has been busy on execution and logistics for planting about 25 saplings near our ‘Den’ i.e. area around Mahesh Nagar, Nasik Road. This will add to our existing 200 trees planted there over the last five years. Our monsoon plantation efforts seem to be slowly coming back on track, after starting the season by dispatching about 80 saplings (a variety of native Indian ones) to be planted on a plot of land at Pandharpur.

Well… ‘Green chromosomes’ (thats what we have named our efforts) seems to be making a head start towards its contribution to a greener tomorrow…!