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’….
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’….
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