Chikmagalur - trees - a few images

May 9, 2009
A resort in Chikmagalur – (notes from a person who wishes she knew trees and flowers better.)
It is a wet morning after four days of bright sunshine and warm days. Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle for about two hours. After a late and lazy breakfast, I take a walk on my own, leaving my sister-in-law and friend behind in the swimming pool. They are like kids delighted to just be in the water. I feel the need to be on my own, with trees and plants as my only companions and partners in solitude.

It is a quarter past eleven and the rain has stopped. The sun is out. Mild its feel. As I walk the path away from our room, I recall what I had written about trees a few years ago and know that I feel the same even now:

I want to feel the height of each tree, vicariously experience its shade; feel each branch, its stretch, its curve, its reach; I want to feel the peculiar nature of its wood, its strength, its inner resistance to nature's changing moods and vagaries. I want to outline the shape of each leaf, run my fingers along its surface and experience its texture. I want to know the different kinds of leaves - thin and papery; thick, smooth and glossy; young and tender; tough and coarse; long and slender; large and wide; like needles but silky soft; velvety; furry; stiff; pliable as fine muslin; satiny; sandpapery; deep-veined; fine-veined; with serrated edges; with curling edges….

The air is refreshing, cool. And the earth is wet wet wet. It is thickly covered with pale grayish brown soggy banyan leaves, twigs, broken branches. In some places the chocolate brown earth flaunts its rich fertile hue.

I hear several birds I do not see. My eyes strain to look through the plants, peer into the foliage of the trees but these feathered creatures remain tantalizingly concealed.

The path I take is lined with banyan trees, hoary guardians of perennial wisdom and profound mysteries. Their shade is deep and widespread. The coffee plants grow under them. The younger leaves of the plant are glossy green with curvy edges. Smooth and pliable. When the leaves hang down from the branches of the coffee plants, they look like so many open palms lowered in an offering. Or, is it the bhumisparsha mudra? On one plant I see a new leaf at the edge of a stem. Upright and eager, it takes in the light and fresh air. My eyes linger on the tiny coffee beans - closely clustered green beads or a secret clique sitting bunched together to formulate strategies. A close-knit community – a rarity! Whatever it may be, I gladly take in their fresh green colour, their small round firmness and rejoice in nature’s pleasing variety.

The third row is formed by the silver oaks – tall and robust with the pepper creeper moving valiantly up their trunks. The paan-shaped leaves are a dull bottle green – firm, rather stiff. I trace their prominent longitudinal veins with my finger and marvel at the fine network of smaller veins.

I see a banyan tree so huge that its trunk looks like several elephants’ legs fused together. Then there are two trees growing from the same base, very unlike each other and going their separate ways. The healthier one has leaves which are a bigger version of the tamarind leaves and white flowers with fine thread-like petals. The second one’s trunk is scooped out as if eaten away by some inner rot or disease. A part of it is just a sad shell and yet it has the will to survive, with its two feet planted firmly on the earth. I salute it.

I see two inseparable trees – embracing. Or, if you, my reader, like a less pleasing description – an unflattering one – a tree with a greenish white trunk forces itself onto the other one with the brownish black trunk, which is coarse and scaly. It clamps its heavy form onto it. Long lasting happy union or an unalterable undesirable close connection – reader, choose whatever suits your passing fancy or deeper proclivity. The tree with the paler smoother trunk has sprightly green leaves that taper to a fine point. The darker one has ovate leaves with a rounded front; the leaves are duller, thicker than the ones of its fairer companion or adversary.

Walking further my gaze rests on a robust jackfruit tree. On the earth squats an over-sized jackfruit – a weary slouchy thing. A huge unseemly thing, unable to manage its own weight.

Retracing my steps part of the way, I turn left into an uneven side path where the touch me nots creep undisturbed on the ground. For the first time in my life, I know what a touch me not or chui-mui looks like and really experience the shyness of this sensitive plant. My finger gently touches the tiny fern-like leaves with purplish edges and they fold up, shrinking from my intrusive touch. The touch me not has been touched by the rain and it accepts this graciously.

A pleasant surprise awaits me further down the path. There are clusters and clusters of the tummichettu, or tumbe guda (in Kannada, or Leucas aspera), one of the plants dear to Ganesha. With its grass-blade-like leaves and tiny white flowers with a jutting out petal-tongue, it is a beautiful miniature plant. I am thrilled as I have never seen so many of them. In fact, I began to know of it only after our return to India nearly three years back. And last Ganesh Chaturthi, my leafy vegetables' vendor had generously handed me a small bunch for the puja.

I look at the young Halvan and orange trees that shield the coffee plants and move on.

As I walk back to our room, I recall the chopped off trees - their lifeless forms, stripped off branches and leaves. I saw these on our way to Sravanabelagola from Bangalore. The road was being widened in several places, hence the trees that were in the way of this 'impressive' and 'public-serving' project had to be cut. These long-standing glorious forms now looked like hapless mammoths. Like defeated Titans they cut a sorry figure. Here, I was glad to be surrounded by living breathing ones.