THE STRANGER IN MY HOME
  • Home
  • Vignettes
    • Encounters
    • Events
    • Experiences
    • Epiphanies
  • Stories
  • Fables
  • Translations
  • Miscellany
  • Now/Then

now  /  then

blogs and blends

A Tree and an Execution

5/7/2018

4 Comments

 
With a breathtaking leap, Reston, the Washington suburb where I live, has hurtled from winter into summer. Last week I wore parkas and windcheaters, as I walked around the lake, and prayed for spring. What I have got instead is this hasty visitor, an impatient summer, intruding on my dream of an equable vernal respite.
 
Granted my morning walk was late, and the usual harmony of birds was long past. My craving for an over-easy egg and a large mug of coffee delayed my saunter. When I finally sallied this morning, I was astounded. The sun was strong and the air was warm. It was decidedly summer, not spring.
Picture
Unlike most of my friends, I don’t ascertain the weather by reading the temperature on the computer or hearing it on the television. I check it by stepping outside. It gives me a chance to be surprised. Sometimes I go out on a mild afternoon, without noticing the gathering clouds, and return thoroughly drenched. But more often I step out on a nondescript morning and the sun bursts forth in all its glory and makes me happy to be alive. The ripples on the lake nearby glitter and meld as I pass, and the cool breeze feels like a caressing finger on my face.
 
It seems comical to say this, but Reston has taught me to look around me. There is so much to see. There are so many trees on both sides of the trail that I appear to receive an honor guard every time I walk. I don’t know their names; when somebody tells me, I forget them. What will I do with a generic name anyway, when the trees are so unique? Each one has a unique bark, unusual roots, unmatched shape and a fanciful set of branches. Each is beautiful in its own way, and some are truly spectacular. Nobody loves poetry as much as I do, but I quite understand Joyce Kilmer when she says,
“I think I will never see
 A poem as lovely as a tree.”
 
My brother, Pritish, was a swashbuckling reporter, and of all his remarkable interviews the one that sticks in my memory is the one he did of a quirky Bollywood celebrity. When asked about his closest friends, the star led Pritish to his garden and started introducing the trees by the eccentric but familiar names he had given them. You may not care for the kooky names he had conferred on the trees, but you cannot but be impressed by the tenderness with which he daily sang to the trees, his beloved buddies. I confess that I have begun to think of the giant firs near my home as fraternal too.
 
It was painful to find our arborist has decreed an order of execution on my neighbor’s tree. No doubt she has her reason: perhaps some arboreal disease or a perilous weakening of her roots. But it was a decision that hurt. It is a tree I have watched change through the seasons year after year. I have seen it grow taller and more luxuriant. Now to find that it had to go was not very pleasant.

Picture
​What made it uglier was the process of its removal, which I saw for the first time. A huge tree is not gone in a second; it is more like one of the cruelest forms of torture and murder. Experts explained to me that, if you bring down a massive tree, however well you control the process, it may land on a house or a garage and wreck it. The right way is to chop it off bit by bit. A crane placed an expert chopper on a high branch of the tree and he secured himself with ropes to the trunk-top. With an electric saw he cut off the highest branches and the very top of the tree. Then the crane took the man off and placed him on another side of the tree, where the branches came off one by one. Step by step the fellow expertly chopped of all the higher branches and then the lower branches. Little by little he lopped the trunk of the tree. It was execution by inches, some form of heartless killing akin to what was done in the middle ages. Finally, came the last bit: the saw neatly took out the last bit of the trunk, which was placed with the other parts in a truck, to be taken to some lumber factory. The execution was complete.
 
I was saddened by the horrid spectacle. For the first time in my life I understood the enormity of a tragedy taking place around us. Trees are vital to us humans, for they not only create oxygen for us but also absorb deadly carbon monoxide from the environment. They reduce the need for air-conditioning and use of fossil fuels for energy. Thomas Crowther of Yale has painstakingly gathered statistics from different countries and estimated that there are three trillion trees on our planet. About 400 trees for each of us. If that sounds a lot, you better remember that since the start of civilization about 12,000 years ago we have cut down about half of the world’s trees. The planet that is our home is losing 15 billion trees every year.

Picture
I am fortunate that these bright summer days I still walk among an opulence of trees. I hope that they will stay and brighten my remaining days. No, there is no better poem that a glossy-green, glorious tree.
4 Comments
bikash
5/7/2018 23:12:58

eto sundor vabe lekha ja bhasai bola jai na, lekha ta anuvob korte hoi.
pronam sir

Reply
Manish
5/8/2018 16:55:58

Thank you, Bikash. I am honored.

Reply
Apan Kumar Basu
5/7/2018 23:22:00

ভাষা এবং লেখন এত সুন্দর হয় ভাবা যায় না।

Reply
Manish
5/8/2018 16:56:51

Many thanks for your generous compliment, Apan.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Manish Nandy

    Writer, Speaker, Consultant
    Earlier: Diplomat, Executive


    Archives

    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015

    RSS Feed


    Categories

    All

Proudly powered by Weebly
© Manish Nandy 2015  The Stranger in My Home