Will You StepInto My Arbour?

Pradip’s first choice as a profession was making films. He directed Massey Sahib in which his novelist wife Arundhati Roy played the stellar role. My wife and I were invited over by his parents Prem Krishen of the ics and Bimla whom we had known since our college days to watch the film in their home on Sardar Patel Marg facing the Ridge. We were charmed by the film. No sing-song, no buttock-wiggling dances—a simple story powerfully told. Neither Pradip nor Arundhati who lived on the floor above bothered to join us. It was not surprising that none of his films was a box-office success. He gave up making films.

Pradip was always a loner. He spent long hours loitering about footpaths in the heavily afforested Ridge across the road. He didn’t pay much attention to the vegetation he passed through day after day. In his short preface, he describes the sudden realisation that there was more to trees and bushes than he had known. It reads like an epiphany—the manifestation of God in a new incarnation. He writes: "Then something happened. It was late winter in 1995—16 February to be precise. I know because I wrote it down. It is a time of year when most shrubs and trees on the Ridge have been bare for many weeks. On this particular day, I noticed that every dry twig had sprouted a tiny, pale green affirmation that it was still alive—little glinting points of life, especially noticeable when a bush was backlit by the sun. It was like a hidden trigger that had been pulled to produce the magic of a fresh shoot, not just on one plant, but everywhere I looked. I felt specially privileged, as though the forest had allowed me in on a secret event on its biological calendar."

He continues: "Looking back, I am sure this was the exact moment when my interest in plants began. My earliest photographs of Delhi trees were taken in the rainy season of 1997. It must have been just before then that I decided to learn as much as I could about Delhi’s trees and begin the research that led to this book."

Although I had known Pradip from his childhood days—the family had stayed with me in my home in England—I was not able to recognise him when I met him one evening as I was resting on a slab of stone in Lodhi Gardens. He came over and introduced himself. He had read my book Nature Watch and chided me for using outdated Latin terminologies to describe plants I had listed. "Things have changed; new Latin words have replaced the old used by you," he said. I admitted my knowledge of trees was superficial. Today all trees in Lodhi Gardens have two labels bearing their names in Hindi and Latin identified by Pradip. The Delhi government would do well to get him to label all trees in the city.

Many years ago I planted a sapling of what I was assured was a kadam. Today it is over 21 feet tall with branches spreading into the verandah of the flat above mine. It has become the haunt of crows, mynas, barbets, bulbuls and magpie robins. But it is not a kadam. I asked a nursery owner of Chennai to identify it for me. He took a leaf. A few days later he wrote to me saying neither he nor his father who had been in the business for over 50 years could identify it. I must get Pradip over to solve the mystery.

Trees of Delhi is a veritable treasure: all the 11,000 colour photographs make identification simple and pleasurable. It should find a place in every educated home, school, college and library.