A mini-forest in the city
K S S Pillai
It seems man, fed up with the hustle and bustle of modern life, sometimes wants to escape to his early days in the wilderness.
Many ancestral homes in my home state of Kerala used to have a sacred grove called ‘kavu’ at an auspicious spot in the compound. A diya would be lighted there at twilight. As holy serpents were believed to reside inside, menstruating women would keep away from it. There would be several old trees inside with thick creepers on them.
Only people belonging to a particular tribe were allowed to enter it to retrieve fallen trees or their branches. With pressure mounting on the land, all but a few of them have disappeared.
In big cities, it is beyond the reach of the ordinary man to own a piece of land and build a house there. Real estate sharks are on the prowl for independent old houses. They buy them at exorbitant prices and offer other attractive terms to the owners. Within no time a multi-storey building with shops and residential units would appear there.
I stay in a fast-expanding city. The price of residential plots of land has been going up steadily. Farsighted people buy several such plots and keep them ready to sell in the future.
There is one such piece of land in front of my house. The owner, who stays a little away, bought it years ago when the price was low. He has fenced it off with barbed wire and visits it now and then. However, now there are many openings in the fence through which people and animals enter. Over the years, it has become a mini-forest with different kinds of wild plants. The cattle owners leave their herds there for many hours to feed on different plants and grass.
The plot next to it has been bought by a couple settled in the United States and built a big house there. As the house is locked up most of the time, wild creepers from the vacant plot have found ways to enter it. Some relatives of the house owner visit the place now and then and cut off the creepers and the branches of trees that have encroached upon the property. However, when they return after a long interval, the situation remains the same.
Stray dogs have made the piece of land their home and raise families there. As the puppies grow old and become independent, they leave their mother. In a few months, we find the mother dog pregnant again, and the entire process is repeated.
The place has become home to snakes, too. Recently, when our house was being renovated, the workers would go there for urination. Sometimes they would rush back, not completing the task for which they had gone there. When asked about the reason, they would say they had sighted a snake nearby.
Sometimes, people enter the plot and cut sticks of a particular plant for cleaning their teeth. The land is also home to several wild plants bearing sweet berries, a leisurely feast to birds and squirrels. Even some papaya plants have come up there, perhaps their seeds dropped there by birds or animals.
Some crown flower plants also grow there. Though the flowers are used in the puja for Lord Shiva, they are not grown in one’s compound as their sap is poisonous. Shiva worshippers often enter the plot to collect the flowers as an offering to the deity. The colourful flowers attract bees and butterflies that help in the propagation of the plant. At night, a cacophony of insects emanates from the bushes, lulling one to sleep.
The greenery of the little forest amid the concrete buildings of the city has a relaxing effect on the eyes, but I have no doubt a new owner would soon clean the whole plot and start constructing a building there.
(The author is a retired professor of English. A regular contributor to The Kashmir Vision, his articles and short stories have appeared in many national and international publications)
